"Woody" Zhengxi Jin is a postdoctoral researcher at the Collège de France, associated with the ERC Mental Files project. He obtained his doctorate in philosophy from King's College London and, before that, a bachelor's degree in philosophy from Lingnan University in Hong Kong.
His research lies at the intersection of Philosophy of Language and Mind, with a particular interest in mental structures such as concepts and their contents. He adopts a biological and functional perspective, viewing mental structures as adaptive traits aimed at causally modeling their environment. In this light, he suggests that many mental structures, including mental files, maintain a direct referential connection with objects and types in the world. He is also interested in the philosophy of psychiatry, particularly in understanding mental disorders as failures of otherwise adaptive cognitive conceptions.
