Book blogging, pt5. Ch5 of the book discusses the comparisons we make and that bear on happiness - with the recent past, or our expectations, or with our neighbours. I say that some comparisons are more apt than others. Along the way, I endorse the view that "good" only ever means "better than...".

Highly relevant when you read people talking about a genetic component of happiness.

rewriting a paper rejected by Analysis

Book, pt4. Ch4 is on hedonic adaptation. I explain why it is apt for happiness to subside over time. The key observation is that there is no limit to how good or bad things might be, and so no simple way to match degrees of happiness and value. See also this in PhilImprint: philpapers.org/rec/GRETIY

Book blogging, pt3. Ch3 of the book explains the idea that happiness is an emotion - a claim that seems at once obvious, but also not widely discussed in philosophy. I also explain why this emotion is so central ("happy" and "sad" are the first emotion words that children learn).

Aaaand we're back!! Two Postdocs in Philosophy of Mind (one ot two years), Centre for Philosophical Psychology, University of Antwerp - to work with me! Deadline: March 20, 2026 More info on PhilJobs

Book blogging, part 2. Ch2 of the book explains and clarifies the main idea: you should be happy about goods. But other things happen along the way. Here's one: what does it take to possess the concept GOOD? Here's one answer: a disposition to respond to deployment of that concept with happiness.

Book blogging, part 1. How happy should you be about the present state of the world? This is a coherent question. It is also neglected: the literature on norms for emotion almost never discusses happiness. This is effectively the gap the book aims to address. alexgregory.name#HAPbook

For World Logic Day, the ontological proof of God's non-existence (I think I heard it first from my late friend Aldo Antonelli): God is a being such that there could none more awesome It is pretty awesome to be all-powerful, all-knowing etc. ...

At last I have a shareable draft of my book on Fitting Happiness! Drop me a line if you'd like to see. alexgregory.name#HAPbook

Added an entry on philpapers for my book draft - that counts as progress, right? philpapers.org/rec/GREFHO

Interestingly, even Feldman-Barrett seems open to the idea that happiness, at least, is culturally universal.

Pls share/re-post! New Onora O'Neill Prize! Here's a brand new @ecpr.bsky.social book prize in pol-theory, regardless of whether it's your 1st/10th book! Had honour of asking Onora myself if she would lend us her good name: ecpr.eu/news/news/de... @biapt.bsky.social @psapolthought.bsky.social

Filling this out as individual. Telling them that if I had to wait for ten years to apply for indefinite leave to remain I would not have thrown myself into my community as I did. I’d be aloof and shorttermist w/ little to none affective commitment to the U.K.

66% decline in five years. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

One for my introduction to philosophy module.

Yes please!

I am sharing a preprint of my chapter forthcoming in the Routledge Handbook on the Philosophy of Desire (edited by @alexgregory.bsky.social): "Desires in Economics." philpapers.org/rec/BECDIE-3 Feedback or any thoughts are welcome! Contains references to a galaxy far, far away🌌 More details below👇

I originally got into philosophy largely by hanging around on philosophy newsgroups on usenet (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet). This would have been around the mid-late 90s. I wonder if this makes me the one of the oldest academic philosophers who got into the subject through "social media"?

My article on structural rationality in desire is now out, open-access, at Utilitas. Amongst other things, it explains why instrumental desires are not just ultimate desires combined with relevant beliefs: they are more plausibly independent states of mind. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Python was awarded a funding grant, funding grant asked Python foundation to remove all diversity and inclusion initiatives they have. Python foundation said no and rejected the grant. If you use Python, send a few dollars to the charity to keep it going. I’m pushing a dono on behalf of ScamGuard.

Found some time this morning to continue some work on my manuscript on fitting happiness (alexgregory.name#HAPbook). One question: The English word "Happy" clearly has many meanings - it is polysemous. Is there yet some single core meaning common to the various uses? Luckiness?

Very glad to see that someone is doing the important work of aligning AI alignment. alignmentalignment.ai

UK Higher Ed friends, we are MASSIVE. www.kcl.ac.uk/policy-insti...

New paper: "Structural Rationality in Desire", at Utilitas. I defend the idea that structural rationality has things to say about desire, and defend a rational requirement to desire the means to your ends. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Excited to be appearing at a Philosophy in the Bookshop event at Blackwell’s flagship store in Oxford. Please repost and register now! @blackwells.bsky.social @nigelwarburton.bsky.social @philoswarwick.bsky.social www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/philosophy...

This navigable and enormous (I'm guessing: comprehensive) tree of life is pretty amazing: www.onezoom.org

It occurs to me that some people might not know of this fantastic guide to punctuation. It manages to be succinct, clear, and sensible. www.sussex.ac.uk/informatics/....

Here is the advert for a postdoc at Liverpool for a project I'm involved in. Please share it with anyone who you think might be interested in applying. A brief project description is below. tinyurl.com/4f7vw7ra

An interesting thing about sports (and other contests-for-entertainment) is that they have to balance meritocracy against excitement. Designing a contest that actually selects the best team is often boring, because we know who is the best team. So most sports build in randomness

Something about pulling apart lego toys, or unbuilding ikea furniture?

Spam emails from predatory academic journals: Dearest Dr Professor Landes, may you grace us with your world-leading expertise? Emails from actual academic journals: We've created an account in our system for you. Review this paper, kthx.

RIP Alasdair MacIntyre, a towering figure the likes of which this world rarely produces. Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised that his influence extended far beyond his scholarship:

New paper coming out in Philosopher's Imprint: "Take In Your Hen: Fittingness and Hedonic Adaptation". philpapers.org/rec/GRETIY

Putnam 1975:

Come and work with us! We are advertising for a Lecturer in Philosophy (roughly=Assistant Prof) with research interests in philosophy of mind, metaphysics, or language. Details: jobs.soton.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...

Why does everyone *always* set up the problem of evil by appeal to God's omnipotence, omnibenevolence, *and omniscience*? It's relevant to the problem, but not central. Theodicies effectively aim to state caveats on omnipotence and omnibenevolence, so they are where the action is.

This is the first of two adverts for postdocs on a project I'm involved in with Laura Gow and Thomas Raleigh. This one will be based in Luxembourg; the other will be based in Liverpool and will be advertised soon. Please share with anyone who might be interested. recruitment.uni.lu/en/details.h...

Many years ago when I was a teenager starting to study philosophy, my Nan reported that she's once heard philosophy described as the effort to check things that were normally treated as common sense. I've since found few better short descriptions, I think.

It's always hard to give a short answer to "what is philosophy?". But I wonder if the beginnings of one comes out when we notice that many of the core areas of philosophy surround words in this list: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_co... (the, be, if, good, know, want, because, etc.).

Southampton, England. r/brutalism

I get the impression that my Happiness&Wellbeing students this year are less sympathetic than normal to hedonism, and more swayed by the experience machine objection. Is that some kind of post-pandemic effect?

It is stunning to see how Meta illegally downloaded billions of pages of copyrighted books and articles from Russian pirate sites when training Llama 3. And not only that, but Meta also directly redistributed that copyrighted data to others:

More fascinating stuff.

FREE has never been “free” but today it’s come closest - Kindle & Audiobook are selling for 0.99p each & it’s topping the charts so you have until midnight to grab the offer or taste freedom or contemplate the fetish character of commodities (or just spread the word please🧿🌹!)

World Happiness Day! May your happiness be not only present, but also fitting.

Meta is training AI on pirated books?!

3 year post in Philosophy at Sheffield! www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DMH928/l...

Wow. I'm split between thinking "surely ministers are not relying on this for serious advice?!", and "there's nothing wrong with quickly confirming your existing mental map of some issue isn't missing anything big".