Head of the Philosophy Depatment, Bar-Ilan University. Prof. Alon Hasid joined the faculty of the philosophy department in 2009 (academic year 2009). Prof. Hasid specializes in philosophy of mind, philosophy of perception, philosophical psychology, epistemology and aesthetics.

Prof. Alon Hasid completed a bachelor's degree (SCL) in philosophy and the "Amirim" program for honors at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a master's degree and a PhD (Joined program) in philosophy at the Hebrew University. He wrote a doctoral thesis on "Theory of Pictorial Representation" under the guidance of Prof. Adi Tzemach.
Prof. Hasid specialized in a post-doctorate at the Hebrew University and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, served as a lecturer at the Hebrew University and at Haifa, Ben-Gurion and Bar-Ilan universities (2004-2015) and a visiting researcher at the University of Michigan (2004/5) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, ( Fall 2007 and Fall 2008).
Since 2015 he has been a senior lecturer in the philosophy department at Bar-Ilan University and since 2021 - an associate professor in the department. Prof. Hasid is a member of the teaching committee and the disciplinary committee of the university.

Research:

AOS: Philosophy of mind; Philosophy of perception; Epistemology; Aesthetics. 

AOC: Philosophy of language; Philosophical psychology

Personal statement

In my research, at this time, I am focusing on several issues related to the functional structure of consciousness: the structure of imaginary projects and their relationship to other states of consciousness, the relationship between art (beliefs) and perceptual experiences (in particular the issue of cognitive permeability), perceptual capacity of images and more. Theoretical explanations of these issues may clarify, in the end, the relationship between consciousness and the brain and the relationship between our state of consciousness and different types of behavior.

I will give some examples to clarify a little, for example, what "imaginary projects" are and what questions I am asking in their context. Imagine it is raining heavily. Now continue to imagine, as part of this imagination project, that you believe it is not raining. Such a project is possible if the two imaginations arise one after the other. But what about the possibility of simultaneously imagining that it is raining and believing that it is not raining? According to me, under certain conditions, such similarity is impossible. why? You can read in the article I wrote entitled: "A Puzzle about Imagining Believing" published in the journal Review of Philosophy and Psychology.

I am also concerned with questions, such as, is it enough to raise belief-like imagining in our minds so that its content becomes real in the relevant imaginary world, or in the process of determining such truths are other mental actions also involved? More on this in the article called "Not by Imaginings Alone : On How Imaginary Worlds Are Established" published in the Journal of the American Philosophical Association.

For my work on these topics on the internal structure of imaginary projects and faith-like imagination, I won two research grants from the National Science Foundation (ISF, 939/16 and 1544/20, respectively).

You can read about the relationship between art and perceptual experiences, among other things, in the article entitled "How Judgments of Visual Resemblance are Induced by Visual Experience", which I wrote with my colleague Dr. Alik Fellman and was published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies. In this article we dealt with the question of how the determination That A looks like B, unlike other judgments of imagination, are determined directly based on a perceptual experience. We asked: What is the nature of this sensory experience? Basically a visual perception of B, and it is different from a perception that does not raise such a judgment or determination.