Rate My Professor Raphael Milliere

Raphaël Millière served as a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence in the Department of Philosophy at Macquarie University from 2023 to 2025. He earned his DPhil in Philosophy from the University of Oxford in 2020, completing his thesis titled "Self in Mind: A Pluralist Account of Self-Consciousness" at Magdalen College. Prior to Macquarie, Millière held the position of Presidential Scholar in Society and Neuroscience at Columbia University from 2020 to 2023. His academic career builds on graduate research in philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and altered states of consciousness.

Millière's research specializations encompass philosophy of artificial intelligence, including mechanistic interpretability of deep neural networks, cognitive capacities of large language models such as analogical reasoning and variable binding, AI safety and alignment vulnerabilities, and philosophical foundations for evaluating AI systems against human cognition. He also investigates consciousness and self-consciousness through phenomenological and neuroscientific lenses, particularly in psychedelic and meditative states. Key publications include "Psychedelics, Meditation, and Self-Consciousness" (Frontiers in Psychology, 2018), "Looking for the Self: Phenomenology, Neurophysiology and Philosophical Significance of Drug-Induced Ego Dissolution" (Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2017), "Are There Degrees of Self-Consciousness?" (Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2019), "The Varieties of Selflessness" (Philosophy and the Mind Sciences, 2020), "Deep Learning and Synthetic Media" (Synthese, 2022), "Selfless Memories" with Albert Newen (Erkenntnis, 2024), "Philosophy of Cognitive Science in the Age of Deep Learning" (WIREs Cognitive Science, 2024), and a contribution to "Beyond the Imitation Game: Quantifying and Extrapolating the Capabilities of Language Models" (Transactions on Machine Learning Research, 2023). Millière has secured major awards, including a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) valued at $364,904 for his project "Philosophical Foundations of Mechanistic Understanding in AI" and an AI2050 Early Career Fellowship from Schmidt Sciences to address interpretability illusions in AI. At Macquarie University, he lectured in the unit "Consciousness and Self" (PHIX3063).