Headshot of Benjamin Young.

Benjamin Young

Associate professor of philosophy
University of Nevada, Reno

Benjamin Young is associate professor and director of graduate studies in philosophy at the University of Nevada, Reno. He is also a member of the graduate faculty in interdisciplinary neuroscience at the university’s Institute for Neuroscience. Previously he held a Kreitman Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, as well as a visiting assistant professorship and postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Cognitive Science at Hebrew University. Young conducts research at the intersection of cognitive neuroscience and philosophy, with a particular emphasis on olfaction.

Young’s book “Stinking Philosophy!” (MIT Press, 2024) brings together more than a decade of research on olfactory philosophy. His research on non-conceptual content, qualitative consciousness in the absence of awareness, and the perceptible objects of smell have appeared in journals such as Mind & Language, Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly and Philosophical Studies. Additionally, he is co-editor of the textbook “Mind, Cognition, and Neuroscience” (Routledge, 2022) and the collection “Theoretical Perspectives on Smell” (Routledge, 2023). Young is currently working on a book about the unconscious and our sense of self, tentatively titled “Don’t Tell Anyone.”

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