Simon Brown

We're looking forward to attending the 12th Annual #3Rs Symposium hosted by @jhucaat.bsky.social , @hopkinsmedicine.bsky.social , USDA, & NIH. 🧪

📅 Sep 10-11 & 17-18
🕙 10 am - 1:30 pm ET
💻 Virtual

www.eventbrite.com/e/12th-annua...

Candidates must have expertise and research interests in an area of philosophy and a demonstrable ability to conduct research that has a substantial connection to Artificial Intelligence (AI). We interpret a substantial connection to AI broadly to include, for example, the intersection of AI and philosophy of science, AI and logic/formal methods, AI and moral and political philosophy, and/or AI and philosophy of law. Candidates must be willing and able to make a substantial research-led contribution to the Department’s core teaching provision. (More information about our courses can be found here.)

Candidates must have expertise and research interests in an area of philosophy that has a substantial research connection to sustainability. Candidates must be able to develop a new course in philosophy and sustainability, and be able to make a substantial, research-led contribution to the Department’s core teaching provision. (More information about our courses can be found here.) This role is fully based in the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method, but involves extensive collaboration with LSE’s new Global School of Sustainability (GSoS). Candidates are expected to be committed to this collaboration and willing to contribute to GSoS activities. We therefore particularly welcome candidates whose work bears on GSoS’s five research themes.

Two job ads for people in philosophy in my dept (www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOD999/a... and www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DOD995/a...). Ever heard of this thing called AI? You probably haven't it's pretty niche. But if you have maybe apply? Also this even more niche thing (sustainability) so that too.

Confidence in absence as confidence in counterfactual visibility: a CogSci proceedings paper with star MSc student Maya Schipper, is now out on PsyArXiv:

osf.io/preprints/ps...

🧵👇

Happy Approximation to Pi Day (22/7)! 🥳
Suggested ways to celebrate include eating approximations to pie, such as tarts, flans, quiches, pastries, turnovers,... 🥧

How to Study Animal Minds Cambridge Core - Philosophy of Science - How to Study Animal Minds

Cambridge Elements are free to download until 7/25-check out my little book How To Study Animal Minds. I had fun writing this one, and I'll never forget how nervous I was in front of a bunch of scientist friends, including Sara Shettleworth, hearing their thoughts on the draft! tinyurl.com/3yy6a52c

The secret to Baltimore's extraordinary year This April, Baltimore saw five homicides.

For everyone who has ever asked, on seeing my Baltimore homicide charts, "How did they do that?"

Happy to share this updated Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on 'Associationist Theories of Thought' with
@ericman.bsky.social. Among other things, we included a new major section on reinforcement learning. Many thanks to Eric for bringing me on board!

plato.stanford.edu/entries/asso...

Philosophy Professor Reportedly Assaulted & Abducted During ICE Raid on Farm - Daily Nous Jonathan Caravello, a lecturer in philosophy at California State University Channel Islands, was reportedly "piled on by multiple agents all at once" as "he tried to help a man in a wheelchair" who wa...

"Jonathan Caravello...was reportedly “piled on by multiple agents all at once” as “he tried to help a man in a wheelchair” who was having difficulty moving after...[ICE] agents threw canisters of tear gas"

our colleague is still missing as of the last info I got

dailynous.com/2025/07/12/p...

How citizens’ assemblies could improve animal welfare Community discussions help to explore what the future may hold for animals by 2050.

I recently had the chance to sit on an expert panel for the first ever citizens' assembly on animal welfare - I've written here about my experience
theconversation.com/how-citizens...

Screenshot from the linked preprint with the following text: "Long-Term Potentiation and Closed-Loop Learning in Paired Brain Organoids for CNS Drug Discovery; Corey Rountree, Eva Schmidt, Nicholas Coungeris, Victoria Alstat, Andrew S. LaCroix, Megan Morris, Michael J. Moore, J. Lowry Curley; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.07.03.663054"

Who says you can't study cognition in vitro? 🧠

This new preprint describes short- and long-term potentiation, as well as reinforcement learning, in paired human brain #organoids.

By Rountree et al. of @28bio.bsky.social & @tulaneu.bsky.social

#neuroskyence 🧪

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

There's interesting stuff about this in Donaldson and Kymlicka's work, and in work by Alasdair Cochrane, @joshmilburn.bsky.social, Eva Meijer, several contributors to Siobhan O'Sullivan and Robert Garner's edited collection, and I think @stevecooke.org has written on it though can't find it now

Mazviita Chirimuuta wins the 2025 Lakatos Award! The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is pleased to announce the 2025 Lakatos Award winner Mazviita Chirimuuta, who receives the award for her book “The Brain Abstracted:…

🏆 We are pleased to announce the 2025 Lakatos Award winner Mazviita Chirimuuta, who receives the award for her book “The Brain Abstracted: Simplification in the History and Philosophy of Neuroscience”

Congratulations! 👏

👉More about the award: www.lse.ac.uk/philosophy/b...

"What Britain looks like after Brexit" A piece by Daniel Hannan which is the least accurate thing anyone has ever written about Brexit. (This was the title graphic to it.)

It's here! It's finally here! It's Daniel Hannan Day!

The future he promised everyone a mere 2 days before the Brexit referendum is so exciting, I think my heart may burst with joy when I step outside and experience it for myself.

(Read it. You deserve a laugh.)

www.reaction.life/p/britain-lo...

My latest Aronov lab paper is now published @Nature!

When a chickadee looks at a distant location, the same place cells activate as if it were actually there 👁️

The hippocampus encodes where the bird is looking, AND what it expects to see next -- enabling spatial reasoning from afar

bit.ly/3HvWSum

This is nuts. We shouldn’t have to be fighting needless battles like this. So annoying. Just like the coal mine farce, mad ideas like this just get in the way of sensible policy making for improving lives and dealing with climate.

I am so excited to share that our paper 'A neural basis for distinguishing imagination from reality' is now published in @cp-neuron.bsky.social! 🧠✨ See thread below! doi.org/10.1016/j.ne...

We had a sneak peak today in team meeting. Looks set to be fascinating talk (1) documenting deep uncertainty within Animal Welfare Science about what they are studying, (2) developing potential implications (e.g. showing ambiguity allows industry to distort debate) & (3) proposing ways forward

My Canadian university, Queen's, is offering TWENTY 4-year funded PhDs (40k CAD/yr) for a student of ANY citizenship who has been accepted at a top 100 US university but have had offer rescinded OR are reconsidering offer due to US policy.
Details found here👇

www.queensu.ca/grad-postdoc...

Looking forward to talking to UFAW about one of my main preoccupations, defining animal welfare

1. A hermit crab in a stubby, round shell, incrusted with dark green algae, lies upside-down, inspecting a much larger whelk shell, this one whitish, quite clean. We see two legs manipulating the new shell; the chelipeds are out of sight, checking out the shell's interior.

2. Going for it. Herm pulls out of the old shell, still holding the new one with his legs. A good view of his carapace; greenish brown top, wine-red sides. His legs are brown, with blue knees; the antenna is a dotted line, green and white; he waves orange antennules above his eyes, as if in celebration.

3. And a quick twist; a blur of motion; he pulls his abdomen out of the old shell and inserts it into the new one. Time taken: 2 seconds.

4. And no, it didn't feel right. 30 seconds later, he's back in the original shell. Off to look for another, then.

New outfit? Maybe. Hermit crab tries on a larger shell. Does it fit? Is it comfortable? Is it too heavy? (In the end, he goes back to the old one.) #VancouverIsland #HermitCrabs #IntertidalInvertebrates #Invertebrates #MarineLife #DailyHermit

All Souls College, University of Oxford is advertising a senior academic position in philosophy. Closing date: 19 September 2025. #PhilJobs, #Philosophy, @jowolff.bsky.social, @birchlse.bsky.social
www.asc.ox.ac.uk/senior-resea...

The world’s climate change watchdog may be underestimating global warming Why the new IPCC "Synthesis Report" may be lowballing one of the worst consequences of global warming -- sea level rise.

However, as scientists we are highly allergic to Type 1 errors. We prefer to not say whether human-caused climate change was involved until we have extremely precise data in the published literature we can cite. As a result, we often commit Type 2 errors.

A good discussion of this bias here:

Hugely important new work for our understanding of consciousness!

Submit a comment by Monday 5/19 to the Federal Register on proposed changes to the Endangered Species Act:
www.federalregister.gov/documents/20...

This article ⬇️ (by ecologist + law professor) has the info you need. Text of my public comment is below.

You can now submit a commentary on our paper here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal.... We're very much looking forward to reading your commentaries and discussing our hypothesis with you!

Those who are uncomfortable with this Labour immigration announcement, but think it's necessary to satisfy Reform voters, this is for you.

You will not satisfy. You will never satisfy.

FOX NEWS: Cardinals assess Pope Francis' legacy before vote. Delegates include $\aleph_0$, $\aleph_1$, $\beth_2$, and others, as the continuum hypothesis looms over the ceremonies.

blurry blue bird flying near a building site

Bonus: while in California last week for @pamba.bsky.social , I saw some flashes of blue which may or may not have been scrub jays, the stars of animal memory research. Unreasonably exciting for someone who doesn't live in their range. Here's the closest I came to capturing a picture 9/9

Screenshot of title and abstract from the paper 'Episodic Memory in Animals' by Alexandria Boyle and Simon Brown in Philosophy Compass, available at https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.70037

And as a Philosophy Compass article, we've aimed to write it in a way which is accessible to undergrads new to these issues, while still covering serious ground - and it's open access! 8/9

Each of these issues quickly gets us into tricky, deep issues in philosophy of biology, philosophy of mind etc., and we can raise similar issues for many capacities we might want to attribute to animals - language, consciousness, theory of mind etc. So, rich pickings for future work! 7/9