Current Work
​

Do Insects Feel, and Should We care?

Using a mix of experiments and philosophy, we are on the quest to discover how insect minds work. Do they feel pleasure, pain, lust and love? And if they do, how could we ever tell? We take a behavioural approach to this topic, looking for behavioural signatures indicative of sentience. This work is supported by the Arthropoda Foundation, and the Australia & Pacific Science Foundation.
Related outputs:

Genes, Germs and Gender: The Reach and Impact of Bioessentialism

Scientific misconceptions are enabled by simplistic explanations, such as bioessentialism: beliefs that biological agents (e.g. genes) dictate meaningful categorisations (e.g. gender) by determining traits and behaviour. Bioessentialism about genetics, microbiology, and sex and gender has significant social costs, yet how it is perpetuated is unresolved. Combining philosophical analysis with AI classification models, this project will establish when and where bioessentialism arises, and which interventions are likely to mitigate such misunderstandings. 
This work is supported by the Australian Research Council DP260100695
​Related outputs:

Causes of Death and Values in Science

When a person dies, a cause is assigned and recorded on a death certificate. These causal explanations serve multiple purposes: informing loved ones of hereditary health risks, aiding the grieving process, identifying patient safety concerns in health settings, and compiling mortality statistics, which are used to inform the allocation of health resources, public health initiatives, and research priorities. This wide range of purposes speaks to the importance of recording causes of death for improving health and wellbeing. However, this research has identified how a single causal explanation serving multiple purposes and informed by various and sometimes conflicting values can be problematic. Causes of death provide a fascinating case study for philosophers of science to learn how values influence causal selection. ​
Related outputs:

Effective Conservation Biology

We are living in a world full of declining ecosystems, and limited resources, meaning that some conservation efforts must be prioritised over others. Given the sheer diversity and scale of the current global situation, how does one effectively decide where to best invest time and effort, on research and implementation? Which problems should be prioritised over others, and why? How can emerging biotechnologies assist in meeting conservation goals? This project involves collaborations conservation biologists, philosophers, and social scientists to develop a framework for understanding the heterogeneous and sometimes conflicting value-systems that underlie conservation biology, and to use those values to make evaluative assessments of the best interventions and projects in the field.  This work has been supported by the Australian Academy of the Humanities, The Sydney Environment Institute, The Melbourne Biodiversity Institute and the Centre for Environmental and Animal Protection
​Related outputs:

An Interventionist Approach to Explainable Artificial Intelligence

This project aims to develop a new approach to explaining and understanding decisions generated by artificial intelligence (AI). Popular approaches rely on counterfactuals, which focus on how an outcome would change, given different inputs. Such explanations are criticised in philosophy for failing to provide causal understanding. Interventionism is a theory of explanation from philosophy designed to yield such understanding. This project aims to develop new strategies for explaining AI decisions using interventionism.  This research is supported by the Australian Research Council DP260101587 


​Past Projects

​Gene-Environment Correlations

Gene-environment correlations occur when organisms with particular genotypes are more likely than chance to develop in particular environments. This leads to an association between certain genotypes and certain environments at the population level. While other forms of gene-environment interplay, such as gene-environment interactions, are now widely discussed in quantitative and behaviour genetics, gene-environment correlations are still largely overlooked. My interest in these correlations is to understand the different causal processes that can lead to correlations; the consequences for each for estimations of genetic causation, such as heritability; the consequences for these correlations for genetic and phenotypic evolution; and to understand how scientists think about gene-environment correlations, and why they have been largely overlooked in quantitative and behavioural genetics. This work is supported by the Australian Research Council.
​Related outputs:

Microbiome Causation

In science, often multiple causes are thought to influence a particular outcome. When this is the case, how can we determine which is the most important cause, or understand how these causes interact? Tackling these issues brings together diverse methods such as Causal Graph Theory, Social Psychology, and philosophical analysis. A case study that well illustrates this causal complexity is the causal influence of microbes on human health and disease states.
​​Related outputs:

Environmental Preferences and Habitat Selection

Habitats and micro-habitats may be selected by individuals because of some genetic basis (resulting in some types of gene-environment correlations), but they can also occur if preferences are learnt, taught, or environmentally induced. Habitat selection can influence the environmental selection pressures that an individual or population are subject to, thus having evolutionary consequences. In this project I look at the causes and consequences of habitat selection at the individual and population levels. In the Queensland fruit fly (Bactrocera tryoni) I am studying the heritability, plasticity, regional variation, and effects of long-term captive breeding on temperature preferences. In the Trinidadian guppy (Poecilia reticulata) I am studying the relationship between behaviour, personality, and habitat choice. I am using guppies to study the influence of environmental choice across development and across multiple generations to answer questions about the role of habitat selection on evolutionary processes. This work is supported by the Australian Research Council IC150100026 and DP160103668, and Horticulture Innovation Australia. 
​​Related outputs:

Genetic Causation -Perceived and Actual

People are subject to numerous biases when we try to understand the world. Understanding how causes and effects operate, are no exception. A number of biases and other factors make a difference to how people pick out causes, or how people assess causal strength. When we try to understand genetic causation, it appears that there are two kinds of influences: 1. processes general to causal reasoning, and 2. processes and considerations specific to thinking about genetic causes. For this project I am collaborating with philosophers, social psychologists, linguistists, and medical educators in order to understand how normative factors about traits influence the way in which public, media and medical professionals causally reason about genes.  This work is supported by the John Templeton Foundation as part of the Genetics and Human Agency Initiative and the Charles Perkins Centre
​Related outputs:
​
Proudly powered by Weebly