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Shlomi Sher’s research explores decision-making and consciousness. His work examines problems that arise when we attempt to relate different theoretical perspectives on the psychological subject—as intentional agent and cognitive mechanism, as neural network and locus of subjective experience.

In the experimental study of decision-making, the psychologist’s view of the human as an information-processing mechanism is contrasted with the economist’s view of the human as a rational agent.  While rational and psychological levels of analysis are often seen as radically incompatible, Sher believes that the interplay between these levels is subtler and less sharply antagonistic. His research explores the complex interplay between rational and psychological levels of analysis in framing effects, context effects and apparent preference reversals.

In contemporary scientific research on consciousness, a central objective is to correlate experiential states with underlying neural states. Today, many researchers believe that this neutral empirical approach can bypass age-old philosophical puzzles about consciousness. Sher is interested in the ways in which the old philosophical problems continually re-emerge in, and wreak havoc with, the new scientific work.