Jonathan Birch
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birchlse.bsky.social
Jonathan Birch
@birchlse.bsky.social
5.9K followers 300 following 700 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

birchlse.bsky.social
Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 48m
Closer to home is Manchester - that's been a really good expansion project using overground tram lines, far quicker and cheaper. Crossrail is good, but 10 or so Manchester-like networks in other cities might have been even better.

birchlse.bsky.social
Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 1h
The Elizabeth Line took 18 years; I think Delhi built ~9 new metro lines during the same period.

Reposted by Andreas De Block

birchlse.bsky.social
Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 13h
Pretty much no one can make their ideas clear to others on the 1st attempt. The two main reactions are "let's painstakingly clarify this with some back and forth", and "doesn't matter as long as the various interpretations are themselves interesting", leading to the 2 main branches of philosophy.

Reposted by Jonathan Birch

Reposted by Jonathan Birch

Reposted by Jonathan Birch

Reposted by Jonathan Birch

sdepaor.bsky.social
Sean Enda Power @sdepaor.bsky.social · 23h
This reminds me of a paper this year on how congenitally blind people can talk about colour in detail (wonder if relevant to Molyneaux problem too):

Liu, Van Paridon, and Lupyan. 2025. ‘Learning about Color from Language’. Communications Psychology 3 (1): 60. doi.org/10.1038/s442...
Learning about color from language - Communications Psychology
Blind people show similar associations between adjectives (e.g. cold) and colours (e.g. blue) as sighted people; word embedding models trained on corpora of written and spoken language learn these ass...
doi.org

Reposted by Richard S.J. Tol, Richard McElreath, Wim Thiery , and 7 more

janrosenow.bsky.social
Jan Rosenow @janrosenow.bsky.social · 1d
Solar’s price drop is astonishing: panels are now 98% cheaper than when I first analyzed them in 2004.

Today, building a fence with solar can be cheaper than using wood.

Reposted by Jonathan Birch

petergeoghegan.bsky.social
Peter Geoghegan @petergeoghegan.bsky.social · 1d
Like why would the bbc need to ‘balance’ its cover of the US in this way?

When the BBC covers, say, Xi critically should it also run a programme dedicated to the CCP’s achievements?

birchlse.bsky.social
Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 1d
What are your favourites?

birchlse.bsky.social
Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 1d
Ved Mehta was blind from age 3 but wrote nonfiction books full of rich visual imagery constructed from auditory, tactile & olfactory data. A reviewer once called the method dishonest. Mehta wrote to the editor that they would be "well advised to review my book rather than my disability".
Ved Mehta

Reposted by Jonathan Birch

michelamassimi.bsky.social
Michela Massimi @michelamassimi.bsky.social · 2d
New paper out in this volume by human rights lawyers www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/int... where I discuss what an ‘epistemic jurisdiction’ is, two possible different views on it, and why it matters for international cooperation in the context of implementing the human right to science (Art 27 of UNDHR).

Reposted by Jonathan Birch

Reposted by Jonathan Birch

defendourjuries.bsky.social
Defend Our Juries @defendourjuries.bsky.social · 2d
Environmental protesters are being given licence conditions on release from jail that are supposed to be limited to extremism cases.

Ella Ward, 22, was banned from going to any meetings or gatherings, except for worship, without permission.

www.theguardian.com/law/2025/nov...
Jailed UK climate protesters facing conditions reserved for extremists on release
Exclusive: Just Stop Oil activist was banned from attending gatherings, including meeting a friend in a cafe, without permission
www.theguardian.com

Reposted by Rebecca Sear, Jonathan Birch

duhe.bsky.social
Ehud @duhe.bsky.social · 3d
Watson and Crick elucidated the structure of DNA. Stop saying that they discovered DNA! This was done by another guy you probably haven't heard of! And therein lies a story. academic.oup.com/genetics/art...
Before Watson and Crick in 1953 Came Friedrich Miescher in 1869
Abstract. The story of genetics typically omits the original discovery of the molecular nature of DNA: Friedrich Miescher's 1869 discovery of the substance
academic.oup.com

Reposted by Jonathan Birch, Catriona Seth

richove.bsky.social
Richard Ovenden @richove.bsky.social · 3d
The most incredible library in the world, @bodleian.ox.ac.uk opened to OTD 1602, through the energy, money & commitment of Sir Thomas Bodley. It began with 5k books, & now more than 22m, with 2m+reader visits a year, & multi-million online users across the globe. Privilged to be its 25th librarian!

birchlse.bsky.social
Jonathan Birch @birchlse.bsky.social · 3d
Yale's Beinecke Library is quite glorious.
Beinecke Library, Yale.

Reposted by Jonathan Birch

Reposted by John J. Foxe, Jonathan Birch

Reposted by Jonathan Birch

Reposted by Jonathan Birch

dzakharova.bsky.social
Daria Zakharova @dzakharova.bsky.social · 3d
Great meeting on AI consciousness research this week at Google NY, what an inspiring crowd!

Really grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the panel on AI consciousness evaluation, alongside Roman Yampolskiy, @birchlse.bsky.social and Rob Long.

And special thanks to Rob for the sticker :)

Reposted by Jonathan Birch

lastpositivist.bsky.social
lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 3d
Finnur Dellsén got a nice pic of me on my standard Q&A slide, so now I have a stock reply to any time anyone disagrees with me.
Me in a red jumper talking into a mic and holding my hand up. Behind me is a slide with the words "You tell me I am wrong. // Who are you, who is anybody, to tell me I am wrong? // I am not wrong."

Reposted by Jonathan Birch, Katrina Navickas

stevecooke.org
Grumpy Philosopher @stevecooke.org · 4d
UK university news just this week: 163 jobs at risk + course closures at Leicester; 300 jobs at risk at Dundee; modern language & music courses being closed at Nottingham. Every week it‘s the same.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
University of Leicester to consult on redundancies
University bosses are also planning to stop a number of courses.
www.bbc.co.uk