Date:
Location:
57th annual Whitehead Lectures
Professor Peter Godfrey-Smith
University of Sydney
Limits of Sentience, Boundaries of Consideration
April 13-14, 2023
3:00-5:00pm
Emerson Hall, Room 210
25 Quincy Street, Cambridge MA 02138
Abstract
Work in several fields has made it appear likely that sentience, or subjective experience, is present in many more animals than has often been supposed. The first lecture, “Limits of Sentience,” looks at this evidence and asks how far the rethinking might extend. To plants? All life? Computer systems? The second lecture, “Boundaries of Consideration,” will look at the ethical side of these issues. How might we reasonably set the boundaries of ethical concern, and what status might such boundaries have?
About the Speaker
Professor Godfrey-Smith is a professor in the School of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney.
His main research interests are in the philosophy of biology and the philosophy of mind. He also works on pragmatism (especially John Dewey), general philosophy of science, and some parts of metaphysics and epistemology. He has written six books, Complexity and the Function of Mind in Nature (Cambridge, 1996), Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science (Chicago, 2003), Darwinian Populations and Natural Selection (Oxford, 2009), which won the 2010 Lakatos Award, Philosophy of Biology, (Princeton, 2014), Other Minds: The Octopus, The Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness (FSG, 2016), and Metazoa: Animal Life and the Both of the Mind (FSG and William Collins, 2020).
His photos and videos have appeared in the New York Times, National Geographic, The Guardian, Science, The Boston Globe, and elsewhere.
Bio from Professor Godfrey-Smith's website; portrait by Daniel Boud