I’m a postdoctoral researcher in philosophy at the Applied Ethics Center at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. I work mostly on the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of AI. I combine empirically-informed philosophy, analysis of scientific research, and neo-Kantian ideas to explore continuities and discontinuities between animal and human mentality—whether behavioral, functional, psychological, physiological, or evolutionary. I use this approach to shed light on phenomena such as intentionality, mental representation, and agency. In recent publications, I have drawn on empirical studies of animal problem-solving to argue that certain forms of tool use require a limited kind of self-consciousness.
You can find my UMB email address here.
Publications
Transformative Rationality and the Problem of ‘Creeping Rationalism’
Michael J. Hegarty
Erkenntnis: An International Journal of Scientific Philosophy, vol. 90, 2025, pp. 3145–3168
A Dilemma for Naturalistic Theories of Intentionality
Michael J. Hegarty
Filosofia Unisinos, vol. 22, 2021, pp. 59--68