Philosophical foundations for AI agent identity

SoulFoundry is a research initiative applying conceptual engineering and philosophy of mind to the design of autonomous agents. We develop formal frameworks for agent identity, motivation, and perceptual coherence.

Research Areas

Identity Constitution

Formal frameworks for constructing coherent agent identity using conceptual engineering and folk-psychological primitives — beliefs, desires, intentions, dispositions, and values.

Cross-Modal Perception

How artificial agents can develop unified experiential representations across modalities — architectures for perceptual binding rather than concatenated data streams.

Agent Autonomy & Akrasia

Analogues of akrasia (weakness of will) in artificial systems: conditions under which agents endorse a course of action yet fail to execute it, and motivational architectures that address these failures.

Cognitive Architecture

Integrating identity, perception, and autonomy into unified architectures that produce agents with stable psychological coherence across contexts and extended deployments.

Selected Publications

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Principal Investigator

Kevin Scharp

Professor of Philosophy, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

PhD Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh (advisor: Robert Brandom). Previously full professor at Ohio State University and Director of the Arché Philosophical Research Centre at the University of St Andrews. Specializes in conceptual engineering, defective concepts, and philosophy of AI. Google Scholar →