Walter Veit

Walter Veit

Walter is a PhD candidate under the supervision of Peter Godfrey-Smith and Paul Griffiths in the School of History and Philosophy of Science. He received an MA in Philosophy of the Biological and Cognitive Sciences from the University of Bristol under the supervision of Samir Okasha, and a BA in Philosophy & Economics from the University of Bayreuth under the supervision of Rainer Hegselmann. His interests stretch widely across science and philosophy, with his primary research interests being located at the intersection of the biological, behavioral, and cognitive sciences.

His PhD dissertation is centered around three separate questions: (i) what is health and disease?, (ii) how did organisms evolve the capacity to detect and respond to dysfunction and pathology?, and (iii) what are the origins of consciousness, sentience, and agency? His thesis argues that sentience and consciousness are a 'mere' byproduct of the evolution of pathology/dysfunction detection, nociception, and pain. The very same reason that allows scientists to usefully group a set of widely diverse phenomena together as 'pathological states', allows organisms to usefully track a set of diverse phenomena detrimental to their fitness, proper functioning, and welfare, thus enabling something that may, akin to Daniel Dennett's intentional stance, be called the health/pathological stance.

Publications

Forthcoming

2021

2020

Browning, H., Mather, J., Pungor, J., Godfrey-Smith, P., Franks, B., Jacquet, J., New England Anti-Vivisection Society, American Anti-Vivisection Society, Physicians Committee For Responsible Medicine, Humane Society Of The United States, Humane Society Legislative Fund, & Veit, W. (2020). Petition to Include Cephalopods as “Animals” Deserving of Humane Treatment under the Public Health Service Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.27522.30401 Download
Browning, H., & Veit, W. (2020). Is Humane Slaughter Possible? Animals, 10(5), 799. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani10050799 Download
Chapman, R., & Veit, W. (2020). “The essence of autism: face or artefact?” Molecular Psychiatry. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-020-00959-1 Download
Chapman, R., & Veit, W. (2020). Representing the Autism Spectrum. The American Journal of Bioethics, 20(4), 46–48. https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2020.1730495

2019

2018

2017