Claudia Passos Ferreira
Center for Bioethics
708 Broadway
New York, NY 10003
P: (212) 992-7999
cpf264@nyu.edu
Claudia Passos-Ferreira is Assistant Professor of Bioethics. She studied psychology at the Rio de
Janeiro State University and earned her MA and Ph.D. in the program of Human Sciences and
Health Sciences in Public Health there. She obtained a second Ph.D. in Philosophy at the
Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.
Passos-Ferreira has published on philosophy, psychology, and neuroethics. She has collaborated
in cross-cultural research on moral development and social cognition (on topics such as empathy,
fairness, ownership, intersubjectivity). She has published a book on Freud and mental causation.
In philosophy of mind, she has published on self-knowledge, introspection, and external mental
content. Passos-Ferreira’s current research program focuses on the development of
consciousness, including what theories of consciousness say about infant consciousness and
machine consciousness, and how these theories shed light on ethical issues. She is the principal
investigator of the project What do theories of consciousness predict about consciousness in
animals, infants, and machines? founded by Templeton World Charity Foundation.
Prior to joining NYU, Passos-Ferreira was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Federal University
of Rio de Janeiro with the Ethics and Biotechnologies project., and a Postdoctoral Research
Fellow at the State University of Rio de Janeiro with the Ecological Mind and Self-
Consciousness project. Earlier in her career, she was awarded a Residency Scholarship from the
Brazilian Health Ministry and she received clinical training in Child-Adolescent Mental Health
and Mental Health. She has worked as clinical psychologist in private practice and public
hospitals as well in Brazil.
