Jenny Judge

Jenny Judge

Research Affiliate

Jenny Judge is a Lecturer (i.e. assistant professor) in philosophy at the University of Melbourne, Australia. She works in philosophy of mind, aesthetics and philosophy of AI. She holds a PhD in philosophy from NYU, and a PhD in music from the University of Cambridge.

One strand of Judge’s research is an exploration the resonances between music and the philosophy of mind. She is currently developing a novel theory of musical meaning, whereby a piece of expressive music is a moving picture of feeling. On this basis, Judge argues that music is no less deserving than pictures of being considered a core part of the human communicative toolkit.

The other strand is an investigation of digital technology's impact on our moral and aesthetic lives. Judge is currently thinking about the impact of recommender systems on aesthetic experience, and what the advent of generative AI is likely to mean both for the creation of art, and our engagement with it. She’s also interested in the significance of distinctive forms of attention for both moral and aesthetic experience, and the pressure that the attention economy places on both kinds of encounter with value.

Judge is an active musician in addition to being a philosopher. She also contributes essays to the program books at both Carnegie Hall and the San Francisco Symphony.