Simon Brown

Simon Brown joined Ashoka in August 2025, having held postdoctoral positions at Johns Hopkins University and the London School of Economics. He completed his PhD in Philosophy at Columbia University in 2020, having previously earned a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, and a BPhil (masters) in Philosophy at the University of Oxford.

His research is primarily in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science, and their intersection with animal ethics. He is particularly interested in understanding memory, consciousness, and decision-making across species. In each case, he draws on traditional philosophical techniques alongside insights drawn from psychology, biology, neuroscience, and computer science, to piece together what the capacity looks like in different animals, and what its ethical significance might be. For example, what kinds of memory do birds have, and how can we tell? If it turns out they have rich memories of experiences from their past, does this mean that individual experiences have different impacts on their well-being than they would for species who would not remember those experiences later? In turn, does that mean we should treat these species differently?

Simon Brown has published on these topics in venues including Mind and Language, Philosophy of Science, and Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.