Liz Stillwaggon Swan PhD

Liz Swan earned a PhD in Philosophy from the University of South Carolina, where she focused on the question of how human consciousness emerged from the natural world. Her academic research is highly interdisciplinary, incorporating biology, neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, and artificial life. She has taught college level at several different institutions, including during appointments as the Horning Postdoctoral Research Fellow in History and Philosophy of Science at the Center for Humanities at Oregon State University, and the Philosophical Naturalism Fellow at the Center for Inquiry in Amherst, NY. She edited Origins of Mind (Springer, 2013, which was translated into Chinese in 2017), co-edited Origin(s) of Design in Nature (Springer, 2012), and published research papers in The Journal of Mind and Behavior, Biology and Philosophy, and The International Journal of Machine Consciousness. She also enjoys writing more popular stuff like Yoga: Philosophy for Everyone, and essays in The Elephant Journal, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Philosophy Now, and Technology and Society Magazine.

She lives in Colorado where she writes, teaches at CU Boulder, sells real estate, teaches yoga, and avoids high-elevation hikes.