Huw Price | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1953-05-17)17 May 1953 (age 72) Oxford, England |
| Education | |
| Alma mater | Australian National University University of Oxford Darwin College, Cambridge |
| Thesis | The Problem of the Single Case (1981) |
| Doctoral advisor | Hugh Mellor |
| Philosophical work | |
| Era | Contemporary philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Analytic philosophy Neo-pragmatism |
| Institutions | Trinity College, Cambridge |
| Main interests | Philosophy of science |
| Notable ideas | Globalexpressivism (anti-representationalism),[1]subjectnaturalism (philosophy needs to begin with what science tells us about ourselves)[2] |
| Website | prce |
Huw Price FAHA (/hjuːpraɪs/; born 17 May 1953) is an Australian philosopher,[3] formerly theBertrand Russell Professor in theFaculty of Philosophy, Cambridge,[4] and a Fellow ofTrinity College, Cambridge.[5]
He was previouslyChallis Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Time at theUniversity of Sydney,[6] and before that Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at theUniversity of Edinburgh.[7] He is also one of three founders and the Academic Director of theCentre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, and the Academic Director of theLeverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence.
Price is known for his work inphilosophy of physics and for his brand of "neo-pragmatism"[8] and "anti-representationalism", according to which "all utterances must be looked at through the lens of their function in our interactions, not the metaphysics of their semantic relations."[9] This view has acknowledged affinities with the work ofRobert Brandom and, earlier,Wilfrid Sellars.
He was elected a Fellow ofAustralian Academy of the Humanities in 1994,[10] and a Fellow of theBritish Academy in 2012.[11]
Around 2012, Price co-founded the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, stating that "It seems a reasonable prediction that some time in this or the next century intelligence will escape from the constraints of biology." Price voices concern that as computers become smarter than humans, humans could someday be destroyed by "machines that are not malicious, but machines whose interests don't include us", and seeks to push this concern forward in the "respectable scientific community".[12][13] Around 2015, he assumed the directorship of the new Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, stating "Machine intelligence will be one of the defining themes of our century, and the challenges of ensuring that we make good use of its opportunities are ones we all face together. At present, however, we have barely begun to consider its ramifications, good or bad."[14]
