Jonathan Birch
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birchlse.bsky.social
Jonathan Birch
@birchlse.bsky.social
6.3K followers 310 following 780 posts

Professor, LSE. Philosophy of science, animal consciousness, animal ethics. Director of The Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience.

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Jonathan Birch is a British philosopher and professor of philosophy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His work addresses the philosophy of biology and behavioural sciences, especially questions concerning sentience, bioethics, animal welfare, and the evolution of social behaviour and social norms. .. more

Neuroscience 26%
Psychology 15%
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birchlse.bsky.social
Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · Mar 25
An emotional day - I can announce I'll be the first director of The Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience at the LSE, supported by a £4m grant from the Jeremy Coller Foundation. Our mission: to develop better policies, laws and ways of caring for animals. (1/2)
www.lse.ac.uk/News/Latest-...
LSE announces new centre to study animal sentience
The Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience at LSE will develop new approaches to studying the feelings of other animals scientifically.
www.lse.ac.uk

Reposted by Jonathan Birch

Reposted by Jonathan Birch

crookedfootball.bsky.social
Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social · 23h
What steps is the Labour government taking to establish safe routes to the UK for Iranians facing persecution and death?

Reposted by Jonathan Birch

conitzer.bsky.social
Vincent Conitzer @conitzer.bsky.social · 1d
Soccer goalkeepers have to make some tough decisions during the game. This should clear things up.

birchlse.bsky.social
Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 1d
Thanks!

birchlse.bsky.social
Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 1d
Ancient Indian debates about animal consciousness should definitely have their own entry!

Reposted by Nigel Warburton, Brian Weatherson, Stefano Gualeni , and 2 more

birchlse.bsky.social
Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 1d
I've been working for ages on a comprehensive revamp of the Stanford Encyclopedia Entry on "Animal Consciousness", with new sections on non-Western perspectives, methodological challenges and evolutionary big pictures, and it's out today: plato.stanford.edu/entries/cons.... Hope you find it useful!
Animal Consciousness (first paragraph of the article). First published Sat Dec 23, 1995; substantive revision Tue Jan 13, 2026. Is there something it’s like to be an octopus, a bee, a snail? For much of the twentieth century, research into animal cognition tended to avoid questions of consciousness, following the lead of human neuroscience, where such questions were also marginalized (see the entries on animal cognition, methods in comparative cognition). However, the growing profile of consciousness science since 2000 has brought the topic of consciousness back into the scientific mainstream (see the entry on the neuroscience of consciousness), and this has led to resurgent interest in studying conscious experience in other animals.

Reposted by Jonathan Birch

lovingautomaton.bsky.social
François Kammerer @lovingautomaton.bsky.social · 1d
I have a fairly exploratory/speculative manuscript on moral significance in AIs, and I would love comments/remarks on it by people interested in these questions. You will find the draft here: philpapers.org/rec/KAMMSI
François Kammerer, Moral significance in artificial systems: if not consciousness, then what? - PhilPapers
Many think AIs would be morally significant if and only if they are phenomenally conscious in certain ways. This sentientist conception has been challenged, and alternative views emerged, on which age...
philpapers.org

Reposted by Steven French, Jonathan Birch, Michael Larkin

radiobeartime.com
Mark O’Neill 🐻 @radiobeartime.com · 2d
The UK National Health Service has very clear information on all major medical conditions.

It is browsable by all

Never EVER rely on an LLM for health advice

www.nhs.uk/conditions/

Reposted by Jonathan Birch

defendourjuries.bsky.social
Defend Our Juries @defendourjuries.bsky.social · 3d
Their plan all along:

The government would still curb jury trials even if the criminal courts were not in crisis, the courts minister revealed yesterday - as MPs demanded yet again to see the impact assessment for the proposal.

www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/ministe...
Minister admits jury trials would be curbed regardless of courts crisis
MPs call out comment by courts minister Sackman during fiery debate on jury reforms.
www.lawgazette.co.uk

birchlse.bsky.social
Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 4d
I sometimes ask people: where do you think the vitamins in factory farmed meat come from? The wholesome goodness of eating corn all day in the dark? No, they give the animals lower-quality versions of the same vitamin supplements you can buy yourself.

Reposted by Jonathan Birch

mbolotnikova.bsky.social
Marina Bolotnikova @mbolotnikova.bsky.social · 4d
oh my god. More details are surfacing about the catastrophic incompetence that led to the dietary guidelines' inaccurate claims about a litany of nutrient gaps in plant-based diets

Reposted by Jonathan Birch

Reposted by Jonathan Birch

Reposted by Jonathan Birch

Reposted by Elizabeth Saunders, Richard S.J. Tol, Will Jennings , and 39 more

anneapplebaum.bsky.social
Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum.bsky.social · 4d
The Norwegian Nobel Prize committee has been forced to make a statement, declaring that the prize cannot be transferred.
It's hard even to comprehend how stupid this has become

birchlse.bsky.social
Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 5d
A confusing thing is that you can hold an endowed chair in a department (as Peterson does) without being the chair (or head) of the department.

Reposted by Jonathan Birch, Brian Weatherson

doctorspurt.bsky.social
David Spurrett @doctorspurt.bsky.social · 5d
"Critical 4E Cognitive Science" by @liao.shen-yi.org and Zoe Brinner is forthcoming in 'Philosophy Compass' and up as a preprint at Phil Archive. This is a *really* useful and lucid overview of recent work on downsides/bad-sides of 4E cognition. /1
philpapers.org/rec/LIACEC-2
Shen-yi Liao & Zoe Brinner, Critical 4E Cognitive Science - PhilPapers
According to 4E cognitive science, our cognitive capacities depend on, and have been transformed by, the environments we have made. Most early works of 4E cognitive science tend to focus on ...
philpapers.org

Reposted by Jonathan Birch

nicolecrust.bsky.social
Nicole Rust @nicolecrust.bsky.social · 5d
I'm a bit sad that we've abandoned the "passions" - the MOST INTENSE of all affective states (like RAGE is to anger and ECSTASY is to joy.

#BringBackThePassions

From The Psychology Of Feeling And Emotion by Ruckmick, Christian. 1936 (p73)

archive.org/details/in.e...
Figure from book showing stream of experience from emotion > mood > passion The Emergence of the Passions. — A contrasting picture is presented by the passions, which again have neither been adequately described in the literature nor experimented upon in the laboratory. But we can say three principal things by way of indirect analysis. They are extremely intense in affective tone, they are as sudden in subsidence as they are in appearance, and they are usually vastly richer in action and expression than are even the emotions. Passions are outgrowths of emotion with the hedonic tone particularly stressed. While we may not be able to hear or to see accurately when we have flown into a passion, we must, however, say that the cognitive element is there. We do see and hear and the passion, unlike the mood, is directed toward some person, object, or event. Its adjustment to the situation is probably not nearly so efficient or effectual but there is a more or less disorganized response.

birchlse.bsky.social
Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 5d
Do you remember this one
Movie poster for "Hannah Arendt". Tagline: "The woman who saw banality in evil."

birchlse.bsky.social
Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 6d
The giant window for alt text on Bluesky is a cool feature; I'm learning about it for the first time now.

Reposted by Robert C. Richards, Silvia Secchi, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò

birchlse.bsky.social
Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 6d
Some have pointed out that the whole letter would have fit in the alt text window, so here is a version with the whole letter in alt text.
The letter reads: Dr. Sweet, As you may have noticed, I believe it is important to document that philosophy professors at Texas A&M University are not permitted to teach Plato at their own discretion. To comply with the new censorship requirements, I have replaced the affected module with lectures on free speech and academic freedom. The censored material is marked in red in the attached document. The required text for the new module is: Texas A&M, Under New Curriculum Limits, Warns Professor Not to Teach Plato”, The New York Times, January 8, 2026. Texas A&M Warns Professor Not to Teach Plato Because of Gender Rules - The New York Times. Respectfully, Martin Peterson

Reposted by Lisa W. Fazio, Jan W. Mueller, Matthew Bunn , and 39 more

birchlse.bsky.social
Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 6d
Martin Peterson's creative response to being banned from teaching Plato (shared with his permission).
An email from Martin Peterson to university administrators.

birchlse.bsky.social
Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 6d
I don't like the gradual Londonisation of all accents and I think the principle should be to do whatever you can do to resist Londonisation (not much, in my case).