Jonathan Birch
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birchlse.bsky.social
Jonathan Birch
@birchlse.bsky.social
6K followers 310 following 730 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 Portes, Will Jennings, David Papineau , and 6 more

adambienkov.bsky.social
Adam Bienkov @adambienkov.bsky.social · 6h
New Home Office impact assessment finds that cutting skilled and social care visas will cost the UK up to £10 billion with a central estimate of -£5.4 billion.

It would be good if this got even a fraction of the coverage devoted to the endless debate about boats, flags and Turkish barber shops

Reposted by Jonathan Birch

protik.bsky.social
Protik Islam-Jakobsson @protik.bsky.social · 12h
😔
Britain in British history: Daniel Radcliffe as a young and very proper Harry Potter Britain In everyone else's history: disheveled Daniel Radcliffe in a ratty robe and bear paw slippers brandishing two guns while grinning madly

Reposted by Jonathan Birch

nataliegreenpeer.bsky.social
Natalie Bennett @nataliegreenpeer.bsky.social · 1d
"Region imported 438,000 tons of pesticides and herbicides in 2020, two-thirds more than in 2018. More than half of such chemicals used in Nigeria are highly hazardous, at least 40% of those can’t be sold in Europe"

#Pesticide colonialism
www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
Europe’s Banned Pesticides Are Poisoning Nigeria
Chemicals barred by the EU are widely available across Africa, threatening food and water supplies.
www.bloomberg.com

birchlse.bsky.social
Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 1d
Dear Reader delivers a similarly ambivalent message more explicitly. Yes, I know you idolise me, and I get it - I'd probably idolise me too - but have you noticed you're idolising someone completely alone and miserable?

Reposted by Jonathan Birch

lastpositivist.bsky.social
lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 1d
One thing I have surprisingly detailed opinions on is the psychology behind the narrator's character in Taylor Swift's You're On Your Own, Kid. So I wrote about that here. I think we all know why you read a 40k blog: for Taylor Swift lyrics analysis.

sherdenpact.neocities.org/4thWall#Swift
Behind the Brush
sherdenpact.neocities.org

birchlse.bsky.social
Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 2d
Truly the Nietzsche of our age. bsky.app/profile/birc...
birchlse.bsky.social Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · Feb 17
Nietzsche knew that a true philosopher must write his own jacket blurbs.

Reposted by Jonathan Birch, Patrick Stokes

noamchompers.bsky.social
noam chompers @noamchompers.bsky.social · 2d
just learned about this colin mcginn blog post

Reposted by Jonathan Birch

gautamkamath.com
Gautam Kamath @gautamkamath.com · 3d
In 2026, all three of the major ML conferences will be in incredible locations:
- #ICLR2026 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- #ICML2026 in Seoul, South Korea
- #NeurIPS2026 in Sydney, Australia

Which one do you want to go to the most?
gautamkamath.com Gautam Kamath @gautamkamath.com · 3d
#NeurIPS2026 will be held in Sydney, Australia!

#ICML2017 was also in Sydney and was an absolute blast

Reposted by Steven French

Reposted by Jonathan Hopkin, Scott A. Imberman, Jonathan Birch

carlbergstrom.com
Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 4d
2018, Russia: "Fuck this, I'm not watching a World Cup in a fascist country. I'll just wait four years."

2022, Qatar: "Fuck this, I'm not watching a World Cup in a fascist country. I guess I'll wait another four years..."

2026: So I guess the joke is on me.

Reposted by Steven French

Reposted by Jonathan Birch

juangallego.bsky.social
Juan Gallego @juangallego.bsky.social · 4d
but I am also leery of internal models for motor control, e.g.,
I think that rapid learning (adaptation) is based on adapting these controllers not the classic view of adapting a forward model and inverting it -- e.g. this great paper by @adrianhaith.bsky.social www.jneurosci.org/content/41/1...
Did We Get Sensorimotor Adaptation Wrong? Implicit Adaptation as Direct Policy Updating Rather than Forward-Model-Based Learning
The human motor system can rapidly adapt its motor output in response to errors. The prevailing theory of this process posits that the motor system adapts an internal forward model that predicts the c...
www.jneurosci.org

Reposted by Jonathan Birch, Richard Pettigrew, Brian Weatherson

cmlittlejohn.bsky.social
Clayton Littlejohn @cmlittlejohn.bsky.social · 4d
My entry for the SEP on externalism vs. internalism about justification is now live.

plato.stanford.edu/entries/just...
Internalist vs. Externalist Conceptions of Epistemic Justification (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
plato.stanford.edu

Reposted by Jonathan Birch

benhayden.bsky.social
Ben Hayden @benhayden.bsky.social · 5d
Thoughtful review with some good recent historical perspective on the ongoing paradigm shift that is radically changing the way we think about what brain areas do.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
How distributed is the brain-wide network that is recruited for cognition? - Nature Reviews Neuroscience
Both localized and distributed views on the functional organization of the brain have been put forward. In this Perspective, Rosen and Freedman examine the degree to which these two views account for ...
www.nature.com

Reposted by Jonathan Birch

stevecooke.org
Grumpy Philosopher @stevecooke.org · 5d
Cool new paper on using idea and non-ideal political theory to think about progress away from animal research: link.springer.com/article/10.1...
How to Give Ethical Input on Animal Research Transitions: Ideal and Nonideal Theory - Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics
Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics - Research that harms animals raises the question of whether and how science should be transformed over time. To helpfully address this issue,...
link.springer.com

Reposted by Jonathan Birch

damianshields.bsky.social
Damian Shields @damianshields.bsky.social · 5d
Inveraray from the Dun na Cuaiche Watchtower #Inveraray #Argyll #Scotland damianshields.photoshelter.com/p/2026-calendar

birchlse.bsky.social
Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 6d
The series needs more expert judgement, not less. The BBC has become incredibly timid. If you compare this to Simon Schama's shows 20 years ago: he judged, he opined, he said what he felt. He didn't feel any need to be neutral about events centuries earlier.

Reposted by Steven French, Jonathan Birch

stevecooke.org
Grumpy Philosopher @stevecooke.org · 6d
If you‘re in London on the 11th December, there’s a great event exploring the role of photography in building empathy towards nonhuman animals. I can really recommend events at this venue, it’s a wonderful space: www.kairos.london/event/why-lo...
Why Look at Animals? with Jo-Anne McArthur and Zed Nelson - Kairos
Thursday December 11th, 6.30 for 7pm How can contemporary photography, by focussing on our broken bonds with animals and the rest of the natural world, help drive a paradigm shift in our priorities an...
www.kairos.london

Reposted by Jonathan Birch, Matthis Krischel

phdhurtbrain.bsky.social
Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 6d
Not sure if any single part of academia felt more like a weird cheat code than Interlibrary Loan. Like, I just say a book I want, basically any book, and this crack team of experts just *get it*????