Professor Andy Clark

Professor Andy Clark, Professor of Cognitive Philosophy in the Faculty of Media, Arts and Humanities and the School of Engineering and Informatics, has won the inaugural Dennett Prize, awarded by the International Center for Consciousness Studies (ICCS). The prize is awarded for significant advances in the fields of philosophy of mind, cognitive science, evolutionary biology, and artificial intelligence, the modern appearance and scopes of which were shaped largely due to the revolutionary ideas of Daniel Dennett (1942-2024). Professor Clark is the author of groundbreaking works on embodied and extended cognition, artificial intelligence, robotics, and computational neuroscience. 

A renowned American philosopher and cognitive scientist, Dennett’s work spanned philosophy of mind, evolutionary biology and artificial intelligence. Across the board he challenged received ideas, and introduced new perspectives. His writing set a gold standard for intellectual clarity and scientific integrity. 

Professor Clark said: “I first encountered Dennett’s work as a first year undergraduate at the University of Stirling back in 1976. It blew me away with its heady mixture of argument, imagination, and leading-edge scientific conjecture. Dan really wanted to know how things work and would use every tool in the kit to do so. I’ve tried to follow that lead, and the University of Sussex is an ideal place to work across disciplinary boundaries in the way that requires.” 

Executive Dean of the Faculty of Media, Arts and Humanities, Professor Cornel Sandvoss, said: “Daniel Dennett was a huge and influential figure in the philosophical world and it is a wonderful accolade for Andy to have won the inaugural Dennett prize, the year after Dennett’s passing. Andy’s research is pushing forward the boundaries of knowledge in embodied and extended cognition, and his bold and progressive approach is very much in keeping with the spirit of the late Daniel Dennett. Congratulations Andy.” 

Head of the School of Engineering and Informatics, Professor Ian Wakeman, said: “This is an amazing honour for Andy, very much merited for the huge contributions he has made to the academic endeavour around the philosophy of cognition and consciousness.  It is also a reflection on the fantastic environment here at Sussex for doing research at the interdisciplinary boundaries of cognitive philosophy and science, AI and the study of consciousness, and we’re all very much looking forward to increasing our understanding of our minds with Andy in the years to come.” 

The award will take place on the last day of the 2nd Annual ICCS Conference ‘AI and Sentience,’ when Andy will give the Daniel Dennett Lecture. The conference will be held on 3-5 July 2025, in Heraklion, Crete. The next competition for the Dennett Prize will be announced in autumn 2025.