I'm interested in the mind and its place in the natural world. Understanding the mind doesn't only involve thinking about human minds. Animals have minds too, and so might machines. I'm interested in understanding similarities and differences between human and nonhuman minds, using tools from philosophy, cognitive science and AI.
A lot of my recent work focusses on episodic memory - memory for events from our past which we can now 'replay in the mind's eye'. I'm interested in what episodic memory does for us, and whether it's uniquely human. I've also written about self-recognition, self-awareness and mindreading in animals, and more general methodological issues in animal cognition research. I'm especially interested in areas where scientists disagree sharply about nonhuman minds, despite having access to the same evidence.
I also have research interests in the philosophy of biology, especially questions about how to count organisms. I've written about how many organisms are involved in various kinds of conjoined twinning, and am currently wondering how to count organisms in pregnancy.
A lot of my recent work focusses on episodic memory - memory for events from our past which we can now 'replay in the mind's eye'. I'm interested in what episodic memory does for us, and whether it's uniquely human. I've also written about self-recognition, self-awareness and mindreading in animals, and more general methodological issues in animal cognition research. I'm especially interested in areas where scientists disagree sharply about nonhuman minds, despite having access to the same evidence.
I also have research interests in the philosophy of biology, especially questions about how to count organisms. I've written about how many organisms are involved in various kinds of conjoined twinning, and am currently wondering how to count organisms in pregnancy.
Publications
Articles
The Mnemonic Functions of Episodic Memory. Forthcoming. Philosophical Psychology.
What is episodic memory for? Discussions of episodic memory's function often highlight its role in imaginative simulation. But in this paper, I emphasise episodic memory's important mnemonic functions. In particular, I argue that it plays a central role in the storage, encoding and retrieval of semantic memory, analogous to the role played by the 'mind palaces' used by memory champions.
Remembering Events & Representing Time. Forthcoming. Synthese.
Abstract: It's natural to think there's a tight connection between episodic memory and the possession of temporal concepts. If this were true, it would suggest certain straightforward evidential connections between temporal cognition and episodic memory in nonhuman animals. I argue that matters are more complicated than this. Episodic memory is memory for events and not for the times they occupy, and is dissociable from temporal understanding. This is not to say that episodic memory and temporal cognition are unrelated, but that the relationship between them cannot be straightforwardly captured by claims about necessity and sufficiency.
Replication, Uncertainty and Progress in Comparative Cognition. 2021. Animal Behaviour and Cognition, 8 (2): 296-304.
Abstract: Replications are often taken to play both epistemic and demarcating roles in science. I argue that in fields characterised by a high degree of theoretical openness and uncertainty, like comparative cognition, replications sit poorly in these roles. Like other experiments conducted under conditions of uncertainty, they are often equivocal and open to interpretation. As such, they're poorly placed to deliver clear judgments about comparative cognition's reliability or scientific bona fides. I suggest that this should encourage a broader view of both the nature of scientific progress and the role of replication in comparative cognition.
The Impure Phenomenology of Episodic Memory. 2020. Mind and Language 35: 641-660.
Abstract: Episodic memory has a distinctive phenomenology: it involves 'mentally reliving' a past event. It's been suggested that if episodic memory is characterised in terms of this phenomenology, it will be 'impossible to test' for it in animals - because this is to characterise it in terms of its 'purely phenomenal features', which cannot be detected in nonverbal behaviour. I argue that this is a mistake. The phenomenological features of episodic memory are impure phenomenological features, which can be detected in animal behaviour. So, insisting on a phenomenological characterisation of episodic memory does nothing to damage the prospects for detecting it in nonhuman animals.
Conjoined Twinning & Biological Individuation. 2020. Philosophical Studies 177 (8), 2395-2415.
Abstract: In dicephalus conjoined twinning, it appears that two heads share a body; in cephalopagus, it appears two bodies share a head. How many human animals are present in these cases? One answer is that there are two in both cases: conjoined twins are precisely that, conjoined twins. Another is that the number of human animals is the same as the apparent number of bodies - so, there is one in dicephalus and two in cephalopagus. I show that both answers are incorrect: on prominent accounts of biological individuation, there is a single human animal in both cases. This has a number of consequences for the debate about what we are.
Mapping the Minds of Others. 2019. Review of Philosophy & Psychology 10 (4), 747-767.
Abstract: Some mindreaders can ascribe representational states to others. I argue that these mindreaders might differ from one another with respect to the format they take representational states to have. Some might take mental states to be linguistic, whilst others might take them to be map-like or to have another format. Since formats differ in their expressive power and formal features, these differences make a significant difference to the range of mental state attributions a mindreader can make. I close by articulating the significance of this for the study of mindreading in the great apes.
Learning from the Past: Epistemic Generativity and the Function of Episodic Memory. 2019. Journal of Consciousness Studies 26 (5-6), 242-251. Winner of the 2018 Annual Essay Prize of the Centre for Philosophical Psychology, University of Antwerp.
Abstract: I argue that the function of episodic memory is to store information about the past, against the currently orthodox view that it is to support imagining the future. I show that episodic memory is epistemically generative, allowing organisms to learn from past events retroactively. This confers adaptive benefits in three domains: reasoning about the world, skill and social interaction. Given the role played by evolutionary perspectives in comparative research, this argument necessitates a radical shift in the study of episodic memory in nonhumans.
Mirror Self-Recognition & Self-Identification. 2018. Philosophy & Phenomenological Research 97 (2), 284-303.
Abstract: Some animals, including the great apes, are capable of mirror self-recognition. This is widely taken to show that they are self-aware - but there is some disagreement about whether the self-awareness in question is psychological or bodily self-awareness. I argue that self-recognition does not involve psychological self-awareness, but involves more than bodily self-awareness: it also involves 'objective self-awareness', the capacity for first-person thoughts which rest on identification, and are thus vulnerable to error through misidentification.
Chapters
Do Animals Have Episodic Memory? Optimism, Kind Scepticism and Pluralism. Forthcoming in Current Controversies in Philosophy of Memory, Routledge (expected 2021). [email for preprint]
Despite many apparently confirmatory results, there is little consensus about whether nonhuman animals have episodic memory. Why is that? I focus on a family of sceptical views I call ‘kind scepticism’. Kind sceptics argue that the evidence doesn’t support the hypothesis that animals have episodic memory, since it fails to rule out that they have a form of memory that, though similar to episodic memory, differs in kind. This raises a difficult question about how to delineate episodic memory as a psychological kind. I suggest that kind sceptics and advocates of nonhuman episodic memory are committed to different answers to this question, and that their disagreement can’t be settled by appealing to the objective structure of the world, but only by appeal to pragmatic considerations.
Blog Posts
Do Nonhuman Animals Have Episodic Memory? 2020. At Imperfect Cognitions.
Reading Minds & Reading Maps. 2019. At the iCog Blog.
My less academic writing is here.
Articles
The Mnemonic Functions of Episodic Memory. Forthcoming. Philosophical Psychology.
What is episodic memory for? Discussions of episodic memory's function often highlight its role in imaginative simulation. But in this paper, I emphasise episodic memory's important mnemonic functions. In particular, I argue that it plays a central role in the storage, encoding and retrieval of semantic memory, analogous to the role played by the 'mind palaces' used by memory champions.
Remembering Events & Representing Time. Forthcoming. Synthese.
Abstract: It's natural to think there's a tight connection between episodic memory and the possession of temporal concepts. If this were true, it would suggest certain straightforward evidential connections between temporal cognition and episodic memory in nonhuman animals. I argue that matters are more complicated than this. Episodic memory is memory for events and not for the times they occupy, and is dissociable from temporal understanding. This is not to say that episodic memory and temporal cognition are unrelated, but that the relationship between them cannot be straightforwardly captured by claims about necessity and sufficiency.
Replication, Uncertainty and Progress in Comparative Cognition. 2021. Animal Behaviour and Cognition, 8 (2): 296-304.
Abstract: Replications are often taken to play both epistemic and demarcating roles in science. I argue that in fields characterised by a high degree of theoretical openness and uncertainty, like comparative cognition, replications sit poorly in these roles. Like other experiments conducted under conditions of uncertainty, they are often equivocal and open to interpretation. As such, they're poorly placed to deliver clear judgments about comparative cognition's reliability or scientific bona fides. I suggest that this should encourage a broader view of both the nature of scientific progress and the role of replication in comparative cognition.
The Impure Phenomenology of Episodic Memory. 2020. Mind and Language 35: 641-660.
Abstract: Episodic memory has a distinctive phenomenology: it involves 'mentally reliving' a past event. It's been suggested that if episodic memory is characterised in terms of this phenomenology, it will be 'impossible to test' for it in animals - because this is to characterise it in terms of its 'purely phenomenal features', which cannot be detected in nonverbal behaviour. I argue that this is a mistake. The phenomenological features of episodic memory are impure phenomenological features, which can be detected in animal behaviour. So, insisting on a phenomenological characterisation of episodic memory does nothing to damage the prospects for detecting it in nonhuman animals.
Conjoined Twinning & Biological Individuation. 2020. Philosophical Studies 177 (8), 2395-2415.
Abstract: In dicephalus conjoined twinning, it appears that two heads share a body; in cephalopagus, it appears two bodies share a head. How many human animals are present in these cases? One answer is that there are two in both cases: conjoined twins are precisely that, conjoined twins. Another is that the number of human animals is the same as the apparent number of bodies - so, there is one in dicephalus and two in cephalopagus. I show that both answers are incorrect: on prominent accounts of biological individuation, there is a single human animal in both cases. This has a number of consequences for the debate about what we are.
Mapping the Minds of Others. 2019. Review of Philosophy & Psychology 10 (4), 747-767.
Abstract: Some mindreaders can ascribe representational states to others. I argue that these mindreaders might differ from one another with respect to the format they take representational states to have. Some might take mental states to be linguistic, whilst others might take them to be map-like or to have another format. Since formats differ in their expressive power and formal features, these differences make a significant difference to the range of mental state attributions a mindreader can make. I close by articulating the significance of this for the study of mindreading in the great apes.
Learning from the Past: Epistemic Generativity and the Function of Episodic Memory. 2019. Journal of Consciousness Studies 26 (5-6), 242-251. Winner of the 2018 Annual Essay Prize of the Centre for Philosophical Psychology, University of Antwerp.
Abstract: I argue that the function of episodic memory is to store information about the past, against the currently orthodox view that it is to support imagining the future. I show that episodic memory is epistemically generative, allowing organisms to learn from past events retroactively. This confers adaptive benefits in three domains: reasoning about the world, skill and social interaction. Given the role played by evolutionary perspectives in comparative research, this argument necessitates a radical shift in the study of episodic memory in nonhumans.
Mirror Self-Recognition & Self-Identification. 2018. Philosophy & Phenomenological Research 97 (2), 284-303.
Abstract: Some animals, including the great apes, are capable of mirror self-recognition. This is widely taken to show that they are self-aware - but there is some disagreement about whether the self-awareness in question is psychological or bodily self-awareness. I argue that self-recognition does not involve psychological self-awareness, but involves more than bodily self-awareness: it also involves 'objective self-awareness', the capacity for first-person thoughts which rest on identification, and are thus vulnerable to error through misidentification.
Chapters
Do Animals Have Episodic Memory? Optimism, Kind Scepticism and Pluralism. Forthcoming in Current Controversies in Philosophy of Memory, Routledge (expected 2021). [email for preprint]
Despite many apparently confirmatory results, there is little consensus about whether nonhuman animals have episodic memory. Why is that? I focus on a family of sceptical views I call ‘kind scepticism’. Kind sceptics argue that the evidence doesn’t support the hypothesis that animals have episodic memory, since it fails to rule out that they have a form of memory that, though similar to episodic memory, differs in kind. This raises a difficult question about how to delineate episodic memory as a psychological kind. I suggest that kind sceptics and advocates of nonhuman episodic memory are committed to different answers to this question, and that their disagreement can’t be settled by appealing to the objective structure of the world, but only by appeal to pragmatic considerations.
Blog Posts
Do Nonhuman Animals Have Episodic Memory? 2020. At Imperfect Cognitions.
Reading Minds & Reading Maps. 2019. At the iCog Blog.
My less academic writing is here.
Papers In Progress/Under Review
Classification in Comparative Cognitive Science
Disputes over whether nonhuman agents have the same cognitive capacities as humans often follow a familiar pattern - 'optimists' and 'sceptics' arive at different views on the basis of the same evidence, because they delineate the cognitive capacities in question in different ways. The dispute begins to look terminological, and stagnates. Faced with this problem, some comparative psychologists recommend we abandon these classificatory questions, in favour of what they call a 'Bottom-Up' approach. This paper argues that a Bottom-Up approach faces many of the same problems. Both a Bottom-Up and a classificatory approach can be salvaged, though, by the adoption of pragmatic pluralism about cognitive kinds. On this view, disputes between optimists and sceptics may not be trivially terminological, but reflect deeper disagreement about the theoretical interests and goals of comparative cognitive science.
What is a Foetus?
A common sense view of the mammalian foetus treats it as (a) an organism, and (b) comprised only of those parts that emerge as the 'future baby'. In this paper, I draw on a metabolic account of the organism to argue that (a) and (b) can't both be true. If the foetus is an organism, it is more extensive than the future baby: it shares many of its mother's parts. If this is right, we should rethink the nature of birth. On this view, birth is the separation of two overlapping organisms; in the process, both lose parts of themselves.
Classification in Comparative Cognitive Science
Disputes over whether nonhuman agents have the same cognitive capacities as humans often follow a familiar pattern - 'optimists' and 'sceptics' arive at different views on the basis of the same evidence, because they delineate the cognitive capacities in question in different ways. The dispute begins to look terminological, and stagnates. Faced with this problem, some comparative psychologists recommend we abandon these classificatory questions, in favour of what they call a 'Bottom-Up' approach. This paper argues that a Bottom-Up approach faces many of the same problems. Both a Bottom-Up and a classificatory approach can be salvaged, though, by the adoption of pragmatic pluralism about cognitive kinds. On this view, disputes between optimists and sceptics may not be trivially terminological, but reflect deeper disagreement about the theoretical interests and goals of comparative cognitive science.
What is a Foetus?
A common sense view of the mammalian foetus treats it as (a) an organism, and (b) comprised only of those parts that emerge as the 'future baby'. In this paper, I draw on a metabolic account of the organism to argue that (a) and (b) can't both be true. If the foetus is an organism, it is more extensive than the future baby: it shares many of its mother's parts. If this is right, we should rethink the nature of birth. On this view, birth is the separation of two overlapping organisms; in the process, both lose parts of themselves.
Recent & Upcoming Talks
Rats, Cuttlefish & Recharacterising Remembering.
- British Society for Philosophy of Science, 2021. Part of a symposium: 'What have we learned about memory (and what remains to be learned)' - with David Colaço, Michael Levin & Sarah Robins. [Online]
Imagining Things.
-Public talk at the Cambridge Festival, 2021. [Online]
Classification in Comparative Cognitive Science
- MindWork, UT Austin, 2021 [Online] [Cancelled]
- Cognitive Science Colloquium, University of Göttingen, 2021 [Online]
- Consciousness Club, University of London, 2021 [Online]
- Popper Seminar, LSE, 2020 [Online]
- Mind Seminar, Oxford, 2020 [Online]
- COGS Seminar, Sussex, 2020 [Online]
- British Society for Philosophy of Science, University of Kent, 2020 [Cancelled]
What is a Foetus?
- Metaphysics of Pregnancy Summer School, KCL, 2021 [Online]
- Better Understanding the Metaphysics of Pregnancy Workshop, University of Southampton, 2021 [Online]
- Joint Session, University of Kent, 2020 [Online]
Do Animals Have Episodic Memory?
- Current Controversies in Philosophy of Memory, Université Grenoble Alpes, 2020 [Online]
- Philosophy Meets Cognitive Science Colloquium, Ruhr University Bochum, 2020 [Online]
- HPS Departmental Seminar, University of Cambridge, 2020
Detecting Episodic Memory in Animals: A Philosophical Perspective
- Cambridge Memory Meeting, Cambridge Department of Psychology, 2020 [Online]
The Boundaries of Memory
- Boundaries of the Mind, CEU Vienna, 2019
- The Mental Sciences Club, University of Cambridge, 2019
Discovering the Past
- About Time: The De Nunc & The De Se, University of Leeds, 2019
- Origins of Temporal Concepts, Queen’s University Belfast, 2019
The Benefits of Hindsight
- Centre for Philosophical Psychology, University of Antwerp, 2019
- Issues in Philosophy of Memory 2, Université Grenoble Alpes, 2019
- Mind & Reason Seminar, York 2019
- European Society for Philosophy & Psychology, Athens, 2019
- CamPoS, University of Cambridge, 2018
The Impure Phenomenology of Episodic Memory
- Comparative Cognition Lab Group, University of Cambridge, 2018
- London Mind Group, KCL/UCL, 2018
- Stirling Visiting Speaker Seminar, University of Stirling, 2018
- L'animalité Workshop, Université de Nantes, 2018
Dicephalus Twinning & Biological Individuation
- Serious Metaphysics Group, University of Cambridge, 2018
- Joint Session, Oxford University, 2018
Two Logical Problems for Animal Mindreading
- Mind Network, University of Nottingham, 2017
- Joint Session, University of Edinburgh, 2017
Episodic Memory, Consciousness & Behaviour
- Issues in Philosophy of Memory, University of Cologne, 2017
- British Society for Philosophy of Science, University of Edinburgh, 2017
False Belief and Counterfactual Thinking
- New Directions in the Study of the Mind, University of Cambridge, 2017
Mapping the Minds of Others
- Joint Session, Cardiff University, 2016
- Persons as Animals Conference, Leeds University, 2016
- Moral Sciences Club, University of Cambridge, 2016
Rats, Cuttlefish & Recharacterising Remembering.
- British Society for Philosophy of Science, 2021. Part of a symposium: 'What have we learned about memory (and what remains to be learned)' - with David Colaço, Michael Levin & Sarah Robins. [Online]
Imagining Things.
-Public talk at the Cambridge Festival, 2021. [Online]
Classification in Comparative Cognitive Science
- MindWork, UT Austin, 2021 [Online] [Cancelled]
- Cognitive Science Colloquium, University of Göttingen, 2021 [Online]
- Consciousness Club, University of London, 2021 [Online]
- Popper Seminar, LSE, 2020 [Online]
- Mind Seminar, Oxford, 2020 [Online]
- COGS Seminar, Sussex, 2020 [Online]
- British Society for Philosophy of Science, University of Kent, 2020 [Cancelled]
What is a Foetus?
- Metaphysics of Pregnancy Summer School, KCL, 2021 [Online]
- Better Understanding the Metaphysics of Pregnancy Workshop, University of Southampton, 2021 [Online]
- Joint Session, University of Kent, 2020 [Online]
Do Animals Have Episodic Memory?
- Current Controversies in Philosophy of Memory, Université Grenoble Alpes, 2020 [Online]
- Philosophy Meets Cognitive Science Colloquium, Ruhr University Bochum, 2020 [Online]
- HPS Departmental Seminar, University of Cambridge, 2020
Detecting Episodic Memory in Animals: A Philosophical Perspective
- Cambridge Memory Meeting, Cambridge Department of Psychology, 2020 [Online]
The Boundaries of Memory
- Boundaries of the Mind, CEU Vienna, 2019
- The Mental Sciences Club, University of Cambridge, 2019
Discovering the Past
- About Time: The De Nunc & The De Se, University of Leeds, 2019
- Origins of Temporal Concepts, Queen’s University Belfast, 2019
The Benefits of Hindsight
- Centre for Philosophical Psychology, University of Antwerp, 2019
- Issues in Philosophy of Memory 2, Université Grenoble Alpes, 2019
- Mind & Reason Seminar, York 2019
- European Society for Philosophy & Psychology, Athens, 2019
- CamPoS, University of Cambridge, 2018
The Impure Phenomenology of Episodic Memory
- Comparative Cognition Lab Group, University of Cambridge, 2018
- London Mind Group, KCL/UCL, 2018
- Stirling Visiting Speaker Seminar, University of Stirling, 2018
- L'animalité Workshop, Université de Nantes, 2018
Dicephalus Twinning & Biological Individuation
- Serious Metaphysics Group, University of Cambridge, 2018
- Joint Session, Oxford University, 2018
Two Logical Problems for Animal Mindreading
- Mind Network, University of Nottingham, 2017
- Joint Session, University of Edinburgh, 2017
Episodic Memory, Consciousness & Behaviour
- Issues in Philosophy of Memory, University of Cologne, 2017
- British Society for Philosophy of Science, University of Edinburgh, 2017
False Belief and Counterfactual Thinking
- New Directions in the Study of the Mind, University of Cambridge, 2017
Mapping the Minds of Others
- Joint Session, Cardiff University, 2016
- Persons as Animals Conference, Leeds University, 2016
- Moral Sciences Club, University of Cambridge, 2016