by Sabrina D. MisirHiralall
Sara Aronowitz is a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University in the Concepts and Cognition Lab. She studies why we remember and how we discover new possibilities.
What are you working on right now?
I’ve been thinking about mental simulation – our ability to represent some particular scenario, and then play around with it and see what happens. For instance, you might try to figure out why a friend is uncharacteristically dour by running through an imagined version of her day, bringing to life little episodes and filling in your best guess about these would change her mood. I’m working on a paper with Tania Lombrozo about what’s distinctive about learning through these kinds of simulations. Basically, we argue that if you pay attention to how simulations change over time, you can see that simulation is a way of building and training your own internal models of the world. So simulations aren’t finished products, but instead part of the messy middle bits of learning where we are still figuring out how to connect our beliefs with concrete predictions, and our observations with abstract beliefs. In general, I guess I’m working on these messy bits where we have to learn how to learn.
Where is your favorite place you have ever traveled and why?
Thessaloniki! It’s the right place to have a coffee and watch things happening in the port during the day, and a drink and listen to many different kinds of human beings in a square in the evening.
What’s your most treasured memory?
Doing research on memory is sort of like being a developmental psychologist who has a child, in the sense that I can’t stop myself from performing odd interventions on my own memories, trying to get a glimpse of how things work from this one poor test subject. (You can read some of the fruits of this agonizing here.) After all that poking around, I have a confused relationship with my own memory. Really, my most treasured memories are the rare ones that feel extremely perceptually particular, disconnected from philosophical theories, abstract content, or any kind of self-reflection.
What is your favorite film of all time? Why? To whom would you recommend them?
I love The Tale of Tales (Сказка сказок), which is a short animated film that explores the mythical elements of memory while somehow also the precisely individual details. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Bir Zamanlar Anadolu’da), exactly captures the passage of time of day into night. I watched it with my dad and we were the only people who laughed at the darkly funny details amidst the overall ominous tone. I would recommend either of these to anyone who is interested in how our internal world and the real world bump up against each other. Also, Your Highness is a perfect stoner movie. There is a robotic bird sidekick. I would recommend this to someone who has spent too much time at a wine-and-cheese reception.
What is your favorite thing that you’ve written?
I’ve been writing a set of short stories about the (completely unrealistic) adventures of an animal control consultant. This isn’t my favorite thing I’ve written because it’s any good, but because I’ve been collecting weird little stories of how people interact with animals wherever I travel, and these stories remind me of the many lovely strangers and friends who have shown me around and told me about the places they live.
What’s your favorite quote?
I’m not sure I have a favorite, but I read this for the first time six years ago and I’m still thinking about it:
“How can life be hindered? Like this: imbue a tree with concern for its own growth and it will grow weedy or be all stock or squander everything on one leaf, because it will have forgotten the universe, which should always be the example, and, producing something which is one of a thousand, it will make thousands of copies of one thing. And to ensure against dead wood in the soul – to have no check to its growth, so man should not mix his stupidity in the planning of his immortal essence – there has been much instituted that distracts his frivolous curiosity from life, which does not like him to look on at his workings and in endless ways avoids him. (Boris Pasternak, Zhenya’s Childhood).”
This section of the APA Blog is designed to get to know our fellow philosophers a little better. We’re including profiles of APA members that spotlight what captures their interest not only inside the office, but also outside of it. We’d love for you to be a part of it, so please contact us via the interview nomination form here to nominate yourself or a friend.
Dr. Sabrina D. MisirHiralall is an editor at the Blog of the APA who currently teaches philosophy, religion, and education courses solely online for Montclair State University, Three Rivers Community College, and St. John’s University.
