If you like your mind extended and your equality relational, my new paper in Synthese is for you. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Don't miss our new handbook: The Bloomsbury Handbook of Care Ethics An authoritative guide to care ethics: what it is, debates within the field, and the contributions it can make to contemporary issues. Learn more: bit.ly/45LEA0z Preview: bit.ly/4lxyCpG

So pleased to see the Bloomsbury Handbook of Care Ethics available in print!

Join us next month for this fantastic conference!

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Care Ethics appears to be available to all those whose institutions have subscribed to Bloomsbury Collections. Mine hasn't. But it's exciting nonetheless. www.bloomsburycollections.com/encyclopedia...

Had a great chat with the committee of UCL's Minorities and Philosophy chapter recently, setting out the case for viewing mental disabilities as neutral with respect to well-being. You can take a listen here (or on Spotify, if you prefer). soundcloud.com/user-2185781...

Successfully used the power of *asking* to get extra time I need to complete a project today. Why did nobody tell me of this magic before?

Had a fantastic time hosting this group of speakers, over the last two days, to talk through normative questions raised by our ageing societies. Thanks to all who attended too; it was a lovely way to cap off my time here in Glasgow!

One thing I feel pretty confident I will be teaching writers for years to come is that your process has to be what works for you and not what anyone else is telling you is the way to do it. Years into my MFA, I FINALLY have my process and it is so against what most people teach.

An absolute masterclass in how the UK media platforms and normalises far right politics. This is how Farage wins.

Whatever genuine fears of insincere actors exploiting accommodations exist, I do not believe the British public will comfortably bear the consequences of punishing all trans people to stop them. Call me a sentimental liberal, but I believe the cruelty of the new position ensures it will not hold.

As good a time as any to recirculate this article I published in 2022…

Backing down from the Pip freeze is not good enough. Maybe I could stomach the UC changes, but tightening the qualifying criteria for Pip further is a cowardly and cruel way to meet the Government’s self-imposed fiscal rules.

Used to be an avid Marr show viewer as a student but haven’t tuned in regularly for years. Why does it look so cheap now Kuenssberg has taken over? The backdrop makes it look like she’s filming in a student union basement. Was this a gradual or a sudden decline?

New article in open access with Analytic Philosophy. In this piece, I pull apart arguments about the nature of justice and the nature of equality in relational egalitarian literature, giving an account of a relational approach to justice that need not necessarily be egalitarian.

Pre-orders of the collection I edited for Bloomsbury on care ethics are now available. So excited to have found a home for some fantastic contributions from across our international scholarly community!

Another set of long term ambitions that will achieve little meaningful change, because policymakers have few fixed views on what the social care sector is *for*. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Love it when I spend months making torturously slow progress on a draft paper, then finish it rapidly and by surprise. It happens nearly every time, but you try convincing me of that when I’m in the thick of writing one paragraph every three hours.

In 2023 alone more than 1 million people registered Lasting Powers of Attorney. But this is a tale about concerns relation to one legal firm in Essex and 30 cases involving Mr Hiller and his firm, Craybeck Law A disturbing pattern of events: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I expect there are significant framing effects here. Consider: “Under FPTP a party needs to win in the majority of constituencies to get a majority in Parliament. Under PR, a party can win with a majority of votes even if they come from a smaller number of constituencies. Which would you prefer?”

1) What it means to relate to one another as equals given our vulnerability, interdependence, and reliance on supportive configurations of shared spaces to pursue our interests and realise our values. 2) The implications of a distinction between subjectivity and consciousness.

Fantastic visiting Leeds for the first time. Really interested in whether it’s recently been redeveloped. I distinctly remember moving to Leeds being part of Donna’s dystopian experience in the Doctor Who episode “Turn Left”. Based on what I’ve seen today, that may be unforgivably London-centric!

"Councils are today calling for the needs of hundreds of thousands of working age adults and life-long disabled people requiring social care not to be overlooked in government plans for a National Care Service."

Broadly agree with this. Winning messages tell voters what you will *do* with power: preferably in simple, evocative terms. And that’s especially important for an incumbent government in power through crisis. Whether voters like what you’ll do (or believe you will do it) is another question.

At some point, we’re going to have to acknowledge that Donald Trump is one of the most effective political communicators of modern times.

New article published (with genuine open access!!) in the Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy! www.jesp.org/index.php/je...

Labour getting an obscenely disproportionate majority at the next election is, somewhat counterintuitively, the best outcome for the movement for electoral reform. In no small part because governments with small majorities tend to shy away from legislation likely to provoke backbench rebellion.

Every morning I throw that ball of feathers onto that shelf, and my cat runs up and brings it back down. I then throw it up again and she fetches it again. We can repeat this for up to an hour. We must imagine Rosie happy!

There’s been a noticeable uptick in politically-charged work on dementia in sociology and psychology in recent years. I’m halfway through this book and feeling even more strongly that philosophy is far behind other disciplines on this.

I’m soft-launching calling myself a “philosopher” rather than an “academic working in philosophy” here on BlueSky. I may never get over the cringe, but I will persevere regardless.

The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2023 Essay Prize Topic: Methodology Prize £2,500 and publication in Philosophy. Deadline 31st January 2024. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

It took me less than two years of living in Scotland to start complaining about how busy the streets are down south. What are you all rushing for?