Academic Publications |
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Books
Art as Communication: Aesthetics, Evolution, and Signaling (Lexington Books/Bloomsbury Publishing).
Published October 2024. Here is a link to the book's page on the publisher's website.
Edited works
Invited editor of a Winter 2023/2024 Special Issue on Environmental Philosophy for Diálogos: Journal of the Department of Philosophy of the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras (February, 2024) [link]
Articles
Pinillos, A. & Simpson, S. (2014). "Experimental Evidence in Support of Anti-intellectualism about Knowledge". In J. R. Beebe (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Epistemology (pp. 9-44). Bloomsbury Academic. [link]
"James and Carnap on Philosophical Systems and the Role of Temperaments," (2023), Metaphilosophy, 54(1): 134-144.
https://doi.org/10.1111/meta.12604 (Submitted 2021; accepted 2022) [link]
"Introduction to "Diálogos : A Special Edition on Environmental Philosophy," (2024), Diálogos, 55(114): 9-16. [link]
"Limits of Wilderness," (2024), Diálogos, 55(114): 81-115. [link]
"The Mosquito Problem: Evaluating New Mitigation Technologies and Methods" (forthcoming @ Environmental Ethics) [link]
"William James’s ‘The Will to Believe’: A Decision-Theoretic Analysis" (re-submitted/under 2nd review @ William James Studies)
Conferences, Talks, and Other Events
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"Life Beyond 1.5°C: Resignation or Revolution?"
- International Society for Environmental Ethics (ISEE), Pacific APA, Climate Hub, "Climate Philosophy After 1.5°C," April 11th, 2026.
- African Centre for Epistemology and Philosophy of Science (ACEPS | Talk Poster), University of Johannesburg, October 21st, 2025
"Reviving De-Extinction: A Response to Four Anti-De-Extinction Arguments"
- The International Society for Environmental Ethics (ISEE) @ the 2026 Central Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association (APA), Chicago, USA. February 18-21, 2026
- Philosophical Society of South Africa (PSSA), University of Cape Town, South Africa. January 23-25, 2026
- South African Society for Environmental Philosophy (SASEP), 2nd Annual Conference, South Africa. August 25-27, 2025
“The General Will in Kant and Rousseau: Challenging the No-Right to Revolution Thesis”
Second International Congress of Philosophy (ICofP), University of Cartagena, Colombia. November 17-21, 2025
“On the Case Against Revolution in Hobbes' Leviathan : An Environmental Perspective”
Institute for Contemporary Ethics (ICE), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, South Africa. Nov 6, 2025. [poster]
"Do Animals Make Art?"
Invited speaker, "Normativity in the Wild" Workshop, ETH Zürich, Switzerland. October 8-11, 2025. [talk slides]
Terminology Development Consultative Workshop for Philosophy - Translating English Language Philosophical Concepts to Setswana (for a new Setswana language dictionary and online app of philosophical concepts).
North-West University. September 18-19, 2025
"The Mosquito Problem: Evaluating New Mitigation Technologies and Methods" [talk slides]
- 3rd Annual Colloquium on Animal Welfare, Human Rights, Rights of Nature, and Human-wildlife Coexistence, School of Law, North-West University, South Africa. September 15-17, 2025
- International Society for Environmental Ethics (ISEE), American Philosophical Association (APA), Central Division - Denver, CO. February 2023
"Indigenous American Art and Its Interpretation"
American Society for Aesthetics (ASA), Rocky Mountain Division, Santa Fe, New Mexico. July 12th-14th, 2025 (withdrawn | schedule conflict)
Board of Directors and Staff Meeting
Participating Board Member, Red Feather Development Group, Flagstaff, Arizona. May 8-9th, 2025
"William James's "The Will to Believe": A Decision-Theoretic Analysis" [talk slides]
Invited speaker, Pittsburgh Formal Epistemology Workshop (PFEW), Carnegie Mellon University. Feb 14th, 2025.
"Logic and Inference in the Sender-receiver Model" [talk slides]
Invited speaker, Arché Research Centre, University of St. Andrews, Scotland, UK. June 26th, 2024.
"Revenge, Retribution, and the Law"
Invited speaker, University of Pittsburgh, Undergraduate Philosophy Club. Dec 12th, 2023
"Logic and Inference in the Sender-receiver Model"
NY Philosophical Logic Workshop, CUNY Graduate Center, NY. March 20th, 2023
"Re-generation of Wilderness"
- Invited talk, University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras. March 2022.
- Woods Hole Marine Biology Laboratory Seminar Series on Biology. Summer 2020 (initially postponed due to Covid; eventually withdrawn)
"Defining Life"
The Society for Social and Conceptual Issues in Astrobiology, University of Mississippi. March 6th-9th, 2022
“Concepts of Wilderness”
- Canadian Society for Environmental Philosophy/ Société Canadienne de Philosophie Environementale, University of Victoria. Nov 12-14th, 2021
- Mississippi State University Works in Progress Seminar. Dec 3rd, 2021
- Mississippi Academy of Sciences Annual Meeting. March 2022
"The Nature of Moral Evil"
Mississippi State University, Undergraduate Philosophy Club. Nov 18th, 2021
“Communication Between Groups and Collective Organisms”
- International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology, Université du Québec à Montréal. 2015
- Invited talk, Information in Biology Workshop, CUNY Graduate Center, NY. 2014
"James and Carnap on Philosophical Systems and the Role of Temperaments"
Southwestern Philosophy Graduate Conference, Arizona State University. 2013
Interviews/Op-eds/Popular Media |
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"Aldo Leopold's Impact on Environmental Philosophy" Aeon (under contract)
"The Democrats on Gaza - A Case of Moral Hypocrisy" Mississippi Free Press (forthcoming this November)
"Should We Kill All the Mosquitoes? A Conservationist's Dilemma" Conservation Mag (South Africa), Nov 5, 2025. [link]
"How Genocide Perpetrators Exploit the Legal Framework" Cape Times (South Africa), Oct 26, 2025. [link]
[Accepted by Daily Maverick; unpublished due to timing conflict. Original title: "Is It Time to Revise the Genocide Convention?"]
"Democrats Won't Save Democracy - They Don't Even Practice It" The Hill, October 6, 2025. [link]
[Original title: "Can Democrats Save Democracy? Probably Not." Reprinted at Yahoo.com and AOL.com]
"American Political Violence is a Symptom of a Larger Problem" Arizona Daily Star, Oct 2, 2025. [link]
[Version published in the Arizona Daily Star is a condensed version of the original. A longer, more detailed version (updated in light of recent events) is available here - link]
"Can Animals Create Art?" Radio New Zealand, Recorded Audio Interview, April 13, 2025. [link]
- a condensed write-up version from RNZ [link]
"Can Animals Make Art?" The Conversation, March 19, 2025. [link]
- additionally featured on: Rhode Island PBS [link] Daily Nous [link], The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, The Beloit Call, Yahoo News, The Caledonian Record, Phys.org, The Star, The Bradenton Times, The Huron Daily Plainsman, The Lake Chelan Mirror, and The Daily Maverick (South Africa).
"Artificial Intelligence Threatens Disaster for Artists" Newsweek. June 6, 2024. [link]
[Original title: "The Threat of AI Art to Professional Artists"]
"APA Member Interview" American Philosophical Association Blog. July 31, 2020. [link]
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PhD Thesis
Title: Essays on Communication
Primary Advisor: Noël Carroll
Committee: John Greenwood, Stephen Neale, Michael Devitt
Institution & Defense Year: The Graduate Center, CUNY (2021)
Abstract: One of the central issues of contemporary philosophy and biology is the nature of communication. Early accounts of communication tended to focus on just one side of the communicative divide – the speaker side or the receiver side – and took as their starting point the case of human language. Animal communication, historically, was largely treated as a special case. Now things are different. Now it appears we might have a model that makes sense of sign use in both the human and animal realms and brings together both sides of the signaling divide. It’s still to be seen, however, how much the model actually captures, especially the farther down we go on the animal side, and it’s still to be seen how well the model captures the human cases, especially those around the edges. The purpose of this thesis is to explore the foundations of the sender-receiver model and to show that it can cover more than was previously imagined. Topics discussed include the nature of communication and signaling, animal communication, the nature of meaning or content, the communicative nature of objects such as works of art, blueprints, and maps, and the possibility of communication between groups and collective agents.
Photo taken at the Noxubee National Wildlife Refuge, Mississippi, USA (2021)