This is my position. People outsourcing their thinking to AI means they aren't actually learning anything at all.

You know that creative struggle you have in your head when figuring something out and trying to write it out? That’s called thinking!

University of Toronto is hiring: Library Technician #otherposition

#PhilosophyJobs (within an ERC project on women philosophers in the Enlightenment)

Can't "move past the blank page" on your research? Maybe you shouldn't be a researcher.

Reason no. 103857392 to read books and, yes, write your own damn emails, too www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

I am teaching the same class this year. I changed some of the readings (last year @birchlse.bsky.social 's "Edge of Sentience" book was not out yet by the time I wrote the syllabus, this year I could insert some chapters of it) and we have been reading more thoroughly Dharmakīrti and Ratnakīrti

Fixed duties (nityakarman) are not "imperfect duties" elisafreschi.com/2026/02/11/4...

In my experience, AI can take away some "fun" work (e.g., creating slides, writing) and adds a lot of boring/annoying tasks, like checking for mistakes.

#AnimalMinds, animal rights

People responding to this inane quote are getting distracted by a classroom activity (can machines think?), grappling in the mud w the pig of the data expropriation industry. You get covered in mud, the industry likes it, & now you’re busy trying to get yourself clean while it’s stealing your job.

Personal opinion only: There are in fact many "good" (bright, naturally talented, hard-working) students. The difference is done by the community they are in and the education they receive.

Currently listening to a talk by Ignacio Silva on "Divine Action: Thomas Aquinas on How God Acts in the World". So far, the main thesis is: God's intervention needs to be restricted to where causality is not deterministic, as in quantum mechanics. 1/

#AnimalMinds #OtherMinds

In universities, some colleagues use AI for emails etc. (time saved), but we all spend much more time rethinking assignments, checking for use of AI, having in-person invigilators etc. (tons of time lost)

The University of Vienna is advertising a number of fully funded PhD positions in the Humanities (4 years), including in Philosophy. If you are interested or know any philosophy MA student who would be interested, please tell them to get in touch! careers.univie.ac.at/en/praedoc/p...

Listening to an amazing talk by David Brick (Michigan) on the status of widows in Dharmaśāstra (Sanskrit jurisprudence), to which he dedicated a recent book. Widows are discussed in four contexts (widow-remarriage and niyoga, inheritance, satī, asceticism). 1/

Just some random thoughts about grad school. —I am inclined to think that grad school is as much about the cohort as about the professors. You will meet there friends and allies for life and learn from them. 1/

The fact that LLM-s "pass" the Turing test is an evidence against behaviourism, not in favour of LLMs being sentient. Thanks God for Dharmakīrti who said that what counts is *purposive* behaviour, which is an effect of a mind, not just any behaviour.

I am also worried that sooner or later a new trend will emerge, namely "AI-free universities, where you can finally be sure you will be taught and evaluated by real people and you will finally learn and not just regurgitate content"

Again and again, I am reminded of Pif's movie "E noi come stronzi restammo a guardare" (on "love-bots" who are indeed slave workers in India).

#AnimalMinds #OtherMinds

the people who want you to believe that generative AI can paint like Picasso tend to gloss over the fact that Picasso didn’t have hundreds of Picassos to learn from. He had to make something new, which a model trained on old art is definitionally incapable of doing.

I just can't get over that people are still thinking in terms of 'great philosopher'.

I can't believe how many letter writers focus on how "difficult" the courses they teach are! As if "difficult" were intrinsically equivalent to philosophical value! As if being unkind to students automatically meant being a philosophical genius!

"X's German is excellent, much better than that of many native English speakers"… is this meant to be a compliment or a way of mocking how native English speakers never learn other languages?

Letter writer: "X doesn’t just have the makings of a great philosopher; X already is one". I am sure that this is meant to convince schools to admit X. I am sure it is that effective. To me it sounds like "X has nothing to learn and wants to come to your school just bc they need the degree"

On the difference between an algorithm and statistics… (LLMs are the latter)

There is no way to fix the core problem, which is that the statistical production of symbols by definition is not based on their meaning

A profile of Anke Gowda, retired sugar factory worker from Karnataka, and his library of two million books free for anyone to borrow and read. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Regarding the Discourse, lemme just say that if you can't draw, yes you can. Everyone can draw, and folks will almost certainly respond more positively to your stick figures than some generic "A.i." slop. Also, there are LOADS of resources for free images. Like this! 🧵 www.nga.gov/artworks/fre...

This is currently where the IKGA (Institute for the Cultural and Intellectual history of Asia), and several others within the Austrian Academy of Sciences, is located.

"In an order on Thursday, district judge Katherine Polk Failla ruled that the extraordinary sanctions were warranted after an attorney, Steven Feldman, kept responding to requests to correct his filings with documents containing fake citations."

"Students must learn to critically evaluate AI output" Have you seen common arguments for AI usage in schools? We collected some of the ones we see most often, and counter-points to them. Did we miss any? www.aicaution.ca/common-argum...

I finished writing it all up: Generative AI ∉ (Teaching ∪ Learning). I'm going to keep using this as a reference, incomplete as it is www.peter-keep.com/2026-02-06-g...

Good to know if you work at a Canadian university and consider your chances for hiring great professors from all around the world.

"Zombie citations" of work that was never written are becoming a big problem in academic publishing. After encountering one recently I tried tracking down its source. Instead I found a growing mob of mutant references gathering on Google Scholar codeactsineducation.wordpress.com/2026/01/30/t...

In his commentary on the Śaraṇāgatigadya, Veṅkaṭanātha explains that God (Nārāyaṇa) is both the tool and the thing to be reached through that tool. In turn, the tool and the thing to be reached have an already established (siddha) aspect and an aspect to-be-established. #Sanskrit #Philosophy

Speaker 1: "Why are you studying language X, it's a dead language!" Speaker 2: "No, it's not a dead language!" That's a bad answer, imho. It implies that dead languages don't deserve to be studied and that the study of language X, should it ever cease being spoken, should also be abandoned

"X is the language of power, it is the language of strength, it is the language of silence" might not be the best ad for language X.

Just focus on the comments to the blogpost.

I know that philosophy is often implicitly taught to be a lonely genius game, but I disagree. Teaming up makes philosophy better, for most of us.

I just realised while reading about "negative care" that my general sense of safety when walking around a city (even though other people claim that you cannot take the subway after 10pm etc.) could be connected with my being bad at reading other people's (negative) emotions

The first sentence already looks very problematic. #OtherMinds #AnimalMinds

Kind of like how American MDs prioritize their own time over their patients, in making patients wait, but at least in this case, one might not unreasonably surmise that the average MD's working time is more important than your average patient's. But HR? In a university?

AI bros steal our work and make it infinitely worse. Insult to injury.

philosophy of AI