Frances Egan is a professor of philosophy at Rutgers University.[1][2] She has authored a number of articles and book chapters on philosophy of mind, philosophy of cognitive science, and perception.[1]
Egan graduated from the University of Manitoba in 1976 with a B.A. in philosophy.[1] She received a Ph.D. from the University of Western Ontario in 1988.[1] She has taught at Rutgers University since her appointment as an assistant professor in 1990.[1] Besides her Rutgers appointment, she is also an associate editor of Noûs, a quarterly journal of philosophy.[1]
Egan's principal research interests are in philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, and foundations of cognitive science.[2][3] Her work focuses on the nature of psychological explanation, and on the relationship between folk explanation and scientific explanation.[2] She is known for her work on the role of representational content in computer models of mind.[3][4] She argues that computational models of mind do not require meaning ascriptions, and that meaning ascriptions should be viewed as helping to connect the formal characterization of a computational theory with our intuitive belief that mental processes are intentional.[3] She has also written on vision, including the history of vision.[1]
Egan has received a number of awards including research fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the Center for Interdisciplinary Research, Bielefeld, Germany.[1] She is the recipient of the 2021 Jean Nicod Prize.[5]
