I am a philosopher who specializes in the philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of artificial intelligence, logic, epistemology, complexity and philosophy of science. I am currently working as a Guest Professor at the RWTH University in Aachen, Germany, taking care of Professor Gabriele Gramelsberger’s Chair for Theory of Science and Technology.
For the academic year 2021-2022, I was a Senior Research Fellow in the Käte Hamburger Kolleg (KHK) “Cultures of Research” at the RWTH University. My research project was called “Cognitive complexity and enculturated artificial intelligence” and it combines studies on computational complexity with research on the development of human cognitive capacities, with the aim of pursuing the feasibility of building artificial agents with human-like intelligence.
Before this project, I was working as a senior grant researcher at the University of Helsinki, working on the project “Epistemology of mathematics and the cognitive foundations of arithmetic and geometry”, funded by the Finnish Cultural Foundation. I will continue this project in 2022-2024. I also have a title of docent (associate professorship) at the University of Helsinki in theoretical philosophy.
Aside from artificial intelligence and the cognitive foundations of arithmetic and geometry, my research interests include many aspects of philosophy of mathematics and science, as well as epistemology and logic. My Ph.D. thesis focused on mathematical truth, mainly from the viewpoint of the discussion on Gödel and Tarski. Since then I have moved on to studying the cognitive basis of mathematics, with focus on arithmetic and numerical cognition. Recently, I have become increasingly interested in the culture-specific aspects of the development of mathematical knowledge, both in phylogeny and ontogeny.
In a recent research project, I have studied the complexity of mathematics and mathematical cognition, which is work that I hope will be important for the research on artificial intelligence. In addition, I have worked on the subject of mathematical explanations in science. My book “Numerical Cognition and Epistemology of Arithmetic” was published in March 2024 by Cambridge University Press:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/numerical-cognition-and-the-epistemology-of-arithmetic/01C0D51E6753DAA96D0F88D1F7D9A5EF