I am an associate professor in philosophy at HumLab, where I research and teach on theoretical and practical issues surrounding causality and explanation.
Most of my research focuses on causation and explanation. I am particularly interested in exploring how a scientifically and metaphysically respectable understanding of these notions can inform debates in philosophy of mind and philosophy of AI. I also have some research interests in philosophy of language and epistemology.
I joined HumLab in 2024. Before that I held two post-docs. From Fall 2021 to Fall 2024, I was employed on my own research project 'Causation, Correlation and Sensitivity'. The project was funded by a Swedish Research Council international postdoc grant and took place at Umeå University and Rutgers University, where I spent a two-year research visit. From Spring 2020 to Spring 2021, I was a post-doc on the DFG-funded Determinism, Control, and the Consequence Argument project at the University of Cologne.
In the Fall of 2019, I received a PhD in philosophy at Umeå University. My dissertation, defended the controversial thesis that a standard dualist ontology of mind can allow for mental causation even if all events have sufficient physical causes. That is to say, I argue that it is possible for dualist mental phenomena to non-overdeterministically cause behavior in worlds where the physical realm is complete. I also critically assess previous proposals to this extent.
See https://www.bramvaassen.com/ for more information on my research and publications.