Kim Sterelny

Professor
BA PhD Sydney

Profile

Kim is an Australian in exile. In addition to philosophy, he spends his time eating curries, drinking red wine, bushwalking and birding.

He studied at Sydney University, and has taught philosophy at Sydney, ANU, Monash and La Trobe Universities in Australia, and at Simon Fraser, Caltech and the University of Maryland in America.

Kim is now half time at VUW and half time at the Philosophy Program, RSSS, Australian National University. He spends January through July in New Zealand, and July through December in Canberra, and he relies on e-mail to supervise graduate students at both institutions.

Research Areas

His main research interests are Philosophy of Biology, Philosophy of Psychology and Philosophy of Mind.

Current Teaching

Philosophy 316/416 Philosophy of Mind
Philosophy 319/419 Evolution of Life and Mind

Selected Publications

Kim is the author of The Representational Theory of Mind, The Evolution of Agency and Other Essays, Dawkins versus Gould and most recently Thought in a Hostile World (Blackwell, 2003).

He is co-author with Paul Griffiths of Sex and Death: An Introduction to Philosophy of Biology, and co-author with Michael Devitt of Language and Reality.

He is the editor of Biology and Philosophy, the main specialist journal of the philosophy of biology, and with Rob Wislon, the MIT Press series, Life and Mind.

Other recent publications include:

Response to Papineau and Stich. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 82, 2004, pp 512-522.

"Symbiosis, Evolvability and Modularity". In: Gerhard Schlosser and Günter Wagner (eds) Modularity in Development and Evolution, University of Chicago Press, pp 490-516, 2004.

“Externalism, Epistemic Artefacts and The Extended Mind” In: Richard Schantz (ed) The Externalist Challenge. New Studies on Cognition and Intentionality; de Gruyter, Berlin & New York pp 239-254, 2004.

"Po-Bo Man?" Studies in the History and Philosophy of the Biological and Biomedical Sciences 35, pp 729-741 2004.

“Made By Each Other: Organisms and Their Environment” Biology and Philosophy 20, pp 21-36, 2005.

“Another View of Life” Studies in the History and Philosophy of the Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 36 585-593 2005.

“The Elusive Synthesis” in: Kim Cuddington and Beatrix E. Beisner (eds) Ecological Paradigms Lost: Routes to Theory Change; Academic Press/Elsevier (Theoretical Ecology Series) pp 311-329, 2005.

“Primatenwelten” in Marcus Wild (ed) Der Giest der Tiere; Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, pp 357-387, 2005

Development, Evolution and Adaptation. Philosophy of Science, (Supplementary Volume), volume 67 (Proceedings) 2000 pp S369-S387.

Primate Worlds. Heyes, C & Huber, L (eds) The Evolution of Cognition; MIT Press, Cambridge 2000 pp 143-162.

The Reality of Ecological Assemblages: A Palaeo-ecological Puzzle. Biology and Philosophy (a special issue on Philosophy of Ecology, edited by David Castle) 16 (4) pp 437-461 2001.

Niche Construction, Developmental Systems and the Extended Replicator. Russell Gray, Paul Griffiths and Susan Oyama (eds) Cycles of Contingency, MIT Press, 2001, pp 333-350.

Last Will and Testament: Stephen Jay Gould's The Structure of Evolutionary Theory; Philosophy of Science, 70 (April 2003) pp 255-263

Darwinian Concepts in the Philosophy of Mind. In: Jon Hodges and Greg Radick (eds) The Cambridge Companion to Darwin, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp 288-309, 2003.

Charting Control-Space: A Commentary on Susan Hurley's 'Animal Action in the Space of Reasons' Mind and Language. 18 (3) 2003 pp 257-265.

With Julie Fitness (eds) From Mating to Mentality Evaluating Evolutionary Psychology; Macquarie Monographs in Cognitive Science, Psychology Press, 2003, New York and Hove.

Online Papers

For online papers, see Kim's papers page.