iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Simon Brown @simonabbrown.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Is it unfair to suspect that this Indian market research company is secretly connected to Palantir?

Screenshot from the website of Mordor Intelligence describing the Mordor Advantage in Distributed Expertise, Strategic Location, and Flash Delivery

Simon Brown @simonabbrown.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

My Hindi is terrible and most Delhi delivery drivers' English isn't much better, so we often have to rely on google translate. Mix this with lack of standardisation in how Hindi is spelled in Latin alphabet and the results can be glorious:

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

170

Simon Brown @simonabbrown.bsky.social · 11/08/2025

Feeling very excited, grateful, and fortunate to be moving to India today to become an Assistant Professor in Philosophy at Ashoka University! In other news, just learned about the importance of the slogan 'Simon Go Back' to the Indian independence movement

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

290

Simon Brown @simonabbrown.bsky.social · 10/08/2025

Fascinated by how 'philosopher' is used outside academia. This N London park is named after a group of mid-C20th retirees who met regularly to chat, play sports, and help the community (including supervising air raid shelters during the Blitz) hornseyhistorical.org.uk/the-priory-p...

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

2232

Simon Brown @simonabbrown.bsky.social · 10/08/2025

Heat map of most of my cycle journeys over the last year. Much to be done, but thanks to @hackneylcc.bsky.social @cycleislington.uk and others, much of the city feels incredibly safe already. Cycling as my primary mode of transport has saved 100s of hours and probably over £1000 this year alone

map of London showing routes in different shades of orange

2204

Simon Brown @simonabbrown.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

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

blurry blue bird flying near a building site

040

Simon Brown @simonabbrown.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

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

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

130

Simon Brown @simonabbrown.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

We start with some very cool science. But the interpretation of all the empirical and computational work is hotly contested. We articulate 3 philosophical problems driving these disputes, with much broader significance. Our hope is to help crystallise a research agenda going forward... 2/9

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

100

Simon Brown @simonabbrown.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

Seeing an old friend might prompt vivid memories of times you spent together. Do other animals have the same kind of memory - episodic memory? @aliboyle.bsky.social and I introduce philosophical issues around such questions in a new Phil. Compass piece doi.org/10.1111/phc3... 1/9

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

1156

Simon Brown @simonabbrown.bsky.social · 27/04/2025

@pamba.bsky.social unsurprisingly has some of the best non-human participants of any academic conference (and many great humans too)

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

031

Simon Brown @simonabbrown.bsky.social · 13/03/2025

An exciting thing about your job being philosophy is that sometimes people send emails with headings that suggest they're having some kind of crisis, and then it turns out they're just scheduling meetings @birchlse.bsky.social

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

1242

Simon Brown @simonabbrown.bsky.social · 01/03/2025

Yet we do sometimes perform trade-offs by weighing up how good and bad experiences feel to us. So a trade-off *can* be evidence for sentience. Key is distinguishing possible mechanisms, and showing this trade-off is explained by a sentience-involving mechanism (9/11)

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
.

141

Simon Brown @simonabbrown.bsky.social · 01/03/2025

Problem 2: some trade-offs are carried out by extremely simple mechanisms with no connection to sentience. In tiny nematode worms, simple interactions between just 2-3 neurons responding directly to chemical concentrations can explain certain trade-off behaviours (7/11)

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

130

Simon Brown @simonabbrown.bsky.social · 01/03/2025

Bees tolerate higher levels of heat to feed from a feeder where they have previously received higher levels of sugar. Is this because they consciously feel pain and weigh it up against expected felt pleasure? (4/11)

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

120

Simon Brown @simonabbrown.bsky.social · 01/03/2025

Hermit crabs choose their shells according to all kinds of factors. They are less likely to give up a better shell when given mild electric shocks. Do they consciously feel the the shock as painful and weigh it against +ve feelings about the shell? (3/11)

Photo of a hermit crab by Safa Daneshvar

120

Simon Brown @simonabbrown.bsky.social · 01/03/2025

We don't know which animals are sentient, i.e. consciously experience positive and negative states like pleasure and pain. Recent reports about fish, insects, crustaceans, octopuses etc. combine several lines of evidence, with motivational trade-offs amongst the most prominent (2/11)

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

120

Simon Brown @simonabbrown.bsky.social · 01/03/2025

When and why are motivational trade-offs evidence of sentience? New paper with @birchlse.bsky.social forthcoming at Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. B and available to download for free here: philpapers.org/rec/BROWAW-10 (1/11)

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

1258

Simon Brown @simonabbrown.bsky.social · 24/10/2024

Organised by me, Ross Pain (seen here inspecting spiders in the museum's vaults, with various specimens in the background), and Giulia Palazzolo, with funding from the Institute of Philosophy and help from an amazing team of scientists and others! More here: www.bristolmuseums.org.uk/whats-on/bri...

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

000

Simon Brown @simonabbrown.bsky.social · 24/10/2024

Excited to announce a free children's event in November at Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, introducing the weird and wonderful senses of different animals and the philosophical puzzles they raise, through the museum's specimens (including a terrific platypus!), VR, art activities, games, and more

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

110

Simon Brown @simonabbrown.bsky.social · 18/04/2024

Very optimistic about the future of philosophy of animal minds after a terrific few days of talks and discussion with early career researchers from all around the world at the LSE!

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

041

Simon Brown @simonabbrown.bsky.social · 20/03/2024

Registration is now open for online and in person attendance at our Early Career Workshop in Animal Minds at the LSE on 16-17 April! Registration required by April 8. See here for more details, abstracts, schedule, and registration: sites.google.com/view/ecrwani...

0410

Simon Brown @simonabbrown.bsky.social · 28/12/2023

...it implies that experience in the periphery is rich but highly unstable, with noise leading to "flickers" of experience in the periphery! I argue this is a feature rather than a bug for the view: there are systematic reasons to think we would fail to notice such flickers 6/7

110

Simon Brown @simonabbrown.bsky.social · 28/12/2023

Recent results suggest the phenomenon may relate to "inflation": for potential stimuli in the periphery, even weak signals are enough for us to say we saw something (in Signal Detection Theory: we have more liberal criteria). But what does this mean for our experience? 3/7

110

Simon Brown @simonabbrown.bsky.social · 28/12/2023

New paper (open access) in #Consciousness and Cognition! How rich is conscious visual experience? The evidence is fundamentally ambiguous. Different interpretations of the evidence all have surprising consequences for how experience unfolds over time 1/7 doi.org/10.1016/j.co...

2166

Simon Brown @simonabbrown.bsky.social · 13/10/2023

Philosophers should co-author more. One unsung advantage: if you get bored while writing, you can lightly troll your co-author

050