Professor Kim Sterelny
Position: Professor
Centre affiliation: Centre for Moral, Social and Political Theory
Position: Professor
Centre affiliation: Centre for Philosophy of the Sciences
Email: kim.sterelny@anu.edu.au
Location: Level 6, RSSS Building, 146 Ellery Crescent
Researcher profile: https://researchers.anu.edu.au/researchers/sterelny-k?term=kim%20sterelny
After studying philosophy at Sydney University, Kim Sterelny taught philosophy in Australia at Sydney, La Trobe University, and ANU (where he was Research Fellow, and then Senior Research Fellow, in Philosophy at RSSS from 1983 until 1987), before taking up a position at Victoria University in Wellington. Between 1999 and 2008 he spent half a year at Victoria and the other half here at the ANU. After 2009 he transitioned to full time at the ANU. His research interests have always been in the border areas between philosophy and the sciences; most of his research and graduate supervision has been in philosophy of biology and the philosophy of the cognitive sciences. In the last decade and a half, he has been particularly interested in human evolution, and in understanding the the evolution of the distinctive features of human social life, and of the cognitive capacities that make that life possible.
Sterelny has been a Visiting Professor at Simon Fraser University in Canada, and at Cal Tech and the University of Maryland, College Park, in the USA. He is the author of The Representational Theory of Mind; the co-author of Language and Reality (with Michael Devitt); Sex and Death: An Introduction to Philosophy of Biology (with Paul Griffiths); Thought in a Hostile World (which won the 2003 Lakatos Prize); What is Biodiversity (with James MacLaurin); Dawkins vs Gould; and The Evolved Apprentice (the book of the 2009 Nicod Prize Lectures). He is Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and the Royal Society of New Zealand. In addition to philosophy, Kim spends his time eating curries,drinking red wine, bushwalking, snorkelling and bird watching.
Philosophy of biology, especially human evolution
Philosophy of the cognitive sciences
Philosophy of science, especially the historical sciences.
- Sterelny, K 2014, 'Cooperation, Culture, and Conflict', British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.
- Sterelny, K & Jeffares, B 2014, 'Darwinism and its influences', in (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Archaeological Theory, Oxford University Press, online, pp. 1-14.
- Sterelny, K 2014, 'Constructing the Cooperative Niche', in (ed.), Entangled Life, Springer, New York, pp. 261-279.
- Sterelny, K 2014, 'A Paleolithic Reciprocation Crisis: Symbols, Signals, and Norms', Biological Theory, vol. 9, pp. 65-77.
- Sterelny, K 2013, 'The Evolved Apprentice Model: Scope and Limits', Biological Theory, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 37-43.
- Sterelny, K 2013, 'Cooperation in a Complex World: The Role of Proximate Factors in Ultimate Explanations', Biological Theory, vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 358-367.
- Sterelny, K, Joyce, R, Calcott, B et al 2013, 'Introduction: The Ubiquity, Complexity, and Diversity of Cooperation', in Kim Sterelny, Richard Joyce, Brett Calcott & Ben Fraser (ed.), Cooperation and Its Evolution, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 1-14.
- Sterelny, K 2013, 'Life in Interesting Times: Cooperation and Collective Action in the Holocene', in Kim Sterelny, Richard Joyce, Brett Calcott & Ben Fraser (ed.), Cooperation and Its Evolution, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 89-108.
- Sterelny, K 2013, 'The Informational Commonwealth', in Stephen M. Downes, Edouard Machery (ed.), Arguing About Human Nature: Contemporary Debates, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, New York and Abingdon, pp. 274-288.
- Sterelny, K 2013, 'Human Behavioral Ecology, Optimality, and Human Action', in Gary Hatfield and Holly Pittman (ed.), Evolution of Mind, Brain, and Culture, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, PA, pp. 303-324.
- Sterelny, K 2012, The evolved apprentice: how evolution made humans unique, MIT Press, USA.
- Sterelny, K 2012, 'A Glass Half-Full: Brian Skyrm's Signals', Economics and Philosophy, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 73-86.
- Sterelny, K 2012, 'From fitness to utility', in Samir Okasha and Ken Binmore (ed.), Evolution and Rationality: Decisions, Co-operation and Strategic Behaviour, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge United Kingdom, pp. 246-273.
- Sterelny, K 2012, 'Morality's Dark Past', Analyse and Kritik, vol. 34, pp. 95-117.
- Sterelny, K 2012, 'Language, gesture, skill: The co-evolutionary foundations of language', Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B, vol. 367, no. 1599, pp. 2141-2151.
- Calcott, B & Sterelny, K 2011, 'Introduction: A Dynamic View of Evolution', in Brett Calcott and Kim Sterelny (ed.), The Major Transitions in Evolution Revisited, MIT Press, Cambridge United Kingdom, pp. 1-15.
- Laland, K, Sterelny, K, Odling-Smee, J et al 2011, 'Cause and Effect in Biology Revisited: Is Mayr's Proximate-Ultimate Dichotomy Still Useful?', Science, vol. 334, no. 6064, pp. 1512-1516.
- Sterelny, K 2011, 'Evolvability Reconsidered', in Brett Calcott and Kim Sterelny (ed.), The Major Transitions in Evolution Revisited, MIT Press, Cambridge United Kingdom, pp. 83-100.
- Sterelny, K & Calcott, B 2011, 'The Prokaryote's Tale', in Brett Calcott and Kim Sterelny (ed.), The Major Transitions in Evolution Revisited, MIT Press, Cambridge United Kingdom, pp. 101-103.
- Sterelny, K & Calcott, B 2011, 'Complexity and the Development Cycle', in Brett Calcott and Kim Sterelny (ed.), The Major Transitions in Evolution Revisited, MIT Press, Cambridge United Kingdom, pp. 163-167.
- Sterelny, K 2011, 'Darwinian spaces: Peter Godfrey-Smith on selection and evolution', Biology and Philosophy, vol. 26, no. 4, pp. 489-500.
- Sterelny, K 2011, 'From hominins to humans: how sapiens became behaviourally modern', Philosophical Transaction of the Royal Society: B- Biological Sciences, vol. 366, no. 1566, pp. 809-822.
- Calcott, B & Sterelny, K, eds, 2011, The Major Transitions in Evolution Revisited, MIT Press, USA.
- Calcott, B & Sterenly, K, 2011, 'Introduction: A Dynamic View of Evolution', in Brett Calcott and Kim Sterelny (eds.), The Major Transitions in Evolution Revisited, MIT Press, USA, pp. 15-18.
- Tebbich, S, Sterelny, K & Teschke, I 2010, 'The tale of the finch: adaptive radiation and behavioural flexibility', Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B, vol. 365, pp. 1099-1109.
- Sterelny, K & Jeffares, B 2010, 'Rational Agency in Evolutionary Perspective', in Timothy O'Connor and Constantine Sandis (ed.), A companion to the philosophy of action, Wiley-Blackwell, Australia, pp. 374-383.
- Sterelny, K 2010, 'Moral Nativism: A Sceptical Response', Mind and Language, vol. 25, no. 3, pp. 279-297.
- Sterelny, K 2010, 'Minds - Extended or Scaffolded', Phenomenology and The Cognitive Sciences, vol. 9, no. 4, pp. 465-481.
- Sterelny, K 2009, 'Peacekeeping in the Culture Wars', in Kevin Laland and Bennett Galef (ed.), The Question of Animal Culture, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., pp. 288-304.
- Sterelny, K 2009, 'Novelty, Plasticity and Niche Construction: The Influence of Phenotypic Variation on Evolution', in Anouk Barberousse, Michel Morange and Thomas Pradeu (ed.), Mapping the Future of Biology: Evolving Concepts and Theories, Springer, Dordrecht, pp. 93-110.
- Sterelny, K 2009, 'The Triumph of a Reasonable Man: Stich, Mindreading and Nativism', in Michael Bishop and Dominic Murphy (ed.), Stich and his Critics, Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Chichester, UK, pp. 152-166.
- Sterelny, K 2009, 'Philosophy of Evolutionary Thought', in Michael Ruse and Joe Travis (ed.), Evolution: The First Four Billion Years, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., pp. 313-329.
- Sterelny, K 2008, 'Social Intelligence, Human Intelligence and Niche Construction', in Emery, Nathan; Clayton, Nicola and Chris Frith (ed.), Social Intelligence: Fraom Brain to Culture, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 375-392.
- Sterelny, K & Godfrey-Smith, P 2008, 'Biological information', in (ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2008, Stanford University, USA, pp. online.
- Maclaurin, J & Sterelny, K 2008, What is Biodiversity?, University of Chicago Press, Chicago USA.
- Sterelny, K 2008, 'Language and Niche Construction', in D. Kimbrough Oller and Ulrike Griebel (ed.), Evolution of Communicative Flexibility: Complexity, Creativity, and Adaptability in Human and Animal Communication, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, pp. 215-231.
- Sterelny, K 2007, 'What is Evolvability?', in Mohan Matthen and Christopher Stephens (ed.), Philosophy of Biology, Elsevier, Holland, pp. 163-192.
- Sterelny, K 2007, 'Macroevolution, Minimalism and the Radiation of the Animals', in David Hull and Michael Ruse (ed.), The Cambridge companion to the Philosophy of Biology, Cambridge University Press, New York, pp. 182-210.
- Sterelny, K 2007, 'SNAFUs: An Evolutionary Perspective', Biological Theory, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 317-328.
- Sterelny, K 2007, 'Social Intelligence, Human Intelligence and Niche Construction', Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B, vol. 362, no. 1480, pp. 719-730.
- Sterelny, K 2007, 'An Alternative Evolutionary Psychology?', in Steve Gangestad and Jeff Simpson (ed.), The Evolution of Mind: Fundamental Questions and Controversies, Guilford Press, New York, pp. 178-185.
- Sterelny, K & Laland, K 2006, 'Seven reasons (not) to neglect niche construction', Evolution, vol. 60, no. 9, pp. 1751-1762.
- Sterelny, K 2006, 'The evolution and evolvability of culture', Mind and Language, vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 137-165.
- Sterelny, K 2006, 'Memes revisited', British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, vol. 57, no. 1, pp. 145-165.
- Sterelny, K 2006, 'The Perverse Primate', in A Grafen & M Ridley (ed.), Richard Dawkins: how a scientist changed the way we think, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 213-226.
- Sterelny, K 2006, 'Language, modularity and evolution', in Graham Macdonald and David Papineau (ed.), Teleosemantics, Oxford University Press, UK, pp. 23-41.
- Sterelny, K 2006, 'Folk logic and animal rationality', in S Hurley & M Nudds (ed.), Rational animals?, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 293-311.
- Sterelny, K 2006, 'Cognitive Load and Human Decision, or, Three Ways of Rolling the Rock Up Hill', in Peter Carruthers, Stephen Laurence, Stephen Stich (ed.), The Innate Mind: Volume 2: Culture and Cognition, Oxford University Press, United States, pp. 218-233.
- Sterelny, K 2006, 'Local Ecological Communities', Philosophy of Science, vol. 73, pp. 215-231.
- Sterelny, K 2005, 'The Elusive synthesis', in Kim Cuddington & Beatrix E. Beisner (ed.), Ecological paradigms lost: routes of theory change, Elsevier, Burlington, USA, pp. 311-329.
- Sterelny, K 2005, 'Made by Each Other: Organisms and Their Environment', Biology and Philosophy, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 21-36.
- Sterelny, K 2005, 'Another view of life', Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, vol. 36, no. 3, pp. 585-593.
- Sterelny, K 2005, 'Primatenwelten', in Dominik Perler & Marcus Wild (ed.), Der Giest der Tiere (2nd ed), Suhrkamp Publishing House, Germany, pp. 357-387.
- Sterelny, K 2004, 'Symbiosis, Evolvability, and Modularity', in Gerhard Schlosser and Gunter P. Wagner (ed.), Modularity in Development and Evolution, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, p. 29.
- Sterelny, K 2004, 'Po-Bo Man', Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, vol. 35, pp. 729-741.
- Sterelny, K 2004, 'Externalism, Epistemic Artefacts and The Extended Mind', in Richard Schantz (ed.), The Externalist Challenge, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, pp. 239-254.
- Sterelny, K 2004, 'Reply to Papineau and Stich', Australasian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 82, no. 3, pp. 512-522.
- Sterelny, K 2003, 'Charting control-space: Comments on Susan Hurley's animal action in the space of reasons', Mind and Language, vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 257-265.
- Sterelny, K 2003, Thought in a Hostile World: the Evolution of Human Cognition, Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Oxford, UK.
- Sterelny, K 2003, 'Last Will and Testament: Stephen Jay Goulds The Structure of Evolutionary Theory', Philosophy of Science, vol. 70, no. 2, pp. 255-263.
- Sterelny, K 2003, 'Darwinian concepts in the philosophy of mind', in Hodge, Jonathan and Radick, Gregory (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Darwin, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, pp. 288-309.
- Sterelny, K & Fitness, J 2003, 'The Evolution of Evolutionary Psychology (Introduction)', in Kim Sterelny, Julie Fitness (ed.), From Mating to Mentality: Evaluating Evolutionary Psychology, Psychology Press, Taylor & Francis, Australia, pp. 1-12.
- Sterelny, K & Fitness, J 2003, From Mating to Mentality Evaluating Evolutionary Psychology, Psychology Press, Taylor & Francis, Australia.
- Sterelny, K 2001, 'Niche Construction, Developmental Systems and the Extended Replicator', in Susan Oyama, Paul E. Griffiths, Russell D. Gray (ed.), Cycles of Contingency: Developmental Systems and Evolution, MIT Press, Massachusetts, Cambridge, USA, pp. 333-550.
- Sterelny, K 2001, Dawkins versus Gould and the survival of the fittest, Icon Books, Cambridge, UK.
- Sterelny, K 2001, The Evolution of Agency and Other Essays, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
- Sterelny, K 2001, 'The Reality of Ecological Assemblages: A Palaeo-ecological Puzzle', Biology and Philosophy, vol. 16, no. 4, pp. 437-461.
- Sterelny, K 2001, 'Just another species of Large Mammal? Human cognition in evolutionary focus', New Zealand Science Review, vol. 58, no. 2, pp. 47-57.
- Sterelny, K 2001, 'Book Review: Explaining Behaviour by Dan Sperber', Mind, pp. 845-853.
- Sterelny, K 2001, 'Sociobiology: Philosophical Aspects', in Neil J Smelser, Paul B Baltes (ed.), International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (2001), Elsevier, Oxford, UK, pp. 14543-14549.
- Sterelny, K 2000, 'Looking After Number One: A Critical Notice of Elliot Sober's and David Sloan Wilson's Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behaviour.', Biology and Philosophy, vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 275-289.
- Currie, G & Sterelny, K 2000, 'How to Think about the Modularity of Mind Reading', Philosophical Quarterly, The, vol. 50, no. 199, pp. 145-160.
- Sterelny, K 2000, 'Primate Worlds', in Heys, C.; Huber, L. (ed.), The Evolution of Cognition, MIT Press, Cambridge USA, pp. 143-162.
- Sterelny, K 2000, 'Development, Evolution and Adaptation', Philosophy of Science, vol. 67, pp. s369-s387.
- Sterelny, K 2000, 'Roboroach, or The Extended Phenotype Meets Cognitive Science: A Critical Notice of Andy Clark's Being There.', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 61, no. 1, pp. 207-215.
- Sterelny, K 1999, 'Bacteria at the High Table', Biology and Philosophy, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 459-470.
- Devitt, M & Sterelny, K 1999, Language and Reality: An Introduction to Philosophy of Language (2nd ed), MIT Press, USA.
- Sterelny, K & Griffiths, P 1999, Sex and Death: An Introduction to Philosophy of Biology, University of Chicago Press, USA.
- Sterelny, K 1999, 'Supply-Side Biology: A Critical Notice of Rudy Raff's The Shape of Life', Metascience, vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 405-419.
- Sterelny, K 1999, 'Dawkins' Bulldog. An Essay review of Darwin's Dangerous Idea', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 59, pp. 255-262.
- Sterelny, K 1999, 'Species as Ecological Mosaics', in R. A. Wilson (ed.), Species: New Interdisciplinary Essays, MIT Press, USA, pp. 119-138.
- Sterelny, K 1999, 'Situated Agents: The descent of desire', in Valerie Hardcastle (ed.), Where Biology meets Pyschology: philosophical essays, MIT Press, USA, pp. 203-219.
- The Origins of Inequality, Hierarchy and Social Complexity (ARC Laureate Project)
- ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language (Secondary Investigator)
- The Origins of Inequality, Hierarchy, and Social Complexity (Primary Investigator)
- From signs to symbols: language, mind and niche (Primary Investigator)
- Evolvability and the Evolution of Complexity (Primary Investigator)
- The Evolution of the Social Brain: How Emotions and Moral Judgement Interact in the Generation of Cooperative Behaviour (Primary Investigator)
- The Evolution of Embodied Intelligence (Primary Investigator)
Lakatos Prize; Jean Nicod Prize
