DR. RACHAEL L. BROWN
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Dr. Rachael L. Brown

Philosopher of Biology & Cognitive Science
[email protected]
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Evolution of Cognition and Culture
  • Brown, R.L.  (under review) Exorcising Fisher’s Ghost: Getting serious about gradualism in evolutionary psychology.
  • Pain R., Shipton, C & Brown R. L. (Eds.) Thematic Section on "Archaeology and Cognitive Evolution" of Biological Theory, 2023
  • Moore R., Brown, R.L. (Eds.) Special issue of Synthese on “Cultural Evolution of Social Cognition, Synthese, 2022
  • Brown, R.L. & Pain R. (2022) “No tinkering allowed: When the end-goal requires a highly specific or risky, and complex action sequence, expect ritualistic scaffolding" Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 45, e252.
  • Brown, R. L. (2021) “Is cultural evolution always fast? Challenging the idea that cognitive gadgets would be capable of rapid and adaptive evolution” Synthese. 199 (3), 8965-8989. 
  • Pain, R. & Brown, R.L. (2020) “Mind the gap: A more evolutionarily plausible role for technical reasoning in cumulative technological culture” Synthese. .https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02894-8
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Philosophy of Animal Minds
  • Brown, R. (2022). Mapping Out the Landscape: A Multi-dimensional Approach to Behavioral Innovation. Philosophy of Science, 89(5), 1176-1185. 
  • Taylor, A. H., Bastos, A. P. M., Brown, R. L., Allen, C. (2022) "The signature-testing approach to mapping biological and artificial intelligences", Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 26(9): 738-750. 
  • Brown, R.L. (2014) “Identifying behavioural novelty.” Biological Theory, 9(2): 135-148.
  • Brown, R.L. (2017) “Animal Traditions: what are they and why do they matter?” in The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Animal Minds (Kristin Andrews & Jacob Beck eds.). Routledge, pp. 362-371.
Philosophy of Biology
  • Maja Adamska, Rachael Brown, Xia Hua, Dan Noble, Ben Phillips, Kate Sanders, Lexing Xie (In final production stages) Evolutionary Science for a Changing World: A whitepaper prepared for the Australian Academy of Science, Australian Academy of Science (Co-lead author with Sanders)
  • Brown, R.L. (2023) "Structuralism and Selectionism: Friends or Foes?”, Seminars in Cell and Developmental Biology, S1084-9521(22)00061-1. 145: 13-21. 
  • Brown, R.L. (2020) “Proximate-Ultimate Causation and Evo-Devo” in The Evolutionary Developmental Biology Reference Guide (Laura Nuño de la Rosa, Gerd B. Müller and Alan Love eds.). Springer.
  • Brown, R.L. (2015) “A clear-eyed defense of philosophy of biology.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 49: 63-65.
  • Brown, R.L. (2015) “Why development matters.” Biology & Philosophy, 30(6): 889-899.
  • Brown, R. L.  (2014) “What evolvability really is.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 65(3): 549-572.  
  • Brown, R. L. (2013) “Learning, evolvability and exploratory behaviour: Extending the evolutionary reach of learning.” Biology & Philosophy, 28(6): 933-955.
  • Brown, R.L. (2014) “Rethinking behavioural evolution,” in Entangled Life: Organism and Environment in the Biological and Social Sciences, Barker, Desjardins & Pearce (eds.). Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, pp 237-260.
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Philosophy of Mind
  • Brown, R. L., & Brooks, R. C. (2025). Smartphones: Parts of Our Minds? Or Parasites? Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/00048402.2025.2504070
  • Brown, R.L.  (2019) "“Infer with care: A critique of the argument from animals” Mind & Language. 34(1): 21-36.
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Philosophy of Science
  • ​Brown, R.L, Lean C. H. and Weisberg, M. (under review) Climate Adaptation as Evolvability
  • Lynch, K.E., Brown, R.L., Strasser, J. & Yeo, S. (2023) “A disanalogy with RCTs and its implications for second generation causal knowledge” Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 46, E194.
  • Brown, R. L., Brusse C, Heubner B & Pain R. (2020) “Unification at the Cost of Realism and Precision” Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 43, e95. 
  • Brown, R.L. (2017) “Not statistically significant, but still scientific” Animal Sentience, 16(14).

Other
  • K. McNamara, R. Brown, M. Elgar & T. Jones (2008) “Paternity costs from polyandry compensated by increased fecundity in the hide beetle.” Behavioural Ecology, 19: 433-440.  

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  • About Me
  • CV
  • Research
  • Presentations
  • The P-Value Podcast
  • Public Philosophy