Appointments

Dietrich College Artificial Intelligence and Education Fellow

Assistant Teaching Professor. Department of Philosophy, Carnegie Mellon University

Associated faculty: 

• Center for Informed Democracy & Social Cybersecurity

• Center for Behavioral and Decision Research

• Collaboratory Against Hate

Postdoctoral Research Associate. Princeton Neuroscience Institute

Postdoctoral Research Fellow. Department of Philosophy, Princeton University

Degrees

Doctor of Philosophy (Princeton University)

Bachelor of Arts (The University of Melbourne)

• First-class Honors in History & Philosophy of Science 

• First-class Honors in Philosophy

Research and teaching

See projects for an overview of some of my research. I share tools for helping students improve at analytical reading and reasoning as well as materials for instructors interested in incorporating argument visualization into their classes on my website Philosophy Mapped

My teaching and research has been covered by Inside Higher Ed, Higher Ed Dive, Futurity, The British Psychological Society, Heterodox Academy, CMU, and Princeton Alumni Weekly

Areas of Specialization

Improving reasoning and communication. AI for social good. Psychology of reasoning. Philosophy of psychology. Ethics, especially moral psychology and metaethics

Areas of Competence

Applied Ethics. Philosophy of Language. Philosophy of Mind. General philosophy of science. Metaphysics & epistemology. Logic, especially philosophical logic

Published

Choosing to Learn: The Importance of Student Autonomy in Higher Education. Cullen, S. & Oppenheimer, D. Science Advances. (Covered by Inside Higher Ed, Times Higher Education, Daily Nous, Carnegie Mellon)

Current Controversies in Philosophy of Cognitive Science. Lerner, A., Cullen, S., & Leslie, S (eds). Routledge

When do circumstances excuse? Moral prejudices and beliefs about the true self drive preferences for agency-minimizing explanations. S. Cullen. Cognition. (Covered by Denise Valenti)

Improving analytical reasoning and argument understanding: a quasi-experimental field study of argument visualization. Cullen, S., Fan, J., van der Brugge, E., & Elga, A. npj Science of Learning. (Covered by The Conversation and blogged at Daily Nous) 

The "true" self. International Cognition and Culture Institute

Survey-driven romanticism. Review of Philosophy and Psychology

In progress

Cullen, S., Oppenheimer, D. Campaign in Poetry, Govern in Prose, Persuade in Pictures: Visual argument presentation reduces partisan bias but only when arguments appeal to shared moral values

Cullen, S. Automated discussion markets improve group problem solving and decision making

Cullen, S., Chapkovski, P., Byrd, N., & Thomason, T. Measuring reasoning and eliciting concepts using multiplayer discussion-based games

Cullen, S., Byrd, N., & Dasgupta, S. Do nations have essences? Attribution and responsibility for national actions

Unpublished

Cullen, S., & Sharma, V. Short report on an empirical study of argument presentation and political polarization

Invited presentations (selected)

2024

Rational scaffolding: How argument visualization and artificial intelligence can help us reason more effectively and communicate more openly about polarizing topics. The Association for Informal Logic and Critical Thinking

Promoting constructive disagreement and improving student reasoning at scale. Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression; Axim Collaborative, AI & Education, Inclusive Innovation for Student Success (with Nicholas DiBella)

Beyond civility: Honing reason to create safe spaces for dangerous ideas. Carleton College, inaugural Engaging Across Viewpoints Lecture. Keynote hosted by the Office of the President and the Division of Inclusion, Equity, and Community

Harnessing AI to support constructive disagreement on campus: A practical tool for educators. HxA Workshop (with Nicholas DiBella)

Teaching dangerous ideas in dangerous times: Empirical results and hands-on lessons from Carnegie Mellon. Heterodox Academy, Chicago

AI discussion facilitation to enhance group deliberation and debate. Open Forum for AI Launch

2023

Defeating Hank McBort, or How to curb self-censorship, increase inclusivity, promote resilience, and have productive discussions in public policy classrooms. Frank McCourt School of Public Policy, Georgetown University

Structured reasoning techniques to improve intelligence products and interagency communication. Audiences (with Nicholas DiBella): NSA Deputy Director of Research, IARPA Director of the Office of Analysis, CIA Director of Artificial Intelligence, U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee Staff

What's up with Gen Z? Exploring the link between social media and mental illness Carnegie Mellon University Family Weekend Lecture

Visual strategies to improve group reasoning, policymaking, and understanding across the aisle. Bipartisan Policy Center (with Nicholas DiBella)

2022

Thinking alone and together: Crowdsourcing discussions to investigate reasoning and persuasion. The Reasoning Lab @ U.S. Naval Research Laboratory

Visualization and the language of value: Visual argument presentation and appeal to shared values improves argument evaluation among partisans. Center for Informed Democracy & Social-cybersecurity

What's the point of liberal arts education? Carnegie Mellon University Family Weekend Lecture

Earlier

Measuring the development of students' reasoning abilities: Causal inference from non-experimental data. ThinkerAnalytix/Harvard

Are we hearing the best ideas at the table? TEDxPrinceton

Using controlled reasoning to escape the echo chamber. Neuroscience of Cognitive Control Lab, Princeton Neuroscience Institute

Honors and awards (selected)

2024

Heterodox Academy Open Inquiry Award for Teaching Excellence

Carnegie Mellon University Dean's Innovation Scholar

Ben Delo Foundation research grant (with Nicholas DiBella)

Arthur Vining Davis Foundations research grant (with Nicholas DiBella)

Omidyar Network/Open Forum for AI research grant (with Nicholas DiBella)

U.S. Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Research Academic Advisor

2023

Dietrich College Seed Grant (with Danny Oppenheimer)

U.S. Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Research Academic Advisor

Earlier

Falk Research Grant for Research in the Humanities

Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Research Advisor

Princeton University Council on Science and Technology Research Grant (with Judith Fan)

Program in Cognitive Science Grant (with Judith Fan)

Princeton University Center for Human Values Grant

Princeton Graduate School Award for Excellence in Teaching

250th Anniversary Fund for Innovation in Undergraduate Education (with Adam Elga)

Dwight Final Examination Prize for “The highest score in the final assessment of the degree of Bachelor of Arts degree with Honors”

Dwight Prize in History and Philosophy of Science for “The highest final score in History and Philosophy of Science Honors Degree"

Teaching

Carnegie Mellon University

• Dangerous Ideas in Science and Society

• Ethics and Reinforcement Learning

• Ethical Theories: Expressivism and Nihilism

• Psychology/Philosophy Research Training

• Visual Intro to Philosophy & Visual Intro to Ethics

Princeton University

• "Philosophical Analysis using Argument Maps." Freshman seminar on various topics. Instructor, 2015-17, Peter T. Joseph ‘72 Freshman Seminar in Human Values; co-instructor with Shamik Dasgupta in 2014 and with Adam Elga in 2013

Grad/Undergrad advising

• Dan Connolly, "Improving public understanding of economic policies"

• Parker Felterman, "The Spectrum of Free Will and its Impact on the Individual"

• Claire Wang, "Implementing Automated Discussion Moderation"

• Vidushi Sharma, “Doubt Yourself! A case for partisan political rationality"

Postdoctoral advising

• US Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Research Advisor. Project: "Reducing Belief-Driven Thinking (ICPD 2020-22)". Office of the Director of National Intelligence

• US Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Research Advisor. Project: "Visualization of Complex Arguments to Resolve Analytic Disagreements (ICPD-2022-08)". Office of the Director of National Intelligence

Research training

• Arnav Paliwal, "Argument understanding and polarization"

• Eric Shau, "Increasing the efficiency of Socrates: Matching participants using maximum a posteriori likelihood estimation"

• Aditi Narasimhan, "Stimuli for depolarization experiments"

• Ammu Anil, "Chat transcript coding for group reasoning"  

• Peter Lu, "Discussion markets to improve group reasoning"

• Tiger Ruo (Independent study)

• Anna Li (Independent study)

• SURF/SURA: Kyle McClain, Lily Hazam, Ava Allard, Brandon Zhou, Jehyo Park

Recent service

• CMU Open Forum for AI, founding faculty member

• CMU Heterodox Academy Community founding faculty co-chair

• CMU Academic Freedom/Freedom of Expression Implementation Committee

• CMU Philosophy Department Departmental Generative AI Liaison

• CMU Philosophy Department Departmental Disabilities Liaison

• CMU Speech Culture Survey (Principle Investigator)

• CMU Gen Ed Reasoning Assessment Program (Principle Investigator for a college-wide study of the development of students' analytical reasoning abilities)

• CMU Dietrich College Undergraduate Special Admissions Committee

• CMU Philosophy Department AI/Ethics Hiring Committee

• ThinkerAnalytix Advisory Board Member

• CMU Philosophy Department Graduate Admissions Committee

• Institute for Multipartisan Education, faculty advisor 

• Reviewer for Journal of Cognitive Psychology, Frontiers in Psychology, Journal of Educational Psychology, Journal of Cognitive Development, Routledge, Review of Philosophy and Psychology, Ethical Theory and Practice, Decision, HackPrinceton

• Co-organizer (with David Danks), Models of Morality, Morality of Models. CMU. 2020. Recent years have seen an explosion of research into the empirical bases of human moral judgment along with a corresponding interest in formal and computational models of human morality. At the same time, AI and robotics researchers aim to develop systems that are themselves capable of moral judgment, and so require some model of morality. With this workshop, we hope to spur new and generative collaborations between researchers pursuing these two parallel lines of inquiry

• Co-organizer, Cognitive, Philosophical, and Neural Bases of Responsible Action. Department of Psychology & Princeton Neuroscience Institute. 2017. This conference is motivated by two complementary convictions: first, that the neuroscience of cognitive control should inform philosophical theorizing about agency and responsibility; and second, that such philosophical theorizing may help to guide psychological and neuroscientific inquiry and to interpret discoveries concerning the mechanisms underlying cognitive control. Thus, we aim to bring together psychologists, philosophers, and neuroscientists to explore how the science of cognitive and self-control might inform our understanding of ourselves as morally and legally responsible agents