My research is in the philosophy of mind and focuses on a few themes
Illusionism about consciousness
I defend an illusionist conception of phenomenal consciousness, according to which phenomenal consciousness does not exist, but simply seems to exist. I think that such a conception allows to defend physicalism, better than other more standard versions of physicalism. Indeed, I think that the most popular defenses of physicalism against familiar anti-physicalist objections simply do not work (see two of my papers on the subject, here and here).
Illusionism, I think, is a radically counter-intuitive thesis: it might even appear an incoherent thesis, as I argued (here and, more particularly, here). However, this apparent incoherence can itself be explained within an illusionist framework! A good theory of introspection will be able both to explain why consciousness seems to exist, even though it does not, and why we cannot make sense intuitively of the idea that consciousness does not exist, but merely seems to exist. I argued here that theories of introspection already available on the market are not equipped to do the job. I tried to develop a satisfying theory of introspection, of which the most up-to-date version can be found here. In a book in French published in September 2019, I give a comprehensive overview of my conception of consciousness. See also this introductory article in French.
Illusionism might have normative consequences, that is, consequences regarding what has value. These consequences are not necessarily as gloom as some people might think (I do not think that, if consciousness does not exist, then nothing has value), but they can still be difficult to deal with. I try to explore the crucial issue of the normative consequences of illusionism in this article and this article. Moreover, illusionism can be subjected to various objections, but I think that these objections can be answered. For instance, I think that one of the most influential objections to illusionism, which appeal to the idea that it is obviously false, can be answered – see here.
The meta-problem of consciousness
Illusionism is sometimes discussed in the context of the more general problem of explaining why we say and think certain things about consciousness without any explicit reference to consciousness – what David Chalmers calls the “Meta-Problem of Consciousness”. I edited a collection on Chalmers’ meta-problem in the Journal of Consciousness Studies. The collection comprised two parts (published in September 2019 and May 2020), to be found here and here. My editorial introductions can be read here and here. I also criticized some promising theories tackling the meta-problem of consciousness here.
Introspection
I also have an interest for introspection – partially related to my interest for consciousness. Together with Keith Frankish, I recently proposed a research programme on possible forms introspective systems could take, aiming notably at better understanding possibilities of introspection in non-human animals and machines. This article was the target paper for a symposium published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies, featuring 15 contributions from philosophers and scientists, and our own response to these contributions.
Independently of this, with two co-authors (F. Cova and M. Gaillard) I studied the introspection of visual experiences by naïve subjects. We argued that, contrary to what some people supposed in some debates important for the science of consciousness (the debate regarding phenomenal overflow and the dissociation between access-consciousness and phenomenal consciousness), naïve subjects do not find it intuitive that the content of their visual experiences significantly overflows what they can report (see here).
Philosophy of mind and technology
I have recently been interested in the potential consequences of some forms of cognitive enhancement on the nature of our selves: I have argued that certain uses of technology could help us to become more genuine selves (see here), and that freewill could be in some sense technologically enhanced (see here, in French).
Miscellaneous
Before I turned illusionist, I worked a bit on group consciousness: against the view that materialism about consciousness has the natural consequence that group entities such as countries have a genuine stream of consciousness (a strange consequence!), I argued for an anti-nesting principle allowing to exclude some (but not all) cases of group consciousness. In the past years, I have also written on representationalism about consciousness (here and here, in French), on the technological singularity (here, in French) as well as on Nietzsche’s view of subjectivity (here, in French).