Bio
Brian Cantwell Smith is a Professor of Information, Philosophy, Cognitive Science, and the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, and a Senior Fellow at Massey College. Professor Smith moved to the University of Toronto in 2003, initially to serve as Dean of the Faculty of Information (2003–2008).
Professor Smith holds BS, MS and PhD degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). From 1981 to 1996 he was a Principal Scientist at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University. He was a founder of the Center for the Study of Language and Information at Stanford University, a founder and first President of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, and President (1998-99) of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology. From 1996 to 2001 he was a Professor of Cognitive Science, Computer Science, and Philosophy at Indiana University, and from 2001 to 2003 was Kimberly J. Jenkins University Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and New Technologies and professor in the departments of Philosophy and Computer Science at Duke University.
Professor Smith’s research focuses on the philosophical foundations of computation, artificial intelligence, and mind, as well as on fundamental issues in metaphysics and epistemology. His doctoral dissertation introduced the world’s first reflective programming language, 3Lisp. Early publications addressed questions in reflection, meta-level architecture, programming languages, and knowledge representation. Since the 1990s, his work has focused on topics in the foundations of epistemology, ontology, and metaphysics.