I’m a lecturer in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge and a Director of Studies at King’s College, Cambridge. I’m also an Associate Fellow of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence in Cambridge and a participant in the Inner Speech in Action project based at UPF Barcelona. My research covers a range of topics in philosophy of cognitive science, AI and applied ethics. My introductory book What is Philosophy of Mind? is available from Polity Press.

Right now I’m focussing on artificial consciousness. I argue that we should be agnostic about the possibility of artificial consciousness and offer an account of how to navigate the moral risks of conscious AI.

Much of my work is on affordances for mental action. Long-standing work in philosophy and psychology suggests that we see our environment in terms of the actions we can perform in it e.g. we perceive a teapot as affording gripping. I suggest we also see our environment in terms of the mental actions available to us such as acts of attention, imagination and deliberation. Recently I’ve also been exploring how social inequalities might shape our perception. Paulina Sliwa and I have developed the idea that gender inequalities in the performance of domestic tasks may be explained by socially-mediated differences in how affordances for domestic tasks are perceived. Our recent paper on the topic has been widely reported in the media. You can find out more about my research here.

I’m keen to bring insights from philosophy and psychology to the business world. I have a blog on the philosophy of business and have talked to various companies about how research can be applied in their field. I’m an Associate Leader of Outstanding.Global – a personal and professional development consultancy promoting open-minded leadership. You can find out more about my business engagement here.

Outside academia I do volunteer for the community woodlands in my small Suffolk village. I’m partial to comics, cats and a good pot of tea.

Here’s a link to my CV: McClelland CV Apr 2025