Cody Turner

Cody Turner is a postdoctoral fellow whose current work focuses on how emerging wearable and implantable AI cognitive assistant devices—such as smartwatches, smart glasses, smart contact lenses, and neural implants—are poised to affect the mind from a metaphysical, ethical, and epistemological perspective. This research involves examining emerging digital technologies from the standpoint of both techno-optimism and techno-pessimism.

With respect to the former, Turner is particularly interested in drawing on the extended mind thesis in the philosophy of mind to explore how and to what extent emerging augmented reality and brain-computer interface devices can metaphysically extend cognition, knowledge, personal identity, and even intellectual virtue. From the perspective of techno-pessimism, he studies how emerging digital technologies threaten to exacerbate existing ethical and epistemic problems associated with surveillance capitalism, data mining, and personalization algorithms.

Turner has also published on the topics of machine consciousness, cognitive phenomenology, and intentionality. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Connecticut and his B.A. in philosophy from the College of William & Mary, graduating summa cum laude as a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society.

In addition to his appointment at Notre Dame, Turner is a Future of Consciousness Fellow at the Center for the Future Mind at Florida Atlantic University.