Dan Burnston

Dan Burnston is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Tulane University, serving as Director of the Tulane Cognitive Studies Program and faculty member in the Tulane Brain Institute. He also co-manages the Brains Blog. His research focuses on functional decomposition of cognitive and biological systems, representation in science, and decision-making mechanisms. He holds a PhD from the University of California, San Diego (2015), an MA from Georgia State University (2009), and a BA from Rutgers University (2007).

Education:

• Ph.D., Philosophy and Cognitive Science, UC San Diego (2015)
• M.A., Georgia State University (2009)
• B.A., Rutgers University (2007)

Research interests include philosophy of neuroscience, perceptual architecture, representation in biology, and agency. His work addresses topics like contextualist functional localization, embodied cognition, and the integration of pluralistic explanatory frameworks. Recent projects explore cognitive ontologies and the role of diagrams in scientific representation.

He has presented at leading venues such as the Philosophy of Science Association and the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology. His work appears in journals like Philosophy of Science, Synthese, and Consciousness and Cognition. He co-leads the WORking Group on Diagrams in Science (WORGODS), emphasizing inferentialist accounts of scientific representation.

Awards and grants: None explicitly listed in provided materials.

Labs/Teams: Active contributor to the Tulane Cognitive Studies Program and collaborator in interdisciplinary neuroscience initiatives.