Mariel Goddu
I’m interested in issues at the intersection of philosophy of mind, biology, action, metaphysics, and cognitive science. My projects approach cognition and metaphysics of mind through the perspectives of evolutionary biology, learning, and development. You can find my CV here, PhilPeople here, & Bluesky here.
During Summer 2025, I am a visiting research fellow with Beate Krickel in the Chair for Philosophy of Cognition at Technische Universität Berlin.
Some questions that concern me:
1. If minds evolved for action (most people agree, for various reasons, that they did), what ought that tell us about the basic content and structure of cognition and experience?
2. What would a biologically grounded perspective on “intuitive physics” –– (a popular concept in cognitive development, computational cognitive science, & machine learning) –– look like, if its original purpose were for interaction with the environment?
3. What is the relation between “world models” and “self models” in biological agents? (and: Is agency really a phenomenon of agents, or is it a particular kind of relationship between organisms and environments?)
4. How can we best update our outdated cognitive ontology, decrease anthropocentrism, and connect Cog Sci/Phil of Mind to more mature life sciences, like evolutionary biology? (Does it make sense to talk about ‘cognitive homologies’ and ‘cognitive analogies’? If so, what are they?!)
5. How should considerations about autopoiesis & autonomy inform our perspectives on A”I” ?
Before coming to Stanford in 2024, I was an Alexander von Humboldt fellow at Barbara Vetter and Dominik Perler’s Centre for Advanced Study in the Humanities: “Human Abilities” in Berlin (2022-2024). Before that, I was a cognitive scientist for ten years. My primary focus was cognitive developmental psychology, but I also worked on projects in adult cognitive psychology, comparative psychology, psychophysics, and computational cognitive science. I earned my BA in Psychology from Yale University in 2013, where I then worked as the research coordinator of Frank Keil’s Cognition & Development Lab from 2013-2015. I completed my PhD in developmental psychology at UC Berkeley in Alison Gopnik’s Cognitive Development & Learning Lab from 2015-2020. My dissertation examined the development of causal generalization, extrapolation, and innovative problem-solving in children aged 1-5 (précis here). From 2020-2022, I was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University in Tomer Ullman’s Computation, Cognition, & Development lab, where I studied play behavior.
I continue to consult on select empirical research projects on causal & modal reasoning –– phenomena I take to be central to understanding the role of mind in action (and in the natural world, more generally). I have co-organized interdisciplinary workshops on The Science & Philosophy of Modal Thought (w/ Jonathan Phillipsat Human Abilities, Berlin; 2022) and Intuitive Physics Across Species and Development (w/ Marta Halina, Christoph Völter & Daniel Haun at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, 2024).
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Recent publications:
Krickel, B., & Goddu, M. K. (forthcoming). Cognitive ontology in terms of cognitive homology: The role of brain, behavior, and environment for individuating cognitive categories. In Piccinini, G. (Ed.) Neurocognitive foundations of mind. Routledge. (chapter)
Dorsch, J., Goddu, M. K., Nave, K., Vierkant, T., Coeckelbergh, M., Gürtler, P., Urban, P., Spang, F., & Moll, M. (in press; preprint here). Against “AI welfare”: Why care practices should prioritize living beings over AI. AI Magazine.
Goddu, M. K. (2025). Disanalogies between causal learning in animals vs. machines: Comment on “Disentangled representations for causal cognition” by F. Torresan & M. Baltieri. Physics of Life Reviews. (commentary)
Goddu, M. K. (2025) Causal understanding is not a point of view, it’s a point of do. Aeon. (essay)
Zettersten, M., Foushee, R., & Goddu, M. K. (2025). “Helpless" infants are active, goal-directed agents: Reply to Cusack et al. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. (commentary)
Goddu, M. K.*, Noë, A.*, & Thompson, E.* (2024). LLMs don’t know anything: reply to Yildirim and Paul. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. (commentary)
Goddu, M. K., & Gopnik, A. (2024). The development of human causal learning and reasoning. Nature Reviews Psychology, 1-21. (paper)