I am a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Philosophy and at the Cogut Institute for the Humanities at Brown University.
My research focuses on the philosophical foundations of cognitive science and artificial intelligence, with particular attention to normativity, agency, and resource-bounded cognition. I am interested in questions such as how to evaluate how well cognitive systems make use of limited resources, how cognitive limitations shape epistemic norms, and how irrationality can serve as evidence for cognitive models.
My current project, Normative Commitments and the Foundations of Rational and Moral Agency in Artificial Intelligence, builds on my account of resource rationality to provide a framework for empirically investigating and engineering normative commitments in AI systems.
Prior to joining Brown, I served as the Director of Cognitive Science at Columbia University. I am also a coordinator of ALIUS, an international research group focused on the scientific investigation of consciousness, especially alternative states of consciousness.
I hold a PhD in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Pittsburgh, an M.S. in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University, and a B.S. from Tufts University with a double major in Philosophy and Cognitive & Brain Science (and a minor in religion).
contact: brendan_fleig-goldstein@brown.edu
Publications
—Isaac Newton, Interdisciplinarian: Newton's Cross-Domain Evidential Reasoning
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 117 (2026): 102154 (Link)
—Metabolic Considerations Are Generic Biological Details Without Resource-Rational Analysis
Forthcoming, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Commentary (Link)
—A Topological Learning Theoretic Analysis of Bounded Rational Analysis
Forthcoming, Philosophy of Science, PSA 2026 Proceedings (Link)
Under Review
—Meta-Reflection, Normative Commitments, and Responsible AI (Link)
—Alternatives to Hypothesis Testing: Demonstrative Induction in Cognitive Science (Link)
—Closing the Loop in Cognitive Science: The Diachronic Evidential Strategy of Bounded Rational Analysis (Link)
In-Progress
—Intentionality Presupposes Resource Rationality
—There Is No General Frame Problem
—Book Project: The History of Mathematical Psychology (with Colin Allen, Nuhu Osman Attah, Mara McGuire, Dzintra Ullis)
