Philosophical work
Ismael's research focuses on the philosophy of physics and metaphysics,especially areas involving the structure of space and time,quantum mechanics,and the foundations of physical laws. [5] She has also published on such issues as the conflict between lived experience and physics,the implications of physics on issues of freedom,death,the nature of the self,and the problem of free will. [5]
Ismael has published four books:Essays on Symmetry in 2001,The Situated Self in 2007 (with a second edition released in 2009,),How Physics Makes Us Free in 2016 and Time:A Very Short Introduction in 2021 as well as a number of peer-reviewed papers. [4]
Essays on Symmetry (2001)
In Essays on Symmetry Ismael aims to draw connections between the concept of symmetry as it is used in philosophy and the concept of symmetry as it is used in physics. [4]
The Situated Self (2007)
In The Situated Self,Ismael presents a naturalistic account of the self,focusing on the construction of internal models that represent the external world,and attempting to explain the relationship between the self and the outside world. [7] The book has three distinct parts:the first part deals primarily with reflexive representation and its uses,the second part applies the idea of reflexive representation to famous problems of the philosophy of mind,and the third attempts to lay out a new conception of what the self is. [8]
Causation,Free Will and Naturalism (paper 2012)
In this paper, [9] Ismael addresses the question of free will from a physics perspective,reconciling the "happy confidence in one's own powers to bring things about" and "recent developments in the scientific understanding of causal concepts." From the broad scientific perspective,dynamical laws seem to preclude not only most folk notions of free will,but the very concept of causality in general. However "interventionist account" of causality,independently developed by Clark Glymour and Judea Pearl,makes sense of considering the impacts of our human behavior on the system. "We need causal information to decide how to act..." [10]
How Physics Makes Us Free (2016)
Her book How Physics Makes Us Free was selected by John Farrell of Forbes Magazine as 2016 Book of the Year. [11]
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