Unsettling experience last night: I heard disembodied voices arguing over the causes of World War One and the interpretation of Hölderlin. . I think I might have Poltergeisteswissenschaften.

A coauthor has asked me what the norms are in philosophy regarding preprints (when a paper is under review ). I think they’re changing. So: preprints - yea or nay?

I dare you to come up with a worse name for this group of researchers. I double dog dare you.

Yes, but did you read the others too?

Miss Marple and Poirot both use psychology to solve crimes. They have different but equally ludicrous methods (Miss Marple recognizes people as types, based on her experience of life in a village). So why don't we experience imaginative resistance reading the books?

For reasons, I've now watched many youtubes of AI boosters. A commonly cited benefit of LLMs is ....planning your holidays. I think if we got to the bottom of why these people feel a need for someone to plan their holidays, we would understand their motivations a lot better.

Analog clocks are basically a thing of the past. No one uses coins anymore. If Ford stops making cars, epistemology will be over.

It’s about time someone started giving philosophers ratings out of five. Admittedly, they’re only rating importance, but it’s a start. www.philosophes.org/biographies/...

It is vital we never complete the felicific calculus.

I’m at a loss to explain why this is the thumbnail for Daily Nous on my iPad.

“So responsibility is hereditary —not just biologically, but ethically.” I found this (apparent) quote online, attributed to one Neil Levy. Not sure who he is, but he seems to be full of shit.

Philosophers love cognition dissonance. Here’s another nail in its coffin. Here’s the first nail. journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

What I like about this post is the implication that a good cat impression had practical uses in former times.

A proper head scratcher, this one.

I really think I’ve got a shot at this.

In which I throw a small and very timid cat amongst some large and aggressive pigeons. philpapers.org/rec/LEVTWO-10

The case for instant runoff voting is overwhelming. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Big news: a companion to gorilla glue is coming.

In my mid 20s, I was working on Foucault and Heidegger and accepted a strong social constructionism of scientific facts. I have a terrible memory: protects me from ever solidifying.

I think this is exactly how Bruce Willis found out he isn't real in the Sixth Sense.

We crap on them, but academic publishers do it tough. I know from experience. For around a decade, I edited the journal Neuroethics. When I stepped down, Springer scraped together money to send me a gift. Sadly, Springer couldn't afford not to consume the tea that was in it when they bought it.

The virtue signaling literature predicts ever more escalation, driven by status competition. My sense is woke views have de-escalated in the past few years. Do the signaling accounts have an explanation?

They’re playing Coltrane on the plane as people board. It’s not demanding Coltrane. But still, Coltrane.

Straight acceptance - my first in more than 20 years IIRC.

@dailynous.com shouldn't be the Daily Mail. Posting things that promote outrage because people are prone to misunderstand them isn't a good look.

Family member triumphantly concludes an argument. "I think he knows better than you, Neil. He's a professor at Oxford University".

@emilyherring.bsky.social might like to know the epigraph to this paper.

I’m cited in the Washington Post. In the “style” section, which is unexpected www.washingtonpost.com/entertainmen...

I just discovered there are recordings of Zora Neale Hurston singing. youtu.be/18elVaG8G2M?...

Makes me happy that I was thrown out of Exeter.

I just played a game of chess against ChatGPT5. I gave up when it captured one of its own pawns.

Is there any upside at all for me if I agree?

Those visiting Oxford can now stay in a boutique hotel in what was formerly the Victorian-era public toilets in St Giles Street. For me, this is a dream come true. I have always yearned to sleep in an underground toilet in the middle of a busy intersection. thenetty.co.uk

So this is a new one for me: first time on a football coach's. podcast. We don't talk about football, sadly. open.spotify.com/episode/6YdV...

The word 'awkward' is homological. I thought you should know that.

Once more, I am spending my time correcting proofs (adding publisher locations for those who wonder what city the University of Chicago might be found in).

Great, now I’m hungry for bbluebberries.

In Life, the Universe, and Everything, Slartibartfast is said to be planning a monograph to set the record wrong about one or two matters he saw as important. But that's not important right now. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

I'm not taking issue with her claims, but I've been wondering lately whether sci-fi hasn't done a great deal of harm to our cultural imaginary. From Altman (we should burn fossil fuels as fast as possible for AI) to fantasies of being an multiplanetary species bsky.app/profile/iai....

In the light of renewed attention to links between Jeffrey Epstein and prominent intellectuals, including philosophers, let me come clean about my own links to billionaires. In 2024, I was offered and accepted a glass of water from Nicolas Berggruen.

I'm beginning to think that peak analytic philosophy was a lot kinkier than anyone realised.

Stolen from Reddit (obviously ).

Pascal Chabot seems to be a real person. Otherwise I would think this was a shitpost (à cause de son nom).

The Office for Students has caught wind of my plan to wear shorts if the current heatwave continues.

Not a response to Shuringa's book - I haven't read it yet - but on more or less the same topic. philpapers.org/rec/LEVDTB-2

Allegedly the actual sword used to behead Paddington.

I don’t share the outrage over the use of AI to produce bullshit in the MAHA report. What do you prefer? “I demand you produce your crap the old fashioned way”? If anything, the report’s use of citations at all shows more obeisance to epistemic standards than we’re seeing elsewhere.

My very first paper that wasn't on Foucault was on MacIntyre. 25 years later, and I'm still thinking about his work. Neither Foucault nor MacIntyre show up in the foreground of my writing very much, but it's always there in the background.