Charles Beasley

📸 My cat Dimitry sitting in his favorite place with Afella Ighir in the background.
Beasley, C. A. (2024). No Exceptionalism: Norms of Inquiry in the Science of Animal Consciousness. In Journal of Consciousness Studies (Vol. 31, Issue 11, pp. 7–31).

Beasley, C. A. (forthcoming). What's 'Complex' About Complex Cognition? Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS).

My current research falls broadly into three domains.

Non-human Minds

There are ~9 million species of animal on earth. Around half of these species are insects. There is no consensus about how to count artificial minds, but they could one day out number biological minds by orders of magnitude. Most minds are not human. How do these other minds think? What is it like to be them? How should we relate to them?

Replication and Open Science
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Over the past decade, as a wide range of replications have systematically failed, the general status of knowledge that is grounded in a variety of scientific disciplines has been increasingly placed into doubt.This has given rise to a multitude of pressing and difficult questions. Are these doubts justified? Do the most basic features of our best science need to be reformed?

AI Safety, Governance, and Ethics
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AI technologies are promising to fundamentally transform our world. How can this technology be developed, regulated, and deployed in a way that minimizes potential risks and harms to all sentient beings?