Anton Killin

Updated July 4, 2025

I am a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Philosophy at Bielefeld University, Germany. I am also a research affiliate of the Evolution of Cultural Diversity Initiative at the Australian National University (ANU) and the philosophy programme at the University of Waikato, New Zealand.  

Prior to my position in Bielefeld, I held a Lilburn Research Fellowship in New Zealand and lectured in philosophy at Victoria University of Wellington. Before that, I was a senior research fellow in the School of Philosophy and the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language at the ANU, having also completed an ANU postdoctoral fellowship. Along the way I also completed postdoc fellowships in the departments of philosophy at Florida International University (Miami, USA) and Mount Allison University (New Brunswick, Canada). I received my PhD in philosophy from Victoria University of Wellington and my MMus from the New Zealand School of Music.

My main research interests are, broadly, philosophy of the sciences and arts. This includes from the angles of epistemology, metaphysics, and evolutionary theory. 

I have written on the evolution of musicality and language (and cognitive/cultural evolution more generally); epistemology of evolutionary cognitive archaeology;  topics in the philosophy of biology and archaeology; topics in the philosophy of music (and philosophy of art more generally); gamelan music in New Zealand; and several other topics. 

Publications

     Edited Collections

(2025, Corijn van Mazijk, Anton Killin, & Karenleigh A. Overmann) Philosophy and Prehistory: New Perspectives on Minds, Art, and Culture. (Topical collection for Phenomenology & the Cognitive Sciences)

(2021, Adrian Currie & Anton Killin). Creativity in Art, Science & Mind. (Topical collection for European Journal for Philosophy of Science)

(2021, Anton Killin & Sean Allen-Hermanson). Explorations in Archaeology and Philosophy. (Edited volume for Synthese Library, Springer)

(2021, Anton Killin & Sean Allen-Hermanson). Archaeology and Philosophy. (Special issue of Topoi: An International review of Philosophy) 

     Papers

(2025, Anton Killin & Ross Pain) "Four heuristics for theory selection in evolutionary cognitive archaeology", Journal of Cultural Cognitive Science, https://doi.org/10.1007/s41809-025-00172-y  

(2025) "Scientific studies of individualization: a thematic-analytic approach", Perspectives on Science, 33(1): 88-126. https://doi.org/10.1162/posc_a_00635 

(2025) "Intra- and interindividual aesthetic disagreement: a response to Tooming". Estetika: The European Journal of Aesthetics, 62(1): 66-70. https://doi.org/10.33134/eeja.520 

(2025, Corijn van Mazijk, Anton Killin, & Karenleigh A. Overmann) "Philosophy and prehistory: new perspectives on minds, art, and culture", Phenomenology & the Cognitive Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-025-10057-8  

(2024, Marie I. Kaiser, Anton Killin, Anja-Kristin Abendroth, Mitja D. Back, Bernhard T. Baune, Nicola Bilstein, Yves Breitmoser, Barbara A. Caspers, Jürgen Gadau, Toni I. Gossmann, Sylvia Kaiser, Oliver Krüger, Joachim Kurtz, Diana Lengersdorf, Annette K. F. Malsch, Caroline Müller, John F. Rauthmann, Klaus Reinhold. S. Helene Richter, Christian Stummer, Rose Trappes, Claudia VoelckerRehage, & Meike J. Witmann) "Individualisation and individualised science across disciplinary perspectives", European Journal for Philosophy of Science, 14: 41. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-024-00602-8 

(2024, Andra Meneganzin & Anton Killin) "Beyond reasonable doubt: reconsidering Neanderthal aesthetic capacity", Phenomenology & the Cognitive Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-024-10003-0 

(2024, Adrian Currie, Anton Killin, Mathilde Lequin, Andra Meneganzin, & Ross Pain) "Past materials, past minds: the philosophy of cognitive paleoanthropology", Philosophy Compass, 19(6): 13001. https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.13001 

(2024) "Culture, cooperation, and communication: the co-evolution of hominin cognition, sociality, and musicality", British Journal of Aesthetics, 64(3): 335-360. https://doi.org/10.1093/aesthj/ayad038 

(2024, Anton Killin & Glen Downie) "Indonesian gamelan and the music of Gareth Farr", Turnbull Library Record (Journal of the National Library of New Zealand), 55: 60-73. 

(2024, Annette K. F. Malsch, Anton Killin, & Marie I. Kaiser) "Health-oriented environmental categories, individual health environments, and the concept of environment in public health", Health Care Analysis, 32: 141-164. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10728-023-00477-5  

(2024) "The deep history of musicality: evolutionary cognitive archaeology and music", in Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Archaeology, edited by Thomas Wynn, Karenleigh Overmann & Frederick Coolidge (OUP), pp. 575-598. https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/41984 

(2023) "Philosophy of archaeology", in Encyclopedia of Archaeology (Second Edition), edited by Efthymia Nikita & Thilo Rehren (Elsevier), pp. 54-60.

(2023, Anton Killin & Ross Pain) "How WEIRD is cognitive archaeology? Engaging with the challenge of cultural variation and sample diversity", Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 14(2): 539-563. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-021-00611-z 

(2023, Anton Killin & Ross Pain) "Cognitive archaeology and the minimum necessary competence problem", Biological Theory, 18: 269-283. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13752-021-00378-7 

(2022, Anton Killin & Ross Pain) "Culture, genes, selection, and learning: a response to Nichols, Mackey, and Moll", Philosophical Psychology, 35: 297-300. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2021.1980205 

(2022) "Social care and individualised risk in a changing environment", Metascience, 31: 383-386. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11016-022-00789-7 

(2022) "The polysemy theory of sound", Erkenntnis, 87: 435-458. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-019-00201-7 

(2021) "Evolutionary aesthetics", in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780415249126-M071-1

(2021, Anton Killin, Carl Brusse, Adrian Currie, & Ronald J .Planer) "Not by signalling alone: music's mosaicism undermines the search for a proper function", Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 44: e103. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X20001107 

(2021) "Music archaeology, signaling theory, social differentiation", in Explorations in Archaeology and Philosophy, edited by Anton Killin & Sean Allen-Hermanson (Cham: Springer), pp. 85-100

(2021, Anton Killin & Sean Allen-Hermanson) "The twain shall meet: themes at the intersection of archaeology and philosophy" [Intro Chapter], in Explorations in Archaeology and Philosophy, edited by Anton Killin & Sean Allen-Hermanson (Cham: Springer), pp. 1-4

(2021) "Music pluralism, music realism, and music archaeology", Topoi: An International Review of Philosophy, 40: 261-272. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-019-09676-z 

(2021, Anton Killin & Sean Allen-Hermanson) "Introduction: archaeology and philosophy", Topoi: An International Review of Philosophy, 40: 203-205. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-020-09702-5 

(2020) "Defending scientific naturalism in philosophy of art"  Metascience, 29: 289-292. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11016-020-00528-w

(2020, Seán G. Roberts, Anton Killin, Angarika Deb, Catherine Sheard, Simon J. Greenhill, Kaius Sinnemäki, José Segovia-Martin, Jonas Nölle, Aleksanders Berdicevskis, Archie Humphreys-Balkwill, Hannah Little, Christopher Opie, Guillaume Jacques, Lindell Bromham, Peeter Tinits, Robert M. Ross, Sean Lee, Emily Gasser, Jasmine Calladine, Matthew Spike, Stephen Francis Mann, Olena Shcherbakova, Ruth Singer, Shuya Zhang, Antonio Benítez-Burraco, Christian Kliesch, Ewan Thomas-Colquhoun, Hedvig Skirgård, Monica Tamariz, Sam Passmore, Thomas Pellard, & Fiona Jordan) "CHIELD: The causal hypotheses in evolutionary linguistics database", Journal of Language Evolution, 5(2): 101-120. https://doi.org/10.1093/jole/lzaa001 

(2019, Adrian Currie & Anton Killin) "From things to thinking: cognitive archaeology", Mind & Language, 34(2): 263-279. https://doi.org/10.1111/mila.12230 

(2018) "The origins of music: evidence, theory, and prospects", Music & Science, 1: 1-23. https://doi.org/10.1177/2059204317751971 

(2018) "Music and human evolution: philosophical aspects", in Routledge Handbook of Evolution and Philosophy, edited by Richard Joyce (Oxon/NY: Routledge), pp. 372-386

(2018) "Fictionalism about musical works", Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 48(2): 266-291. https://doi.org/10.1080/00455091.2017.1357993 

(2017) "Where did language come from? Connecting sign, song, and speech in hominin evolution", Biology & Philosophy, 32(6): 759-778. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-017-9607-x 

(2017, Adrian Currie & Anton Killin) "Not music, but musics: a case for conceptual pluralism in aesthetics", Estetika: Central European Journal of Aesthetics, 54(2): 151-174

(2017) "Plio-Pleistocene foundations of musicality: the co-evolution of hominin cognition, sociality and music", Biological Theory, 12(4): 222-235. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13752-017-0274-6 

(2017) "Analyzing antiqueness: a response to Curtis and Baines", Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 75(2): 195-197. https://doi.org/10.1111/jaac.12362 

(2017) "Hominin musicality and musical expressivity: revisiting Davies’ contour theory", Debates in Aesthetics, 13(1): 11-18

(2016) "Reflections on imitation, vocal mimicry, and entrainment", Aisthesis. Pratiche, linguaggi e saperi dell’estetico, 9(2): 81-87 

(2016) "Rethinking music’s status as adaptation versus technology: a niche construction perspective", Ethnomusicology Forum, 25(2): 210-233. https://doi.org/10.1080/17411912.2016.1159141 

(2016) "Musicality and the evolution of mind, mimesis, and entrainment", Biology & Philosophy, 31(3): 421-434. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-016-9519-1 

(2016, Adrian Currie & Anton Killin) "Musical pluralism and the science of music", European Journal for Philosophy of Science, 6(1): 9-30. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-015-0123-z 

(2015) "Works, authors, co-authorship, and power: a response to Hick", Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 73(3): 334-337. https://doi.org/10.1111/jaac.12190 

(2015) "Cross-cultural practice in creative perspective: New Zealand compositions for central Javanese gamelan instruments", New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies, 17(1): 21-40

(2014) "Musicality in human evolution, archaeology, and ethnography", Biology & Philosophy, 29(4): 597-609. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-014-9438-y 

(2013) "The arts and human nature: evolutionary aesthetics and the evolutionary status of art behaviours", Biology & Philosophy, 28(4): 703-718. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-013-9371-5 

     Book reviews/notes

(2024) Review of Music in Evolution and Evolution in Music, by Steven Jan, Musicae Scientiae, 28(4): 827-831.

(2021) Review of Philosophy of Western Music: A Contemporary Introduction, by Andrew Kania, Teaching Philosophy, 44(3): 389-393

(2020) Review of Social DNA: Rethinking Our Evolutionary Past, by M. Kay Martin, Quarterly Review of Biology, 95(3): 264-265

(2019) Review of Thought In Action: Expertise and the Conscious Mind, by Barbara Gail Montero, British Journal of Aesthetics, 59(1): 95-98 

(2018) Review of How Biology Shapes Philosophy: New Foundations for Naturalism, ed. D.L. Smith, Philosophical Quarterly, 68(272): 635-638

(2018) Review of Mereology: A Philosophical Introduction, by Giorgio Lando, Phenomenological Reviews, 4: 74

(2016) Review of Late Works of Mou Zongsan: Selected Essays on Chinese Philosophy, trans. and ed. J. Clower, New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies, 18(1): 99-101

(2015) Review of Institutions, Emotions, and Group Agents: Contributions to Social Ontology, ed. A.K. Ziv and H.B. Schmid, Studies in Social and Political Thought, 25: 265-270

     Festschrift contributions

(2015) "Raising a glass" in Jack! Celebrating Jack Body, Composer, edited by Jennifer Shennan, Gillian Whitehead & Scilla Askew (New Zealand: Steele Roberts), pp. 66-67

     Community publications

(2021, Jo Hilder, Anton Killin, Megan Collins, & Budi S. Putra) "The music behind the shadow puppets", Fifty-Fifty (New Zealand Indonesian Association), Sept 2021 (Issue 19), pp. 5-8. 

Professional Affiliations

I have joined the Australasian Association of Philosophy (AAP), New Zealand Association of Philosophers (NZAP), Canadian Philosophical Association (CPA), Florida Philosophical Association (FPA), Irish Philosophical Society (IPS), British Society for the Philosophy of Science (BSPS), European Philosophy of Science Association (EPSA), Philosophy of Science Association (PSA), International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology (ISHPSSB), International Society for the Philosophy of the Sciences of the Mind (ISPSM), American Society for Aesthetics (ASA), British Society of Aesthetics (BSA), New Zealand Asian Studies Society (NZASIA), Composers Association of New Zealand (CANZ), and Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA/AMCOS).

Creative Work

When in Canberra I play in the blues-rock group Ronnie P and the Free Riders, and when in Wellington I play in various alternative bands including Keller Kinder and three Indonesian gamelan ensembles, Gamelan Padhang Moncar and Gamelan Taniwha Jaya and First Smile Gamelan Ensemble. I am also a Founding Member (although currently a rather inactive member) of Wellington's classical-experimental chamber music collective SMP Ensemble. 

A recent composition of mine, Tanpa Tanah, was premiered in May 2021 at a gamelan concert at the National Library of New Zealand. 

Prior to my academic career, I was much more active as a composer and art music performer; see my SOUNZ profile for more details of my classical, experimental/electroacoustic, and cross-cultural (especially gamelan) musical output, including performance information.  

     Selected Composer/Performer Discography
(2024) The First Smile, The First Smile Gamelan Ensemble, Rattle Records. <you can listen here>

(2014) Naga, Gamelan Padhang Moncar and Gamelan Taniwha Jaya, Rattle Records (Victoria University Press). <you can listen here or on Spotify>

(2014) Dying City, Keller Kinder. <you can listen on Spotify; for music videos, click House of Glass and Bridgeburner>

(2010) Podróże—Journeys, SMP Ensemble

(2009) NZ Premieres July 2008 to June 2009, SOUNZ (Centre for New Zealand Music)

(2007) Now I Know, Gamelan Padhang Moncar and Gamelan Taniwha Jaya

      Professional Audio Recording/Mixing/Editing 

(2014) Strange Terrain, Waiteata Music Press. Audio recording "Shifting Shadows"

(2012) NZ Piano Music for Four Hands, Waiteata Music Press. Audio mix/edit of all tracks

(2009) Little Earth, London Fieldworks. Audio mix for DVD release

     Film Music/Soundtrack Contributions

(2021) Gamelan music (with Gamelan Taniwha Jaya) for Signed, Theo Schoon, dir. Luit Bieringa

(2013) Gamelan music (with Gamelan Padhang Moncar) for The Hobbit 2: The Desolation of Smaug, dir. Peter Jackson

(2008) Gamelan music (with Gamelan Padhang Moncar) for Rubbings from a Live Man, dir. Florian Habicht

Contact

Write to me at < anton.killin [@] uni-bielefeld.de > 

Caricature by Alfred Memelink 2010