I’ve officially resigned as Associate Editor for Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience. It used to be a reputable journal, but became a case study in how forced automation destroys academic integrity. 👇

I wrote something for a symposium on The Edge of Sentience (@birchlse.bsky.social). It's too philosophical for the venue, apparently, so I've uploaded it to philarchive. philarchive.org/rec/LEVSMB

Anyone else seeing evidence that the Taylor & Francis submission system is melting down?

Football question: does West Ham’s relegation mean there’s *no* European competition they qualify for?

Michael Bishop once published a paper called “In Praise of Epistemic Irresponsibility: How lazy and ignorant can you be?” I like to think I’m rising to the challenge. academic.oup.com/analysis/adv...

Played a game of chess on chess.com. Next day I got an email: “You have a one day streak! Keep it going”. The following day “Your one day streak is paused.” The day after that “Hurry! We can’t hold your one day streak much longer!” Now I’m wondering what the record for a one day streak is.

If I’m understanding things correctly (always an open question), PDC journals (like J Phil) don’t publish open access papers. That seems a good way to exclude most of Europe from submitting.

I’m going right off Marx now.

I don't use Facebook, but I'm on it because friends are. Was thinking of quitting because I was seeing so much unhinged right wing crap. Meta must have read my mind, cos it's now feeding me unhinged left wing crap (about Golders Green).

The lack of a space after the period bothers me much more than is rational.

Happy one month anniversary to my paper being “with journal administrator.”

What people are missing is that the saying implies there's at least one more kettle full of fish. One would be surprising enough.

I don't know how I feel about this. The view that what Israel does necessarily reflects on Judaism risks conflating the two in a way that gives too much credit to those who say that criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic. www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a...

I guess if you're going to carry out a deeply odd project, you should do it in a deeply odd way. www.theguardian.com/stage/ng-int...

Foucault's lesson on how the encounter with a different way of carving up the world, a different episteme if you will, shows us the possibility of thinking otherwise really brought home to me by noticing that they put the bins out on a differernt day up the hill.

*Former* Roman Dictator? Did something happen? There's been nothing on the news.

An Oxford cafe. Two elderly* people are chatting. “Are you seeing much of the grandkids?” “Oh! I love them, really. But I thought I was done with child rearing. It’s a kind of Derridean hauntology, where they return to you in uncanny form.” * older even than me.

A veeeeery minor annoyance with @rbnmckenna.bsky.social's excellent qualified defence of doing your own research. He says a distinction I make between truth-directed and exploratory research doesn't get at what's going right with patient research in the AIDS crisis. He's right! 1/3

I sometimes play chess online for relaxation.* I often play against people with usernames like "Grandmastersfearme" or "TheNewMagnusCarlsen." Bro! You're splashing around in the shallow end just like me. *if there is a worse way to relax, I haven't found it.

According to Stoljar, philosophical embarrasment can be moral (I am embarrassed that so many great philosophers were racist) or epistemic (I might be embarrassed that philosophy doesn't solve its problems. 1/2 www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Actual headline in my local newspaper.

It's still doing it, btw.

'Roll 'em Pete' (Big Joe Turner) may not be the world's most romantic song, but it's close. Well, you're so beautiful, you've got to die someday Well, you're so beautiful, you've got to die someday All I want's a little loving, just before you pass away.

Noted without comment (from today's QS rankings of philosophy departments).

Not the worst thing he's done, but I will never forgive Donald Trump for making me more sympathetic to virtue epistemology.

Why is Ema Bushati credited with all these citations of works by Roger Scruton? scholar.google.com/citations?us...

I think the bar for sacking academics once hired should be high. But we should refuse any engagement with departments and institutions that show terrible judgment in their hiring decisions.

Is there work on how to count AIs? Suppose they were to become persons, how many persons would they be? One per model (so there’d be just a few dozen more persons in the world). Or very many? Someone must have written about this!

Overheard in Oxford. One young woman to another: "We each have different roles in our friendship group. You're the diplomat. And I'm the alcoholic."

Grammarly's "expert review" - where AIs supposedly mimicing real experts provide feedback - has enrolled hundreds of experts without their consent. These seem to include philosophers. Anyone know which philosophers have been enrolled?

The website for WIRES Cognitive Science (a journal I've published in) has this notice: This material is only for use by healthcare professionals. By continuing to view this site you are confirming that you are a healthcare professional. Seems....odd.

I know the question everyone is asking themselves today is "how do I pronounce Husserl" (as in Edmund Husserl)? I was taught to pronounce it as if it were spelled "Hüssel"; i.e., to rhyme with "rüssel," rather than the way one would expect.

Philosophers: is it important to reply to a paper? A recent paper in an excellent journal is a response to me. In favor of replying: it badly mischaterizes my views. Against, the first-order is a junior scholar who doesn't deserve dunking (and I can't see a way to gently point out how wrong it is).

Reform's polling means I get to experience just a faint echo of what trans people, asylum seekers and immigrants experience regularly and much more strongly: the feeling that my right to exist is on the ballot. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Everyone's doing it.

Yesterday, I found the die on the left lying on the ground. Today I found the one on the right. Alea jacta est, I guess.

Big week starts today. Tomorrow Chinese New Year starts, and, of course, today is Bungo’s birthday. youtu.be/1Qpj1MikAsc?...

This annoys me more than is reasonable.

Great replacement theory vindicated.

I get emails.

Sanity check: am I off base in thinking that these defections are good news? A big part of the attraction of Reform is that they're seen as 'outsiders'. My sense is that every ex Tory hurts them a bit more.

The Odyssey: A "mythical" literary work "deemed by some to be superior to the Lord of the Rings."

This is the content I needed today.

I've been struggling to come up with a charitable reading of this headline that could actually go with the article.

It's all coming true, just as Gary Larson predicted. www.theguardian.com/science/2026... @cowtoolsdaily.bsky.social

"Neil Levy is not a philosopher. He is classifed under Applied Ethics". Et tu, ChatGPT?

Most barbers seem to be in their 20s and 30s. There are few in their 50s and even fewer older than that. My hypothesis that as they grow older, multiple barbers fuse into a single super barber. In other news, I had a haircut.

Just struck me that 'Jason' is a pretty odd name for a Greek hero. Heracles, Odysseus, Achilles, Perseus....and Jason? Here's how I imagine them.

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?