Some say: why do you still need "inference to the best explanation" (a qualitative, imprecise idea) when you have Bayesian updating (a quantitative, precise idea)? In fact, I think Bayesianism is virtually useless without help from IBE, because... 🧵(1/5) Suppose you derive a prediction from a hypothesis using a large scaffolding of background commitments. This greatly underdetermines the likelihood, P(E|H). It could be high, but it could be low: maybe the conjunction of E & your background commitments is very improbable. (2/5)

Hiro has kindly shared a video of my talk on "Theories of consciousness: beyond the first/higher-order distinction". Here is quick thread explaining the main point of the talk. (1/5)

https://twitter.com/HiroTaiyoHamada/status/1569334768528916483

For a long time, first vs. higher-order (FOT vs. HOT) has looked like a major faultline in theorizing about consciousness. FOTs say: perception can be conscious WITHOUT being the object of any kind of "inner awareness" or "inner eye". HOTs disagree. (2/5)

My "Foundations of Animal Sentience" project is at the halfway stage. A good moment to take stock of what we've done in the past 2.5 years. Here is a thread with links to some personal highlights. (1/14) What are we trying to do? We want to put the nascent interdisciplinary field of animal sentience research on secure conceptual foundations, and to find ways of putting this emerging science to work to design better policies, laws and ways of caring for animals. (2/14)

My team has edited a special issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies on "Animal Consciousness", and it's out today. Here is a thread introducing it. (1/13) To open the special issue, I asked the 15 authors to answer the question: How we should study animal consciousness scientifically? Here are their answers (open access) (2/13): ingentaconnect.com/contentone/imp…

I must have seen more than 40 tenure-track "job talks" by now. Here are some general reflections on what works and what doesn't work. (1/7) The best job talks start by giving an overview of your emerging research programme, then "zoom in" to an example of your best recent work, then "zoom out" at the end to lay out future directions. Start and end by generating excitement around your long-term trajectory. (2/7)

It's been another tough year, but my "Foundations of Animal Sentience" team lse.ac.uk/cpnss/research…) has been making progress on several little things and one big thing. Here is a 🧵with open access links to our outputs. 1/ Andrew Crump has been working with bees all year, but simultaneously published some of his doctoral work on optimism in cows: nature.com/articles/s4159…

Many of my most accessible/engaging pieces of writing are book reviews, but they can be hard to find. So here is a 🧵 with open access links to all of them. 1/ "The hatching of consciousness" - an essay review of @pgodfreysmith's Metazoa and @theamygdaloid's Deep History of Ourselves. link.springer.com/article/10.100…

Here are 10 philosophy articles I liked in 2020, in no particular order (a THREAD with links). 1: Do animals have a concept of death? @Susana_MonsO sets out what it takes to have a "minimal comprehension" of death and explains how we can test for it. link.springer.com/article/10.100…