I’m really looking forward to doing two events at this festival: one on my book, Against Identity one on a panel with @philipgoff.bsky.social and Fleur Jongepier to discuss the “charms and dangers” of AI www.g10vandeeconomie.nl#D1

My AI doomer scenario is that it bores us to death. Or we bore ourselves to death talking about it.

The opposite of aristocracy (rule by the best) is not democracy but kakistocracy: rule by the worst. In practice, democracy is the means to achieve this.

Whenever I think of the "Analytic-Continental" divide in philosophy, I remember this Economist headline from decades ago.

By the way if you are a new student or staff member at UCL you have FREE access to all Institute of Making facilities. That includes our experimental kitchen, metals, textiles, ceramics, electronics, workshops ect.. We teach you how to use them all. "What? No". YES! share.google/Hy3wMLdAQtOz...

I wonder if Dutch philosophy departments in the 1630s were only hiring in the philosophy of tulips.

Silicon Valley venture capitalists are a picture of sober restraint compared to the research funding councils on this thing.

“How silly are these investors in the AI bubble! Financial euphoria! Tulips! South Sea! Charles Kindelberger! John Kenneth Galbraith!” — proclaims a chorus of intellectuals who, until a week ago, were hyping this gimmick to the stratosphere. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

🎙️ In the very first episode of Ping Pong Philosophy, I sit down with Greg Restall, Shelby Cullom Davis Professor of Philosophy at the University of St. Andrews, to talk about possibilia, proof-theoretic semantics, and more!🏓 Full episode out now! www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHyx...

I’m a strong advocate of ancient languages, but it seems dangerous to overpromise…

Reposting because still relevant

People who work outside universities: do people in your workplace still think that a good way to create an online form is a make a Word document with little boxes? Not using the form function on Word: drawing actual boxes, like you would for a printed form, though they are hard to type into. Anyone?

A very nice result of publishing a trade book is that people contact me to share cool things they’ve written like this: philosophynow.org/issues/163/A...

Before slogans we had to express thoughts manually. We would choose individual words, one by one, and assemble them into sentences in order to express our feelings and beliefs. Hard to imagine in this automated age, but that’s how we did it.

Wow breaking news from the WSJ www.wsj.com/opinion/acad...

Again, huge thanks to Lucille Mona Ling and Nic Nahar Sharp for giving me the opportunity and asking such deep questions!

Why not combine the two worst things ever created? www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-c...

Check out CEPPA Director Mara van der Lugt on the Gray Area Podcast!

I loved talking to David Marr about René Girard: www.abc.net.au/listen/progr...

I've been pondering the difference between identity & personhood. Identity assumes something like a hard concreteness which polarises Self & Other. It shuts things out: "I'm me, I'm not you". Personhood is, I'd suggest, a relational & porous notion. We 'become' through relationship. We're not fixed.

'The ethical ideal is not to replace a conformist identity with an individual one. It is to get rid of identity altogether' Read St Andrews Philosopher @axdouglas.bsky.social 's piece for @aeon.co on the radical and potentially transformative idea of rejecting identity aeon.co/essays/how-t...

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Finally got around to picking this up! @axdouglas.bsky.social

Thinking of this for my new work bio: “I study Continental philosophy, the Continent being Asia and its promontory, Europe.”

NEW EPISODE OUT NOW! Today something a little bit different. There are now 34 bonus episodes waiting for you as soon as you sign up to PPF+ and in this episode you’ll hear some highlights from 5 of those eps. If you like what you hear, you can sign up today: www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus

I do really think that the Buru Quartet is one of the great works of literature, on the level of Dostoevsky. I’m going to write about it at some point. For now I just think it’s my civic duty to point out that the whole thing is beautifully translated into English by Max Lane.

My new op-ed: in which I ask, can we forge a Bandung moment for climate? www.downtoearth.org.in/climate-chan...

A thought provoking read. One of those books that I probably could not have read before now. I needed to walk a long journey to be ready for this one.

One thing that strikes me about this is how it opens with a warning against "abandoning our American identity" and then, very soon after, complains about "identity politics". americanmind.org/salvo/americ...

Go and see this if you’re in Edinburgh and a fan of the Zhuangzi! Or if you just want to see beautiful, philosophically deep theatre www.edfringe.com/tickets/what...

Adam Knowles reviews A Social History of Analytic Philosophy in Radical Philosophy @radical-philosophy.bsky.social www.radicalphilosophy.com/reviews/mark...

I have long argued that literature contains more truth than philosophy.

There is, I think, an exquisite wisdom in these three paragraphs from Moshin Hamid’s essay, “In the 21st century, we are all migrants”.

If we stopped making publication a de facto condition for getting hired/promoted then journals could agree not to publish any more articles unless they contained something really important. We've been blackmailing ourselves into spamming ourselves.

BONUS EPISODE OUT NOW! Today’s bonus episode on PPF+ is the 2nd part of David’s conversation with @axdouglas.bsky.social looking at how the ideas of the French philosopher René Girard got taken up and corrupted by Silicon Valley. Join PPF+ here for all our bonuses: www.ppfideas.com/join-ppf-plus

You can tell a lot about a person by making a lot of assumptions.

I really enjoyed my conversation with David, who asked very deep and difficult questions!

There's a fair bit of criticism here, but I enjoyed reading this very engaging review of my book: thecritic.co.uk/trapped-in-a...

Exciting new book on Cartesianism, featuring my wife and others! Find out why the facile “criticisms” of Cartesianism you were taught as an undergrad were reductive and dogmatic. www.routledge.com/Cartesianism...

NEW EPISODE OUT NOW! For the final ep in our current series on the history of bad ideas, David talks to philosopher @axdouglas.bsky.social about the damage that can be done by the idea of identity. Why is the search for a distinctive personal identity a futile quest? Find us at...🎧 ppfideas.com

New blog post: Peter Thiel in Locksley Hall open.substack.com/pub/axdougla...

So for me in the discussion, @axdouglas.bsky.social captures that essential anthropological relation, & corresponding tension, between *friendship* & *kinship*. This is imv (& I’ve only just started his book) what makes his new study a vital read for our ‘mimetic’, hypertrophic era