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Varun RavikumarPhD Student and Rotman Institute Member
I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Western Ontario. Prior to my doctoral studies, I earned an M.A. in Philosophy from Northern Illinois University and an M.Eng. in Engineering Mechanics from Pennsylvania State University. I also hold a B.Tech. in Mechanical Engineering from Shiv Nadar University in India. My switch from engineering to philosophy was motivated by a change in research focus, shifting from examining material behavior to exploring how humans adapt to unfamiliar environments. This transition was triggered by a culture shock I experienced during my graduate studies in engineering. Facing unfamiliar values, practices, and structures in a radically new sociocultural setting led to a deep sense of self-estrangement and a search for meaning, which ultimately sparked my interest in philosophy. My research primarily spans the philosophy of cognitive and social sciences, the philosophy of mind, and the history and philosophy of science, among other areas of inquiry. I am particularly interested in the theoretical and conceptual tools used within the cognitive and social science—specifically psychology and sociology—to study human minds, behaviors, and society. Ravikumar, V. (forthcoming). Explaining social subjectivity: A Bourdieusian response to Zahavi. Australasian Philosophical Review. Doi:10.1080/24740500.2024.2485537 Richmond, A., Jonathan, B. G., Kayssi, L. F., Küçük, K., Ravikumar, V., Şahin, M. Y., and Anderson, M. L. (2024). Imposing vs finding unity. Cognitive Neuroscience, 15(3–4), 122–123. Doi: 10.1080/17588928.2024.2405187 Ravikumar, V., Bowen, J., and Anderson, M. L. (2023). A more ecological perspective on human-robot interactions. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 46, e42. Doi: 10.1017/S0140525X22001613 Ravikumar, V., Yi, N., Vepachedu, V., and Cheng, H. (2017). Transfer Printing for Cyber-Manufacturing Systems. In: Jeschke, S., Brecher, C., Song, H., Rawat, D. (eds) Industrial Internet of Things. Springer Series in Wireless Technology. Springer, Cham. Doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-42559-7_28 (Last updated: June 2025) Human beings are social animals. Although the cognitive and social sciences have traditionally studied the biological and social aspects of human behavior separately, recent decades have seen a rise in interdisciplinary fields aiming to bridge these areas. While practitioners of cognitive sociology, cultural psychology, social neuroscience, and embodied cognitive sciences, among others, are working hard to integrate insights from both disciplines, many important questions remain largely unexplored.
For example, how do researchers conceptualize and model the complex interactions between minds, brains, bodies, and society? How do they navigate disciplinary boundaries and reconcile theories, concepts, methods, and explanations across the social and cognitive sciences? In what ways does interdisciplinary research enhance scientific and philosophical understanding of human minds? And what practical contributions can an interdisciplinary science of mind and behavior offer to society, especially given the changing socioecological landscapes of the twenty-first century? My research seeks to address these questions through active interdisciplinary work. As a graduate student within the EMRG Lab at the Rotman Institute of Philosophy, my doctoral thesis aims to develop social foundations for Gibsonian ecological psychology by synthesizing it with Bourdieusian cognitive sociology. One goal of this project is to theoretically build a model of socially embedded agents that captures the constitutive influences of social practices and structures on agents’ perception of affordances—environmental action possibilities. This work aims to enhance the understanding of social constraints that promote (and hinder) cooperation and collective action, which may have important practical implications for addressing complex problems such as environmental sustainability and climate action. |