Alison A. Springle

I’m pursuing two intertwining streams of research. The first develops and applies a novel, unified “action-forward” approach to answering questions about the nature of intentional action and the aboutness of representations. The second explores issues in philosophy of psychology and cognitive neuroscience as they intersect with issues in social epistemology and the ethics of knowing.

The action-forward framework treats the intentionality of action as basic and analyzes the intentionality of representation in terms the function of providing “practical access” to facts. Something functions to provide practical access when it functions to enable or potentiate the performance of actions that are appropriate, i.e., that “practically-fit” (as opposed to descriptively-fit or “match”) the facts. A distinction between two major species of action yields a corresponding distinction between different species of practical access. From the latter emerges a most fruitful distinction between a “de substituto” species of representation-- roughly the propositional representations philosophers are familiar with-- and a hitherto neglected “de agendo” species of representation. The action-forward framework evolves insights from a broader historical tradition that includes Gibsonian Ecological Psychology and American Pragmatism to illuminate a whole host of contemporary issues. Examples include: the relationship between perception, cognition, and action and the ways they manifest in humans as opposed to other animals; the nature of practical knowledge, knowledge-how, and skill; original intentionality, derived intentionality, and singular reference; and the epistemically distinctive nature of scientific representation. Finally, the action-forward framework transforms traditional conceptions of psychological capacities like perception, memory, imagination, emotion, and reason. It thereby contributes to revealing and addressing epistemic injustices inherent in traditional conceptions of such capacities, especially those relating to love and relationships, trust, education, employment, aging, health, medicine, the environmental, economics and law. 

2022-2024: Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oklahoma, Department of Philosophy  

2020-2022: Post Doctoral Researcher in Prof. Hong Yu Wong’s Philosophy of Neuroscience (PONs) research group, University of Tübingen Philosophy Department of Philosophy/Werner Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neurosciences (CIN). 

2022. PhD from University of Pittsburgh, Department of Philosophy

2022. Graduate Training Certificate from the Center for the Neural Bases of Cognition (CNBC).