Huw Price (; born 17 May 1953) is an Australian philosopher, formerly the Bertrand Russell Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy, Cambridge, and a Fellow of

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge or Oxford. ...

. He was previously

Challis Professor The Challis Professorship are professorships at the University of Sydney named in honour of John Henry Challis, an Anglo-Australian merchant, landowner and philanthropist, whose bequests to the University of Sydney allowed for their establishment ...

of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Time at the

University of Sydney The University of Sydney (USYD), also known as Sydney University, or informally Sydney Uni, is a public research university located in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and is one of the country's ...

, and before that Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 15 ...

. He is also one of three founders and the Academic Director of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, and the Academic Director of the

Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence The Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (CFI) is an interdisciplinary research centre within the University of Cambridge that studies artificial intelligence. It is funded by the Leverhulme Trust. The Centre brings together academ ...

Work

Price is known for his work in

philosophy of physics In philosophy, philosophy of physics deals with conceptual and interpretational issues in modern physics, many of which overlap with research done by certain kinds of theoretical physicists. Philosophy of physics can be broadly divided into thr ...

and for his brand of " neo-pragmatism" 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." This view has acknowledged affinities with the work of

Robert Brandom Robert Boyce Brandom (born March 13, 1950) is an American philosopher who teaches at the University of Pittsburgh. He works primarily in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and philosophical logic, and his academic output manifests both sys ...

and, earlier,

Wilfrid Sellars Wilfrid Stalker Sellars (May 20, 1912 – July 2, 1989) was an American philosopher and prominent developer of critical realism, who "revolutionized both the content and the method of philosophy in the United States". Life and career His father ...

. He was elected a Fellow of

Australian Academy of the Humanities The Australian Academy of the Humanities was established by Royal Charter in 1969 to advance scholarship and public interest in the humanities in Australia. It operates as an independent not-for-profit organisation partly funded by the Australia ...

in 1994, and a Fellow of the

British Academy The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences. It was established in 1902 and received its royal charter in the same year. It is now a fellowship of more than 1,000 leading scholars spa ...

in 2012.

Machine intelligence

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". 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."

Publications

* ''Facts and the Function of Truth'' (Blackwell, 1988) * '' Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point: New Directions for the Physics of Time'' (Oxford University Press, 1996) * ''Naturalism without Mirrors'' (Oxford University Press, 2011) * ''Causation, Physics, and the Constitution of Reality: Russell's Republic Revisited'' ed. with Richard Corry (Oxford University Press, 2007) * ''Expressivism, Pragmatism and Representationalism'' (Cambridge University Press, 2013)

References

External links

Personal webpage
*

Closer to Truth ''Closer to Truth'' is a television series on public television originally created, produced and hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn. The original series aired in 2000 for two seasons, followed by a second series aired in 2003 for a single season. Th ...

(

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educat ...

) {{DEFAULTSORT:Price, Huw Living people Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge People from Oxford 21st-century Australian philosophers 1953 births Alumni of Darwin College, Cambridge University of Sydney faculty Academics of the University of Edinburgh Futurologists Bertrand Russell Professors of Philosophy