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Meeting ID: 588 186 1923

Topic description / abstract

This talk provides an overview of my recent book, Kin Matters: Relational Beings in the Fragile Sciences (Oxford, 2026), which completes the individual in the fragile sciences series that started with Boundaries of the Mind (Cambridge, 2004) and Genes and the Agents of Life (Cambridge, 2005).  I locate the book against this background and highlight the chief views of each of its parts—on relations, on incest, and on kinship—with a focus on the four chapters on kinship.

Biographical note

Robert Andrew Wilson is professor of philosophy at the University of Western Australia since November 2019, after teaching previously at La Trobe University, the University of Alberta, the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where he was a member of the Cognitive Science Group at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, and at Queen's University.

Wilson's chief research and teaching expertise is in the philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and the philosophy of biology. In general, his work draws on connections between philosophy and the various sciences. He is the author or editor of seven books, including Boundaries of the Mind (Cambridge, 2004), Genes and the Agents of Life (Cambridge, 2005), and The Eugenic Mind Project (MIT Press, 2018). With the developmental psychologist Frank Keil, he was also the general editor of The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences (MIT Press, 1999).

Wilson was the founding Director of Philosophy for Children Alberta and the principal investigator for the Living Archives on Eugenics in Western Canada project. He was also a professor in Educational Policy Studies at the University of Alberta, chiefly due to his involvement in philosophy for children. In 2009, he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.