Professor David Papineau FBA

Summary

David Papineau was born in Italy and went to school in Trinidad, England and South Africa. His first degree was in mathematics and statistics from the University of Natal (now KwaZulu-Natal). He then studied philosophy as an undergraduate for two years at Cambridge, after which he did a PhD on conceptual change in science with Ian Hacking.
Since 1990 he has been Professor of Philosophy at King’s College London, having previously taught in the departments of History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University, Philosophy at Macquarie University, and Sociology at Reading University. From 2015 to 2020 he spent half of each academic year at the Philosophy Program of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He was president of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science for 1993-5, of the Mind Association for 2009-10, and of the Aristotelian Society for 2013-14.
He has worked in many areas of philosophy, including scientific realism, representation, evolution and cognitive structure, consciousness, perception, physicalism, probability and natural kinds. He is currently completing a project arguing that statistical practice holds the key to the nature of causation. His ten books include Reality and Representation, Thinking about Consciousness, Philosophical Devices and The Metaphysics of Sensory Experience.