legitimate clown show stuff

I've always said Timothy Williamson was a wrong'un but people kept making excuses for him. fucking hell

PAW* patrol * postdoc appreciation week

a philosophical issue about which I've changed my mind is the debate between Whewell and Mill on induction. I used to agree with Mill. two decades later, I'm coming to agree more with Whewell.

list of things protected by the king

me and my eldest kid in the drum n bass tent

US mainstream media since Charlie Kirk died

a highlight of my philosophical career was appearing below masturbation in an index

blink-182 philpapers.org/rec/MAUWMA

next term in Lancaster I'll be teaching an introductory course and giving a public lecture on the philosophy of William Whewell. Whewell was born in Lancaster, and so I'll be including a few bits of local history.

a bit of a niche one

something I love about my clinical ethicist gig is getting to draw on diverse resources from philosophy to help solve everyday problems in clinical practice and service delivery. today I got to draw on testimonial injustice, transformative experience, and Frankfurt's 1st-order and 2nd-order desires.

and they say Freud has been discredited

evolutionary psychologists studying the environment of evolutionary adaptedness

watching a documentary about toxic masculinity. was looking reasonable until they rolled out the evolutionary psychologist

@zackpolanski.bsky.social congratulations!!

today our twins begin primary school and our eldest kid begins secondary school. feeling a bit emotional tbh

Twin 1: *looking sad* "I don't want summer to be finished" Twin 2: "IT'S AUTUMN!! AUTUMN!! YAAAAAA HALLOWEEN!!"

I have a sort of synaesthesia thing for singing voices and food. I can't quite explain it, but Tunde Baiyewu's voice from The Lighthouse Family tastes deep-fried.

feeding our hognose snake april–august september–march

you are in a kink club and this guy shows up. wyd?

there's been too much hype about A.I. emulating human activity but not enough about philosophers trying their best to sound like a race of killer robots

53% of UK respondents think Harry Potter is for adults

not sure whether to celebrate something that's probably just a bureaucratic formality which I feel I didn't do anything to earn (except agreeing to give a guest lecture) but which nonetheless gives me a fancy sounding title

one of my 4-year-old daughters wrote some music for me

never wish for a well-functioning world until you've specified the implicit teleology in the attribution of function

2020 / 2025

with just three more lines and some candles we can use the St George's cross to summon demons

The St. George's Cross

bedtime songs requested by my 4yo twins: Twin 1: Nat King Cole — let there be love Presidents of the USA — peaches John Fogarty — rockin' all over the world Twin 2: Creedence Clearwater Revival — who'll stop the rain Skunk Anansie — hedonism Alban Berg — act 1 scene 1 from Wozzeck 💀

what is your favourite philosophy journal? this is mine. I use it to write down all my philosophy thoughts and feelings.

this is probably the best article on the topic I've seen in the mainstream media. don't be put off by the misleading headline.

I'm convinced that The Beatles' "Norwegian Wood" (1965) must have somehow been influenced by William Byrd's "The Woods So Wild" (1590) — same time signature, same melodic motif at 1:48, same open fifth drone, same mixolydian mode harmonies, "this *bird* has flown", etc. youtu.be/JFCmrJ_wo7A?...

Super Mario Bros 2

just approved the proofs of my chapter for a forthcoming edited volume. looking forward to spotting a typo after casually glancing at a random page when it's published

and philosophers of medicine are a bunch of sickos

Sam Altman reminds me of this Mitchell and Webb sketch (from 0:25) youtu.be/f9L84x15fk4?...

yeah we bad

email from the head of school today about departmental restructuring

I've been thinking about how bizarre it is that the Enlightenment gets called the "age of reason", especially as so much of it seems to involve a reaction to the rationalism of the 16th–17th centuries. if anything, it seems more like the "age of sentiment" ... (1/2)

I feel like I'm living in some alternate clown universe

Thomas Kuhn when he just wants to solve a puzzle

was clearing out some papers accumulated over the years and found this old attempt by me at transcribing a Thelonious Monk solo

a philosophising snake-catcher

if it happened in the UK it would've been a doner kebab

more broadly, people have worried about human creative activities being emulated by nonhuman automata for centuries. here's Johann Joachim Quantz writing in the 18th century about the philosophical implications of musical automata (from David Yearsley's "Bach and the Meanings of Counterpoint")

der absoluter wifeGeist

reading Edmund Husserl's Cartesian Meditations as a self-help book

as shown in this interview, Christopher Reeve understood the character of Superman better than anyone. Dean Cain is a fucking joke. youtube.com/shorts/a2eF9...