David Cornell is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Lancashire.
His research tends to be in metaphysics, but he is something of a generalist when it comes to philosophy and has taught students the full spectrum of philosophical topics, from ethics to epistemology and from logic to political theory.
Arryn Robbins (she/her) is Assistant Professor of Psychology, University of Richmond.
Dr. Robbins is a cognitive psychologist whose expertise is in visual attention and memory. Her research focuses on how visual attention interacts with memory, experience, and expectations, particularly during visual search tasks in both everyday and applied settings. She explores questions like: How do we guide our attention in unfamiliar environments? How do our past experiences shape what we notice—or overlook? Dr. Robbins also addresses research questions in applied domains of visual cognition, such as design, and professional search (e.g., radiology or search and rescue). Dr. Robbins uses tools like eye-tracking and machine learning to uncover patterns in visual behavior. She is currently leading a project to develop webcam-based eye-tracking tools, making gaze research more accessible and scalable for researchers across disciplines.
‘Constant’, an AI film by Danny Ratcliff, follows Bailee from childhood through motherhood, chronicling her lifelong relationship with an AI companion. Beginning with Bailee’s birth in 2023. The narrative explores how trust with artificial intelligence, established early and nurtured over time, can become a cornerstone relationship. While some in our culture remain skeptical of AI technology, Bailee’s story represents what’s possible when a relationship is built on genuine partnership rather than fear of technology. The film culminates with Bailee introducing her five-year-old daughter Natasha to her AI companion, passing down the same trust that shaped her own life.
Adriana Alcaraz-Sanchez is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH), University of Edinburgh.
“I completed my PhD in Philosophy at the University of Glasgow. I’m interested in the study of consciousness, in particular in altered states of consciousness across wakefulness and sleep. To date, my research has focused on the examination of unusual forms of awareness during sleep, including witnessing-sleep, minimal forms of dreaming, and the hypnagogic state. At present, I’m investigating the links between dreaming and daydreaming. I take an interdisciplinary approach, and most of my work combines methods from analytic philosophy, phenomenology, and qualitative research.”
Elay Shech is Professor of Philosophy, Auburn University.
Elay Shech is interested in philosophy of physics, philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, and history of philosophy, as well as issues in biomedical and environmental ethics. His work primarily concerns the nature and role of idealizations and representations in the sciences and, more specifically, in condensed matter physics.
Michael Watkins is Professor of Philosophy, Auburn University.
Michael Watkins earned his PhD from The Ohio State University. He has taught at Auburn for the past 20 years, during which time he has also held adjunct and visiting appointments at Dalhousie University in Canada, the University of Rijeka in Croatia, and Cornell. He publishes in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, aesthetics and ethics, with special interests in philosophical problems related to color, perception, and objectivity. He is a past Lanier Professor.
Steve Taylor is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Leeds Beckett University.
Steve Taylor PhD is the author of several best-selling books on psychology and spirituality, including his new book DisConnected: The Roots of Human Cruelty and How Connection Can Heal the World. He was past chair of the Transpersonal Section of the British Psychological Society.
Dr Taylor teaches Consciousness Studies, Transpersonal Psychology and Positive Psychology. His research interests are spirituality, transformational experiences, parapsychology and altered states of consciousness.
Steve’s background is in Transpersonal Psychology and Positive Psychology. He has published 14 books, and his journal articles have been published in many academic journals, magazines and newspapers, including The Journal of Humanistic Psychology, The Journal of Consciousness Studies and The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology. His work has been featured widely in the media in the UK.
AI uses expansive memory to make accurate predictions of the next word in a series of words. Memory and talking are fundamental to being human, and we fear that AI will replace them. But because memory and talking have built-in limits, human life extends beyond them to a part of ourselves that AI cannot replace. We have called this our “higher” or “true” self, but it is simply the part of ourselves outside of memory. AI challenges us to fully embrace this part of ourselves, since we’re in the process of turning over our talking- and memory-selves to the machines.
Walter Veit is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Philosophy at the University of Reading, where I am also the director of the PPE program as well as the philosophy MA program.
“Furthermore, I am an external member of the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. My interests are broad, but I work primarily in and at the intersections of (i) the Philosophy of Cognitive and Biological Sciences, (ii) the Philosophy of Mind, and (iii) Applied Ethics. Much of my recent writing has been on animal minds, welfare, and ethics, as well as evolution. My first monograph titled ‘A Philosophy for the Science of Animal Consciousness‘ integrating this research into a coherent whole has been published with Routledge. I received my PhD in 2023 from the School of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Sydney. I also spent time during my PhD as a visiting student at the London School of Economics and Political Science, the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, the University of Cambridge, and the University of Oxford, before I moved on to a post-doctoral position at the University of Bristol.”
Heather Browning is a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Southampton.
“My primary research interests are animal welfare, ethics, and consciousness. I completed my PhD at the Australian National University, with a thesis on the measurement of animal welfare.
I have previously worked as a researcher in animal sentience and welfare at the London School of Economics, as part of the Foundations of Animal Sentience project. I was part of the research team who produced a report for DEFRA reviewing the evidence of sentience in cephalopod molluscs and decapod crustaceans, leading to an amendment of the UK’s Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act to include their protection.
I also worked for many years as a zookeeper and zoo animal welfare officer, interested in the practical application of animal welfare measurement.”
As artificial intelligence grows more capable, it’s reshaping how humanity confronts belief. This essay explores how machines now pose questions once reserved for prophets and philosophers—disrupting spiritual traditions, simulating consciousness, and reinterpreting faith as a cognitive inheritance. From data-driven skepticism to the algorithmic search for meaning, AI isn’t just analyzing religion—it’s participating in the inquiry. Drawing on philosophy, neuroscience, and cultural reflection, the piece asks: when machines illuminate what was once unknowable, does divinity fade… or evolve?
This article examines whether “mind altering” substances transcend the experiences of consciousness or are they mere chemicals that release or inhibit the flow of neurotransmitters in the brain. The central question would be to investigate the metaphysical nature of mind-altering substances and whether they truly are ‘revelations’ transcending the crisis of existence or whether they prevent us from seeing our normal reality and thus are a delusional escape. The phenomenological account of a drug induced substance would allow for the transcendental or ‘higher’ self-consciousness felt during such an experience to be real and the research on the use of psychedelic substances in psychiatric therapy might prove drugs to be a novel means of discovering the metaphysical and neurological realities of consciousness. Thus, my aim is to study if psychedelics help us reach the limits of our experience in time and space and enter into the mystical and metaphysical realms of the nature of the ‘self’, its consciousness, realism/ anti realism of its existence and the world experienced by it.