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Stephen Mann

StM_self.jpeg

Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6
04103 Leipzig

e-mail: stephen_mann@[>>> Please remove the text! <<<]eva.mpg.de

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About me
Curriculum Vitae
Publications

About me

StM_about.png
The neuroscientist Karl Friston has proposed a remarkably concise (yet mathematically complex) framework for understanding almost every feature of biology and cognition. Here some of the key equations governing human interactions are depicted. My task is to interpret these equations and evaluate whether they really do provide the kinds of explanation Friston claims. Figure taken from Vasil, J., Badcock, P. B., Constant, A., Friston, K., & Ramstead, M. J. D. (2020). "A World Unto Itself: Human Communication as Active Inference." Frontiers in Psychology, 11. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00417

I'm a philosopher of science studying the role of information and representation in cognitive science and biology. Currently I am investigating active inference (a modelling framework) and the free energy principle (a related collection of hypotheses) which have been proposed to explain many features of cognitive and biological systems.
 

Curriculum Vitae

since 2021Guest researcher at DLCE
2016-2020PhD in philosophy at the Australian National University, Canberra: "Communication and cooperation in evolutionary biology". Awarded December 2020
2013-2015PhD in philosophy at King's College, London: withdrawn December 2015 as part of transfer to ANU
2010-2013Software developer at Weaveability Ltd, Manchester, UK
2006-2010M.Sci in Mathematics and Philosophy, University of Bristol, UK. Equivalent to 3 year Bachelors + 1 year Masters


My full CV is available for download here.

Publications

2023

Turner, C. R., Mann, S. F., Spike, M., Magrath, R. D., & Sterelny, K. (2023). Joint evolution of traits for social learning. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 77: 47.
DOI    BibTeX   Endnote   

2022

Mann, S. F., & Pain, R. (2022). Teleosemantics and the hard problem of content. Philosophical Psychology, 35(1), 22-46.
Open Access    DOI    BibTeX   Endnote   

Mann, S. F., & Pain, R. A. (2022). Teleosemantics and the free energy principle. Biology and Philosophy, 37: 34.
Open Access    DOI    BibTeX   Endnote   

Mann, S. F., Pain, R., & Kirchhoff, M. D. (2022). Free energy: a user’s guide. Biology & Philosophy, 37(4): 33.
Open Access    DOI    BibTeX   Endnote   

2020

Mann, S. F. (2020). Communication and cooperation in evolutionary biology. PhD Thesis, The Australian National University, Canberra.
Open Access    DOI    BibTeX   Endnote   

Mann, S. F. (2020). Consequences of a functional account of information. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 11(3), 669-687.
DOI    BibTeX   Endnote   

Roberts, S. G., Killin, A., Deb, A., Sheard, C., Greenhill, S. J., Sinnemäki, K., Segovia-Martín, J., Nölle, J., Berdicevskis, A., Humphreys-Balkwill, A., Little, H., Opie, C., Jacques, G., Bromham, L., Tinits, P., Ross, R. M., Lee, S., Gasser, E., Calladine, J., Spike, M., Mann, S. F., Shcherbakova, O., Singer, R., Zhang, S., Benítez-Burraco, A., Kliesch, C., Thomas-Colquhoun, E., Skirgard, H., Tamariz, M., Passmore, S., Pellard, T., & Jordan, F. (2020). CHIELD: The causal hypotheses in evolutionary linguistics database. Journal of Language Evolution, 5(2), 101-120.
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2018

Mann, S. F., & Pfeifer, J. (2018). [Book review] Studying animal languages without translation: An insight from Ants / by Zhanna Reznikova. The Quarterly Review of Biology, 93(1), 38-38.
DOI    BibTeX   Endnote   

Mann, S. F. (2018). Attribution of information in animal interaction. Biological Theory, 13(3), 164-179.
DOI    BibTeX   Endnote