Areas of interest
Philosophy of mind, cognitive science, theoretical neuroscience, philosophy of science, mental representation, neural computing, neural networks, neuromorphics, neural dynamics, semantic pointer architecture, neural engineering framework, large-scale neural modelling
Areas of graduate supervision
- philosophy of mind
- cognitive science
- philosophy of science
- philosophy of neuroscience
- philosophy of psychology
Current research
My research focuses on understanding the mind through large-scale neural modelling. My lab built the world's largest functional brain model, 'Spaun'. Understanding the representations, computations, and dynamics of biological systems leads to new characterizations of related philosophical topics addressing concepts, language, experience, mental representation, computation, embodiment and so on.
Selected publications
For a complete list of my publications, see my personal webpage and lab webpage.
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Chris Eliasmith, Terrence C. Stewart, Xuan Choo, Trevor Bekolay, Travis DeWolf, Yichuan Tang, and Daniel Rasmussen. A large-scale model of the functioning brain. Science, 338:1202-1205, 2012.
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Chris Eliasmith. Moving beyond metaphors: understanding the mind for what it is. Journal of Philosophy, 100:493-520, 2003. Reprinted in Brooks and Akins (eds). Cognition and the Brain. 2005. Cambridge University Press. p.131-159.
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Chris Eliasmith. How to build a brain: A neural architecture for biological cognition. Oxford University Press, New York, NY, 2013.
Selected grants, fellowships, and awards
- NSERC Polanyi Prize, 2015
- Fellow of the Cognitive Science Society
- Royal Society of Canada, College of New Scholars
Selected supervisions
- Eric Hochstein (MA/PhD; Philosophy of Science)
- Pete Blouw (MA/PhD; Philosophy of Mind)
- Anatoly Zhitnik (MA; Philosophy of Mind)
Affiliations
- Director of the Centre for Theoretical Neuroscience
- Jointly appointed to Systems Design Engineering
- Cross-appointed to Computer Science
Contact information
celiasmith@uwaterloo.ca
519-888-4567 x42638
Office: E7 6324
Website