I am a philosopher and cognitive scientist at the University of Sydney with interests stretching widely across science and philosophy. My primary research interests are located at the intersection of the biological, social, and mind sciences in addition to empirically informed philosophy and ethics. I am also an external member of the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy at LMU Munich. For a glimpse of my work, you can watch this talk of mine on the evolution of multicellular organisms or take a look at my list of publications which now includes over 50 papers.
Some more information:
Currently, I am a visitor at the Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge in Nicola S. Clayton’s comparative cognition lab to bring my framework for the study of consciousness into practice.
Previously, I have been a visitor at and affiliated with the Foundations of Animal Sentience project (ASENT) and The Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science (CPNSS) at the London School of Economics and Political Science under the sponsorship of Jonathan Birch, in addition to the MCMP under the sponsorship of Stephan Hartmann in Munich.
I am also a member of the Theory and Method in Biosciences group (The Griffiths Lab) at the Charles Perkins Centre (Australia’s leading medical research institute) and an interdisciplinary PhD candidate in the School of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney’s Faculty of Science. I am funded through the Australian Laureate Fellowship ‘A Philosophy of Medicine for the 21st century’ which aims to develop a new theory of health and disease to accommodate developments in contemporary biology with a special emphasis on evolutionary theory. My dissertation Health, Agency, and the Evolution of Consciousness seeks to develop such a theory of the organism and grounds the evolution of consciousness or as I call it ‘phenomenological complexity’ which is meant to include dimensions such as pain, wellbeing, perceptual richness, episodic memory, and self-consciousness, in what I dub ‘pathological complexity’. This interdisciplinary project is conducted under the supervision of Paul E. Griffiths (Charles Perkins Centre & Department of Philosophy), Peter Godfrey-Smith (School of History and Philosophy of Science), and externally Marian Stamp Dawkins (University of Oxford, Department of Zoology) who are international leaders on the subjects of my dissertation.
I also did a couple of interviews on my work:
- ePODstemology Podcast with Mark Fabian and Heather Browning: What can animals teach us about consciousness?
- Do Explain Podcast with Christofer Lövgren: Animal Sentience
- Interviewed by Cody Turner’s Tent Talks: Naturalizing Consciousness
- Interviewed by Jamie Woodhouse’s Sentientism Podcast: Animal Sentience, Ethics, and Religion
- Interview with the Philosophy Exchange Podcast: Model Diversity and the Embarrassment of Riches
- Interviewed by the The NonSequitur Show: Ethics of Genetic Engineering
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7701-8995
My partner Heather Browning is also a philosopher/scientist working as a Research Officer in animal sentience and welfare at the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science (CPNSS) at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).
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Walter Veit 