Simon Brown

@simonabbrown.bsky.social

813 Followers 803 Following

Philosopher of mind/cog sci studying animal minds, memory, consciousness, temporal representation, & implications for animal ethics/policy. Asst. Prof. @ Ashoka University, India

Whatsapp screenshot with messages in short succession reading "Hy", "Sir, I am bathing in delivery curry.", "I brought your dining table"

1920s photo of a protest waving banners and flags with the slogan 'Simon Go Back'

Picture of me reading in a garden behind a sign reading 'Philosopher's Garden Picnic Area'

map of London showing routes in different shades of orange

blurry blue bird flying near a building site

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

Collage of the titles of many scientific papers pertaining to episodic memory in animals

Photo showing Wendy (golden retriever) and Pippi (border collie) looking quizzical, superimposed with thought bubbles with question marks

People sat watching a PowerPoint presentation in a big screen with large dog in the centre being petted by an audience member's foot

Screenshot of email inbox with email from Jonathan Birch asking 'How can I live a meaningful life?'

Table of mechanisms, each with a short description and tick or cross indicating whether it involves sentience:
Conscious Deliberation - Subjects consider valenced experiences alongside other inputs in a fully explicit decision process - /
Automatic Affective Competition - Subjects consciously feel/imagine/remember multiple
valenced experiences at once, with their relative strength
in a common currency determining action - /
Attention Capture - The trade-off is achieved by pre-conscious competition for consciousness, resulting in only one valenced experience (that immediately drives action) - /
Affectively Learned Habits - Subjects’ trade-off decisions are shaped over time by sentience-based reinforcement learning. Valenced
experience at the time of the decision itself is not required - /
Unconscious Capture - The trade-off is achieved by unconscious
behaviour-driving states competing with and suppressing
one another (e.g. food deprivation suppressing sensitivity
to aversive stimuli in C. elegans) - x
Unconsciously Learned Habits - Subjects’ trade-off decisions are shaped over time by reinforcement learning with an unconscious ‘reward’
signal. - x
Fixed Decision Rule - As in Sec. 3’s parasitoid wasp example, innately
determined, inflexible, and unconscious processing of
specific inputs has been shaped by evolution to produce
behaviour that balances different fitness costs and
benefits. - x
.

Simple circuit diagram from Fig. 7 of Ghosh et al 2016, "Neural Architecture of Hunger-Dependent Multisensory Decision Making" showing interactions between neurons AWA, ASH, and RIM, giving rise to forward or backward motion in response to levels of diacetyl and fructose

diagram of bee in testing chamber, detail from Fig. 2 of Gibbons et al. 2022, "Motivational trade-offs and modulation of nociception in bumblebees"

Photo of a hermit crab by Safa Daneshvar

Lists of criteria used by Sneddon et al 2022, Crump et al 2022, and Dung & Dewen 2022, for determining sentience in different species, which include motivational trade-offs, highlighted in red

cartoon weighing scales, surrounded by photos of a goldfish, a trout, a hermit crab, a C. Elegans, a shore crab, a rat, and a bumblebee

2 men (Simon Brown and Ross Pain" in an underground room in front of shelves of taxidermied animals ( a leopard's tail is visible from under a plastic wrap, as are some seabirds), inspecting jars containing spiders preserved in liquid

Poster with cartoon images of a bat, electric fish, and a jumping spider, with text bubbles reading "23-24 November 2024", "For Ages 5-11", "Free Entry", "What would it be like to...Feel the world through electricity? See the world through sound? Have eight eyes?", "Dive into the minds of bats, electric fish, and jumping spiders!", "Interactive art activities!", "VR experience!", "Discover the museum's hidden collection!", "Find out more at bristolmuseums.org.uk", and the logos for Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, and the Institute of Philosophy and School of Advanced Study, University of London

Group photo of about 30 young philosophers, biologists, and comparative psychologists posing in front of the Lakatos Building at the London School of Economics