Bram Vaassen

Philosophy

Postdoctoral fellow

Rutgers University, USA and Umeå University, Sweden

Bram Vaassen is a Swedish Research Council visiting fellow at Rutgers University and a postdoctoral researcher at Umeå University. Before taking up these positions, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cologne and received a PhD in Philosophy from Umeå University, as well as a BA, MA, and MPhil from KU Leuven.

Vaassen’s research focuses on theories of causation. His work develops a scientifically respectable theory of causation that can capture everyday causal talk and can further ongoing debates on consciousness and levels of explanation. Building on these theoretical foundations, Vaassen has argued that causal explanations can be crucial to bolstering human autonomy, because they allow us to plan our lives in an efficient fashion. An important consequence of this research is that certain decision procedures, such as loan and college applications, need to be transparent, even when they are run by AI systems.