Madeleine Ransom

Assistant Professor

Philosophy

Other Titles: Canada Research Chair
Office: ART 338
Email: madeleine.ransom@ubc.ca

Research Summary

Philosophy of Perception; Philosophy of Cognitive Science; Philosophy of Technology; Epistemology; Aesthetics.

Courses & Teaching

Philosophy of Technology

Websites

ransomphilosophy.com

Research Interests & Projects

My primary area of research is on perceptual learning and how it contributes to human expertise in many domains. I also focus on understanding how perceptual learning can go wrong, contributing to racial and gender biases.

Selected Publications & Presentations

Ransom, M. (2020) “Expert Knowledge by Perception“, Philosophy, 95(3), 309-335.

Ransom, M. (2020) “Attentional Weighting in Perceptual Learning“, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 27(7-8), 236-248. *winner of the Eighth Annual Essay Prize at the Centre for Philosophical Psychology, University of Antwerp*

Ransom, M., Fazelpour, S., Markovic, J., Krylywy, J., Thompson, E., Todd, R. (2020) “Affect-biased attention and predictive processing“, Cognition, 203, 10437

Ransom, M. (2020) “Waltonian Perceptualism“, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 1(78): 66-70.

Ransom, M., Fazelpour, S. (2020) “The Many Faces of Attention: why precision optimization is not attention”, In The Philosophy and Science of Predictive Processing. Eds. Stephen Gouveia, Dina Mendonça, Manuel Curado. London: Bloomsbury.

Ransom, M. (2019) “Frauds, Posers and Sheep: A virtue theoretic solution to the acquaintance debate“, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 98(2), 417-434. (Published online 20 October 2017.)

Ransom, M. (2019) “Naturalizing Logic: a case study of the ad hominem and implicit bias“, In  Natural Arguments: A Tribute to John Woods. Eds. Dov Gabbay, Lorenzo Magnani, Woosuk Park, Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen. p 575-589. London: College Publications.

Ransom, M., Fazelpour, S., & Mole, C. (2017) “Attention in the Predictive Mind”, Consciousness and Cognition, 47, 99-112.

Ransom, M. (2016) “Why Emotions Do Not Solve the Frame Problem” in V. C. Müller (Ed.), Fundamental Issues of Artificial Intelligence (Synthese Library). Berlin: Springer.