School of History and Philosophy of Science

University of Sydney

How to contact me

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Recent papers and talks:

Climatic and Other Catastrophes – a talk given at Columbia U., 2022. About science, incentives, lab-leaks, and trust. This is the March 2023 update.

Two corrections to Theory and Reality, 2nd ed.

Models, Fictions, & Conditionals

• Whitehead Lectures, Harvard University, 2023: 1. Limits of Sentience; 2. Boundaries of Consideration

(Photo by Daniel Boud)

 

                                       

Other recent papers:

Nervous Systems, Functionalism, and Animal Minds (text of a talk, 2023)

Covid Heterodoxy in Three Layers (4K). Now publishedReply to Akçay.

Philosophy and Science (New School talk, 2014, NYC)

Simulation Scenarios and Philosophy (Pacific APA 2023)

Gradualism and the Evolution of Experience

If Not Vegan, then What? (Aeon)

Octopus Debris Throwing (PLOS One)

Moderating Twitter’s Moderators (a short article on free speech)

Tolerance: A Hierarchical Analysis (with Ben Kerr). Preprint

On ‘Longtermism’

•  Philosophers and Other Animals (in Aeon, with extra notes here).

Food and Farming (draft)

•  Reafference and the Origin of the Self in Early Nervous System Evolution, (Jékely, Godfrey-Smith, Keijzer),

• The Dual Landscape Model of Adaptation and Niche Construction (with Mark Tanaka and Ben Kerr). Preprint version here.

Varieties of Subjectivity

Materialism, Then and Now [where ‘then’ is 1968]

Evolving Across the Explanatory Gap

Communication and Representation as Sender-Receiver Coordination (with Ron Planer).

* I am now also on twitter.

Notes to Living On Earth (2024 – in press)

In the Beginning There Was Information?

Individuality, Subjectivity, and Minimal Cognition

Loss of Music

Art and Evolution (a book review).