Josh Berson
Essayist, novelist, bothy enthusiast. Author of Computable Bodies (2015), The Meat Question (2019), and Ditch Kit (2020). My background is in linguistic anthropology, the history and philosophy of science, and computer science. Some of what I do could be called philosophy of mind or cognitive anthropology. But my remit is broader. It includes questions of values — What distinguishes flourishing from survival? — and metaphysics — What kinds of phenomena make up the world? One recurring theme for me is the coupling of the intimate (eating, sleeping, being in pain) and the evolutionary (sentience, capitalism, niche exhaustion).
In 2018–19 I am a USC Berggruen Fellow at the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles. From 2013 through 2017 I was visiting researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences.