Shimon Edelman

About

Shimon Edelman holds degrees in electrical engineering and computer science and is a professor in the Department of Psychology at Cornell University. His scientific interests encompass all aspects of mind, brain, behavior, and the human condition, with a focus on behavioral, neural, evolutionary, and computational aspects of language, vision, and happiness. His current research emphasizes evolution and consciousness, and he dedicates a significant portion of his efforts to addressing the urgent challenge of the climate catastrophe. Edelman has authored several monographs, including 'Computing the Mind,' a textbook published in 2008; 'The Happiness of Pursuit,' a non-self-help book from 2012; 'Beginnings,' a psychological-philosophical science fiction work from 2014; and 'Life, Death, and Other Inconvenient Truths,' a short-chapter exploration of the human condition from 2020. His latest publication, 'The Consciousness Revolutions,' was released by Springer Nature in 2023. His work has been featured in the news, including discussions on consciousness from amoeba to human and explorations of happiness, memory, and identity.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Cognitive science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Psychology
• Epistemology
• Cognitive psychology
• Algorithm
• Communication
• Economics
• Philosophy

Selected publications

• Dynamical Emergence Theory (DET): A Computational Account of Phenomenal Consciousness

  Minds and Machines · 2020 · 28 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  DOI

• Parental speech to typical and atypical populations: a study on linguistic partial repetition

  Language Sciences · 2020-07-29 · 9 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Life, Death, and Other Inconvenient Truths

  The MIT Press eBooks · 2020-10-13 · 7 citations

  bookOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  A guide for making sense of life—from action (good except when it's not) to thinking (depressing) to youth (a treasure). This book offers a guide to human nature and human experience—a reference book for making sense of life. In thirty-eight short, interconnected essays, Shimon Edelman considers the parameters of the human condition, addressing them in alphabetical order, from action (good except when it's not) to love (only makes sense to the lovers) to thinking (should not be so depressing) to…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Verbal behavior without syntactic structures: beyond Skinner and Chomsky

  arXiv (Cornell University) · 2023-03-11 · 4 citations

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  What does it mean to know language? Since the Chomskian revolution, one popular answer to this question has been: to possess a generative grammar that exclusively licenses certain syntactic structures. Decades later, not even an approximation to such a grammar, for any language, has been formulated; the idea that grammar is universal and innately specified has proved barren; and attempts to show how it could be learned from experience invariably come up short. To move on from this impasse, we mu…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Consciousness Revolutions

  2023-01-01 · 2 citations

  bookOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This book is about all things consciousness and integrates a computational understanding of the nature of consciousness and ethical implications.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• HH Bülthoff

  Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics

  29 shared

• Nathan Intrator

  27 shared

• Roy Moyal

  16 shared

• Zach Solan

  Tel Aviv University

  15 shared

• Oren Kolodny

  Hebrew University of Jerusalem

  14 shared

• Eytan Ruppin

  National Institutes of Health

  13 shared

• D. Horn

  13 shared

• Heidi Waterfall

  University of Chicago

  12 shared

Education

• PhD, Applied Mathematics and Computer Science

  Weizmann Institute of Science

  1988

• M.Sc., Applied Mathematics and Computer Science

  Weizmann Institute of Science

  1985

• BS, Electrical Engineering

  Technion Israel Institute of Technology

  1978

Similar researchers at Cornell University

• David Randh-100
• Morten H. Christiansenh-78
• Michael H. Goldsteinh-40