Amber Ross, Ph.D.

Areas of Specialization

• Ethics of AI
• Philosophy of Mind
• Metaphysics

Curriculum Vitae

• CV 2026

• Personal Website

Publications

• "Beyond Words: finding centers of narrative gravity in non-linguistic animals." Special Issue on the Philosophy of Daniel Dennett. Ideas y Valores, the Colombian Journal of Philosophy 75.190 (2026): 9-19.
• "AI and the expert; a blueprint for the ethical use of opaque AI." AI and Society 39 (2024): 925-936.
• "Mental Fictionalism: the costly combination of magic and the mind." In Mental Fictionalism: Philosophical Explorations. Eds. Tomas Demeter, T. Parent, & Adam Toon. Routledge, 2022.
• "Multisensory Perception in Philosophy," (with Mohan Matthen). Editors' introduction. Multisensory Research 34.3 (2021): 219-231.
• "Destabilizing the Knowledge Argument and Modal Argument". Inquiry 61.5/6 (2018): 499-519.
• "Illusionism and the Epistemological Problems Facing Phenomenal Realism". Journal of Consciousness Studies 23.11/12 (2016): 215-23.
• Inconceivable Minds. PhD Dissertation. UNC Chapel Hill, 2013.

Edited Volume

• Special Issue on Multisensory Perception in Philosophy, (with Mohan Matthen). Multisensory Research 34.3 (2021).

Selected Presentations

• "Beyond Words: degrees of narrative selfhood in non-linguistic animals"
  International Conference on Comparative Cognition. Montreal, QC. April 2026.
• "Yes, Dolphins Merge: finding the remnants of human linguistic uniqueness"
  Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology. Atlanta, GA. February 2026.
• "Ape Questions: a commentary." Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology. Atlanta, GA. February 2026.
• "Companion Animals, AI Companions, and the Ladies’ Companion: triangulating the essential features of companionship in all its forms." International Workshop on Social Affordances in the Age of AI. Gainesville, FL. November 2025.
• “Conceptualizing the role of Generative AI in Education”
  Panel presentation. Building an AI University. University of Florida. May 2025.
• "Putting the illusion back in Illusionism: an argument for the reality of illusory mental content" Capstone Lecture. Southeastern Graduate Student Conference. University of Florida. April 2025.
• Commentary on Alexander William Tolbert's "Is AI Ethics Distinctively about AI or Racial Caste?" Southern Workshop on the Ethics of Emerging Technologies. Gainesville, FL. April 2025.
• "Can your Digital likeness be my Private Property? Ethical and Conceptual challenges for an AI-generated 'you'." Society for Exact Philosophy. Gainesville, FL. November 2024.
• "Generative AI and the types of transparency worth wanting."
  Ethics and Governance of AI panel. University of Florida International Center. September 2023.
• "Narrative selfhood in non-human animals" Philosophy of Animals Minds and Behavior Association. Madrid, Spain. May 2023.
• "The Value of Opacity" American Univertity. Washington, D.C. January 2023.
• "Why Opaque AI Won’t Go Away: A Case for Ethical AI without Complete Transparency." American Political Science Association. Montreal, Quebec, Canada. September 2022.
• "From Spot to HAL: How the study of consciousness in animal minds can inform the philosophy of AI." Mind and Matter 2022: Foundations of Information, Intelligence, and Consciousness. University of Helsinki, Finland. June 2022.
• “Why opaque AI will not go away; a case for ethical AI without complete transparency.”  Presented at the University of Georgia Philosophies of Nature, Technology and Artificial Intelligence. June 2022.
• "Expanding the Narrative Theory of Self." Logos Research Group, University of Barcelona (talk postponed due to Covid 19). April 2021.
• "The nature of conscious thought and its relation to AI systems." Guest lecture, UF graduate course in machine Learning, Department of Engineering (CAP6610). March 2021.
• "What is Thinking?" Invited presentation for the UF AI Institute Faculty Seminar. January 2021.
• “Is Fictionalism Fit to Account for the Mental?” Budapest- Mental Fictionalism Workshop Series (III)- Organized by the MTA BTK Lendulet Morals and Science Research Group, Hungarian Academy of Sciences. October 2019.
• "How Mary Closed the Explanatory Gap". Moore Humanities Symposium on Consciousness, Texas Christian University, Mar 2014
• "The Phenomenal concept strategy: Can our zombie-twins be our epistemic equals?". Works in Progress Series, UNC Chapel Hill, Nov 2009
• "The identity of the categorical and the dispositional". Graduate Research Symposium, Reading University, UK, Jan 2008
• "The Publicity of Introspection; a response to Alvin Goldman's Science, Publicity, and Consciousness". Graduate Research Symposium, Reading University, UK, Nov 2007