Awards
Awards
Awards
Selected Publications
Active inference and psychodynamics: A novel integration with applications to depression and stress disorders. Harris, H. W. (2025). Frontiers in Psychiatry, 16, 1630858.
This paper proposes a new integration of active inference theory with psychodynamic concepts, using depression and stress disorders as test cases. It shows how computational models can illuminate unconscious processes and therapeutic mechanisms.
Qualia as query act: The phenomenology of predictive error coding.
Harris, H. W. (2025). Frontiers in Psychology, 16, 1531269.
This paper reframes qualia as “query acts” — embodied questions that reduce uncertainty. It connects phenomenology with predictive coding, offering a novel approach to the hard problem of consciousness.
Self-Consciousness as a Team Sport: From Hegel to Predictive Neuroscience.
3 Quarks Daily (2025).
An essay tracing how self-consciousness depends on recognition from others, drawing on Hegel and predictive neuroscience. It argues that our sense of self emerges as a profoundly social achievement
The Social Origin of Free Will.
3 Quarks Daily (2025).
Recasting debates about free will, this piece shows how freedom arises from recursive social modeling. It offers a naturalistic alternative to deterministic accounts, grounded in active inference and philosophy of recognition.
Psychoanalysis 2.0.
3 Quarks Daily (2025).
This essay reimagines psychoanalysis through the lens of computational neuroscience. It highlights how concepts like transference and projection can be understood as adaptive (and sometimes maladaptive) predictive models.
Topsy-Turvy.
New England Review, 44(1), 185–193 (2023).
A Pushcart Prize–nominated personal essay exploring the layered history of racial passing in America. It blends memoir, cultural history, and philosophical reflection on identity.
Excerpts from the Space Between.
Craft Literary Magazine (2024).
Selections from a book-in-progress, the excerpts examine family history, memory, and race. The writing explores how personal identity unfolds in the spaces between cultures and generations.
Portrait of the Artist as a Black Man.
Solstice Literary Magazine (2021).
Winner of the Michael Steinberg Award for nonfiction, this essay reflects on art, race, and selfhood. It blends personal narrative with broader commentary on visibility and belonging.