Hello world! post by Gerda Mittag, PhD candidate
Hello world!
My name is Gerda Mittag, I am a PhD candidate in philosophy of cognition at the Technical University of Berlin. My doctoral project is focused on computational explanation in cognitive science. Supervised by Prof. Dr. Beate Krickel, I am developing a novel approach to this highly contended pattern of explanation, which I call the Didaktik account of computational explanation.
Combining my expertise in philosophy, computer science and educational science, this account is helping me answer open questions about computational explanations such as:
Are computational explanations even explanatory?
Why are computational explanations so successful in cognitive science, despite concerns about their explanatory validity?
What is the specific explanatory contribution of computational explanation in cognitive science?
How does computational explanation relate to other explanatory paradigms in cognitive science?
What role do abstraction and idealization play in computational explanation?
This doctoral project is funded by Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes and I have been invited to present my work at the following events:
Workshop Relating explanatory paradigms in cognitive neuroscience - pluralism, integration, and elimination (TU Berlin, 25.-27.02.2026)
Workshop On Philosophical Issues in Neural Computation (Ruhr-University Bochum, 02.-03.06.2026)
Conference Beyond Neuro-computationalism - The philosophy and science of biological brains (University of Antwerp, 04.-05.06.2026)
XIV Encuentro de la Asociación de Filosofía e Historia de la Ciencia del Cono Sur (AFHIC) (Universidad de Valparaíso, Chile, 03.-06.11.2026)
4th Annual Web Conference of the International Society for the Philosophy of the Sciences of the Mind (online, 04.-06.11.2026)
I am generally interested in how scientific research practice is actually helping researchers and the broad public learn about the world we live in.
Besides philosophy of mind/cognition and philosophy of science and technology, I’m also interested in philosophy of language. In my undergraduate thesis I investigated the role pragmatics and pragmatism play in philosophy of translation, working with the example of the political slogan “ni una menos”. Based on this work, I wrote my essay Lost in Translation? Pragmatism to the rescue!. This essay has been awarded the Premio Pragma – Young Scholars Award by the Associazione Pragma and will be published in the European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy.
For any inquiries, please contact me via e-mail mittag(at)campus.tu-berlin.de.
