Cameron Pattison

Graduate Student

Cameron Pattison is a PhD student in Philosophy at Vanderbilt University whose work bridges formal epistemology and the philosophy of AI. He studies how people and systems represent, compare, and evaluate information—and how those comparisons should guide belief and decision-making. Across projects, he develops principled accounts of similarity and distance that travel between agents, between texts, and into AI systems that compress or synthesize evidence. Recent work includes formal tools for comparing non-ideal agents’ belief states and a framework for evaluating AI summaries by the beliefs they induce, rather than by surface overlap alone. The aim is both theoretical and practical: to clarify what warranted belief looks like in real use, and to supply measures that help researchers and policymakers detect epistemic risk in high-stakes settings. He co-directs Vanderbilt’s AI and the Human seminar and is a research affiliate of ANU’s Machine Intelligence and Normative Theory (MINT) Lab. His recent public writing appears at Tech Policy Press.

Lacy-Fischer Interdisciplinary Research Grant (2025); Berry Publication Prize (2025, 2024); Vanderbilt Award for Doctoral Discovery (2024); Berry First-Year Teaching Award (2024); Vanderbilt Graduate School Travel Grant (2024); Vanderbilt Philosophy Department Travel Grant (2024); Russell G. Hamilton Scholar (2023); Ernest Fortin Memorial Foundation Summer Grant (2022); Phi Beta Kappa; J. Glen Gray Award; Distinction in Philosophy, magna cum laude (Colorado College).

In recognition of his contributions throughout the course of the last year, Cameron has received several awards, including the Berry First-Year Teaching Award, the Berry Publication Prize, the Vanderbilt Award for Doctoral Discovery, and the Russell G. Hamilton Scholarship.

Contact: For inquiries or collaborations, please reach out to Cameron Pattison via email at cameron.pattison@vanderbilt.edu.