Research

Cameron Pattison | PhD Student, Vanderbilt University | Expected 2029

cameron.pattison@vanderbilt.edu

Research Overview

I am developing rigorous, analytic frameworks for measuring and comparing information and belief states—work that travels across agent–agent comparison, text–text comparison, and the evaluation of AI outputs.

My dissertation research centers on formal epistemology and philosophy of AI, working with David Thorstad to create methodologies that bridge technical implementation with normative reasoning. My background in classical Islamic philosophy, particularly textual source analysis, brought me into AI as a tool for quantifying similarity and uncovering overlooked texts—work that directly informs my current focus on similarity quantification and semantic distance in formal epistemology.

Epistemic Distance & Belief Comparison

Developing hierarchy-sensitive methods for comparing non-ideal agents' belief systems using information-theoretic tools including Bregman-style divergences, extending accuracy-first approaches to more practical settings.

Credence-Preservation in AI Evaluation

Creating evaluation frameworks for automatic text summaries that assess the beliefs they induce rather than surface overlap alone, with applications to high-stakes policy contexts.

Current Research Projects

AI-Assisted Classical Source Analysis

Digital Humanities

Developing computational approaches to identify textual similarities and source relationships between classical philosophical texts across linguistic boundaries (Greek-Arabic-Latin).

Applications:
  • Ibn Arabi Translation Project - Digital parallel text edition with AI-assisted alignment
  • Cross-linguistic philosophical source detection
  • Semantic distance measurement in classical texts

Taking Condition & AI Reasoning

Under Review

"Nothing Infers: AI, Human Cognition, and the Taking Condition" - Examining whether AI systems and human cognition satisfy philosophical requirements for reasoning.

Thesis:

Drawing on neuroscience and cognitive psychology, this work argues that both AI systems and human cognition may operate on similar pattern recognition principles, leading to the provocative conclusion that nothing truly 'reasons' under current philosophical definitions.

Research Workflow AI Tools

Open Source

Creating open-source tools that integrate philosophical frameworks with AI capabilities for research workflows.

Zotero PDF Chat

Semantic search and AI conversations with academic papers

PhilPapers Scraper & GPT Classifier

Automated relevance classification for philosophical literature

Vector Database Research Assistant

Large-scale text analysis pipeline for philosophy research

AI and the Human Co-Director

Vanderbilt Initiative

Leading interdisciplinary initiatives on AI applications in humanities research and ethical evaluation, bringing together technical and philosophical research communities.

Recent Guest Speakers:
David Chalmers (NYU) John Tasioulas (Oxford) Sina Fazelpour (Northeastern) Kate Vredenburg (LSE)

Technical Background & Methods

Programming & Data Science

  • Python-based pipelines for large-scale text analysis
  • Topic modeling and embedding/similarity search
  • Vector databases and semantic search systems
  • Statistical analysis and data visualization

AI & Machine Learning

  • LLM prompt engineering and fine-tuning
  • Natural Language Processing (NLP)
  • Transformer architectures (audited Vanderbilt grad course)
  • AI evaluation design and bias assessment

Formal Methods

  • Information-theoretic measures (Bregman divergences)
  • Accuracy-first epistemology frameworks
  • Graph theory and edit distance algorithms
  • Bayesian reasoning and probabilistic models

AI Ethics & Evaluation

  • Fairness assessment and bias evaluation
  • Representational harm analysis
  • AI governance and policy evaluation
  • Sociotechnical impact assessment

Formal Training

  • Vanderbilt University: Graduate course on Transformer architectures (audited)
  • Northeastern University: AI & Data Ethics (AIDE) Summer Program (CS crash course included)
  • Research Methods: Qualitative and quantitative design, sociotechnical analysis

Publications & Scholarship

Revelation in al-Fārābī's Virtuous City

Book Chapter 2024

In Mind, Soul and the Cosmos in the High Middle Ages, Springer Studies in the History of Philosophy

Comprehensive analysis of al-Fārābī's treatment of revelation, exploring its philosophical structure and integration with other aspects of his thought.

Book Review: Inventing the Imagination

Book Review 2025

Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, New School

Critical review of Justin Humphreys' work on the philosophical concept of imagination.

Evaluating Persona Prompting for Question Answering

Conference Paper 2024

Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing, Sydney

Co-authors: Carlos Olea, Holly Tucker, Jessica Phelan, Shen Zhang, Maxwell Lieb, Doug Schmidt, Jules White

Empirical analysis of persona prompting effectiveness in LLMs, demonstrating superior performance of single-agent expert personas on high-openness tasks.

Public-Facing Research

Policy & Tech Writing 2025

Tech Policy Press and other venues

Translating academic research on AI ethics and epistemology for policy makers and public audiences.

Grants, Awards & Recognition

Lacy-Fischer Interdisciplinary Research Grant

$6,000+ 2025

Supporting research at the intersection of formal epistemology and AI evaluation

Vanderbilt Award for Doctoral Discovery

$5,000 2024

Recognition for outstanding doctoral research potential

Conference Travel Support

2024-2025

Multiple awards for presentations at disciplinary conferences

Teaching & Publication Prizes

2024-2025

Recognition for excellence in teaching and scholarly publication

Future Research Directions

Unified Theory of Epistemic Similarity

Consolidating a general, application-ready theory of epistemic distance with clean desiderata, formal theorems, and empirical validation. The goal is a measurement vocabulary usable across agent–agent comparison, text–text comparison, and AI evaluation contexts.

Credence-Preservation Evaluation Framework

Advancing credence-preservation approaches for AI summarization and adjacent tasks, integrating with factual and coverage metrics to better capture downstream belief effects in high-stakes policy settings.

Practical Epistemology Toolkit

Creating a toolkit that is formally rigorous and practically accessible—usable by researchers and evaluators who need to reason about warranted belief and epistemic risk, not only surface alignment.

Curriculum Vitae