I'm always impressed how @wiglet1981.bsky.social generously promotes *others'* successes on here and Facebook - it seems only fitting to congratulate him in turn on this fantastic honour! An excellent choice for Oxford.

“It’s just common sense!” Bertrand Russell:

I mean, the food here looks fairly edible in the context of something made in the front seat of a van, and there is some serious skill here in not cutting, poisoning, or burning anyone involved.

The first page obviously is quite different from the last, though no two adjacent pages differ

Learn to read, with Sorites

Oh no :(

Perfect! But we can perhaps add: and then you wonder whether it goes at all.

Marking season. Annual reminder that marking sixty 2000-word essays is akin to (harder than?) reading a hefty novel and writing out a review of every single chapter, maintaining consistent attention to detail each time. This is not at all easy or quick.

The metaphor "Killed two birds with one stone" seems a bit.. dated. On looking it up, I discover that some have proposed replacing it with "fed two birds with one scone". Lovely!

Do the ultra-rich have personalised number plates? Or would doing that that risk being mistaken for someone of a lower class, someone who has to prove their wealth?

For the fastest 5k of his marathon (35-40k) Sawe ran it in 13:42. That would be the course record on almost every parkrun in the UK. That pace is just so hard for ordinary runners to comprehend as a marathon pace.

Autonomously peeling an apple, from Sharpa. This company continues to produce the most impressive autonomous dexterous manipulation videos in the world. arxiv.org/pdf/2603.08122

There’s a lot of noise in politics but if you want to understand why we’ve had 8 Prime Ministers in the last 20 years and no leading politician has a positive approval rating, you might want to check out this chart

Philosophy of cog sci job at Sheffield - 3yr post. Get in touch if you have questions! www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DQU853/l... #philsky #Philosophy

If you’re still expected to do 8 hours work, and now you don’t have to do the parts that you could do on autopilot, it’s not surprising the result is more intense.

I made a philosophy cryptic crossword for our postgrad reading party last week. A few people asked about it, so I shared it with @dailynous.com, and it's now available on the Heap of Links: dailynous.com/wp-content/u... So if you're a special kind of nerd, check it out! #PhilSky #CrypticCrossword

I'm hiring again!! 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

My review of Allan Hazlett's excellent book. /The Epistemology of Desire and the Problem of Nihilism/. The book is really great and I do recommend it highly. ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/the-...

New article: Alex Gregory, "Take In Your Hen: Fittingness and Hedonic Adaptation", Philosophers' Imprint 26: 4. doi: doi.org/10.3998/phim... Abstract in alt text. #philsky

Eleven new papers up at @philimprint.bsky.social, including papers by @domlopes.bsky.social, @alexgregory.bsky.social and @daniwenner.bsky.social. journals.publishing.umich.edu/phimp/

"Take in your hen: Fittingness and Hedonic Adaptation" is now available, open access at @philimprint.bsky.social. Come for the Julia Donaldson reference, stay for the question of whether hedonic adaptation is irrational. journals.publishing.umich.edu/phimp/articl...

Book blogging, pt8. Ch8 explains Barbara Fredrickson's /Broaden and Build/ theory of happiness. It's a great theory - intuitive and insightful. I explain how this theory neatly meshes with the theory of fittingness to deliver my view of when happiness is fitting. alexgregory.name#HAPbook

My growing take on AI: Right now it's good but only at things you aren't good at. Don't use it to help you with cutting edge research or to improve your special talent. But do use it to learn distant subjects you don't know at all, or improve your abysmal skills at things you've never learned.

Book blogging, pt7. What the heck is fittingness? Chapter 7 offers a systematic theory, which promises to (a) show why fittingness is worth caring about (i.e. solve the RKR problem), and (b) help us identify the fittingness condition for any given attitude in a principled way. This chapter=ambitious

Book blogging pt6. Ch6 discusses strategies for gaining happiness. We cannot be happy at will, but only in light of its seeming fitting. This connects to familiar claims about "wrong" vs "right" kinds of reason. It also explains various facts about happiness, such as why toxic positivity is toxic.

Come and work with us on project EPIC at @unibirmingham.bsky.social. We are looking for a #Philosophy postdoc with an interest in the area at the intersection of philosophy, psychology, and mental health. edzz.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid... #philsky #jobs #epistemicinjustice

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...