Adrian Alsmith

I am a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at King's College London. Most of my work concerns bodily self-consciousness: how the body is mentally represented, how we locate ourselves in the world we experience, and what it is to experience a body as one's own. A recurring theme is the ways in which our experience is structured by bodily and mental activity. That theme has led me more recently to the relation between perception and imagination, and to the ways in which people think about, talk about, and design generative artificial systems.

I joined King's in 2020. Before that I held research positions at LOGOS (University of Barcelona), the Jean Nicod Institute (École Normale Supérieure), and the Centre for Subjectivity Research (University of Copenhagen). I took my PhD at the University of Mainz, supervised by Thomas Metzinger, as part of the DISCOS Marie Curie RTN and the CONTACT ESF project, after taking an MSc. in Mind, Language and Embodied Cognition at the University of Edinburgh and a BA in Philosophy & Psychology at the University of Warwick.

I co-edit the Philosophy and Cognitive Science section of the MIT Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science. Previously, I was an Associate Editor of Analysis and of Philosophy and the Mind Sciences, and Philosophy Programme Chair of the European Society for Philosophy and Psychology.

Adrian Alsmith

Collaboration with GraspingAI

GraspingAI, founded by Aaron Kagan and David Pearl, is a community of philosophers, designers, and user-experience researchers thinking about AI together. My involvement grew out of a collaboration with Aaron on anthropomorphism, artificial selfhood, and interface design, which began during his research visit to King's in 2022. We have written three pieces together.

  • Talk to Me Like a Human. With Aaron Kagan. GraspingAI, August 2026. Based on my Elizans paper. Read at GraspingAI
  • AI Metaphors. With Aaron Kagan, Allen Bevans, and David Pearl. The Philosophical Glossary of AI, May 2026. Read online
  • Metaphors We AI By. With Allen Bevans, David Pearl, and Aaron Kagan. Deep Context Substack, March 2026. Read on Substack

In progress

  • Bodily Self-Consciousness. Monograph under contract with Routledge, New Problems in Philosophy series.
  • Migrated metaphors: How AI vocabulary and interfaces shape thought. With Alex Grzankowski. Draft.

Publications

Where the PDF is the publisher's version, it is provided for personal, scholarly use only.

    DRAFTS
  • Elizan thought & generative artificial systems. Draft, 15 September 2026. PDF Comments welcome.
    • FORTHCOMING
  • The concept of body ownership. Locke Studies, special issue edited by José Luis Bermúdez.
  • Introspection and bodily awareness. In A. Giustina (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Introspection. Routledge. PDF (proofs)
    • 2025
  • Self. MIT Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science. (Open access.) Read online
    • 2024
  • Unmistaken: Imaginative perception and illusion. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 124(3): 205–228. PDF
    • 2023
  • The Routledge Handbook of Bodily Awareness. Edited with Matthew R. Longo. Routledge. Introduction (PDF) Publisher
  • Distal touch and the sensational model. In A. J. T. Alsmith & M. R. Longo (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Bodily Awareness. Routledge.
    • 2022
  • Curved sixth fingers: Flexible representation of the shape of supernumerary body parts. Denise Cadete, Adrian Alsmith & Matthew R. Longo. Consciousness and Cognition 105: 103413. PDF DOI
    • 2021
  • Bodily structure and body representation. Synthese 198: 2193–2222. PDF DOI
  • The structure of egocentric space. In F. de Vignemont, A. Serino, H. Y. Wong & A. Farnè (eds.), The World at Our Fingertips: A Multidisciplinary Exploration of Peripersonal Space. Oxford University Press. PDF (scan)
  • The vestibular system modulates the contributions of head and torso to egocentric spatial judgements. Elisa R. Ferrè, Adrian Alsmith, Patrick Haggard & Matthew R. Longo. Experimental Brain Research 239.
    • 2020
  • Shared contributions of the head and torso to spatial reference frames across spatial judgments. Matthew R. Longo, Chandrika Rajapakse, Adrian Alsmith & Elisa R. Ferrè. Cognition 204: 104349. DOI
  • What is the body schema? Frédérique de Vignemont, Victor Pitron & Adrian Alsmith. In Y. Ataria, S. Tanaka & S. Gallagher (eds.), Body Schema and Body Image: New Directions. Oxford University Press.
    • 2019
  • Using VR technologies to investigate the flexibility of human self-conception. With Matthew R. Longo. In E. Fischer & M. Curtis (eds.), Methodological Advances in Experimental Philosophy. Bloomsbury. PDF
    • 2018
  • How do the body schema and the body image interact? Victor Pitron, Adrian Alsmith & Frédérique de Vignemont. Consciousness and Cognition 65: 352–358. PDF DOI
  • Where am I in virtual reality? Albert van der Veer, Adrian Alsmith, Matthew R. Longo, Hong Yu Wong & Betty Mohler. PLOS ONE 13(10): e0204358. PDF DOI
  • Experiencing electrical muscle stimulation. Jarrod Knibbe, Adrian Alsmith & Kasper Hornbæk. Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies 2(3). PDF DOI
    • 2017
  • Dissociating contributions of head and torso to spatial reference frames: The misalignment paradigm. Adrian Alsmith, Elisa R. Ferrè & Matthew R. Longo. Consciousness and Cognition 53: 105–114. PDF DOI
  • Perspectival structure and agentive self-location. In F. de Vignemont & A. J. T. Alsmith (eds.), The Subject's Matter: Self-Consciousness and the Body. MIT Press. PDF
  • The Subject's Matter: Self-Consciousness and the Body. Edited with Frédérique de Vignemont. MIT Press, Representation and Mind series. Introduction (PDF) Publisher
    • 2016
  • Perspectival structure and vestibular processing. In T. Metzinger & J. M. Windt (eds.), Open MIND. MIT Press. (Open access.) PDF Open MIND
    • 2015
  • Mental activity and the sense of ownership. Review of Philosophy and Psychology 6(4): 881–896. PDF DOI
    • 2014
  • Where exactly am I? Self-location judgements distribute between head and torso. With Matthew R. Longo. Consciousness and Cognition 24: 70–74. PDF DOI
    • 2013
  • Bodily ownership and self-location: Components of bodily self-consciousness. Andrea Serino, Adrian Alsmith, Marcello Costantini, Alisa Mandrigin, Ana Tajadura-Jiménez & Christophe Lopez. Consciousness and Cognition 22(4): 1239–1252. PDF DOI
  • Review of Eric Schwitzgebel, Perplexities of Consciousness. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. PDF DOI
    • 2012
  • Embodying the mind and representing the body. With Frédérique de Vignemont. Review of Philosophy and Psychology 3(1): 1–13. PDF DOI
  • The body represented / Embodied representation. Special issue of Review of Philosophy and Psychology 3(1), edited with Frédérique de Vignemont. Issue
  • What reason could there be to believe in pre-reflective bodily self-consciousness? In F. Paglieri (ed.), Consciousness in Interaction: The Role of the Natural and Social Context in Shaping Consciousness. John Benjamins. PDF (author's version)
  • The concept of a structural affordance. Avant 3(2): 94–107. (Open access.) Journal
    • 2010
  • Minimal conditions for the simplest form of self-consciousness. In T. Fuchs, H. Sattel & P. Henningsen (eds.), The Embodied Self: Dimensions, Coherence, Disorders. Schattauer.
    • 2009
  • Acting on (bodily) experience. Published as A. J. T. Smith. Psyche 15(1): 82–99. PDF