AI and the Degradation of the Human Capacity for Friendship (guest post by @gracehelton.bsky.social) Part Two of a two-part series by Grace Helton (guest blogger) schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/05/ai-a...

ChatGPT Is Not Your Friend: guest post by Grace Helton at The Splintered Mind schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/05/chat...

From an article yesterday in @theatlantic.com. I agree with Schwitzgebel!

Superhuman Moral Standing (for possible future entities) I suggest three possible routes: * having much more of what matters * having something that matters far beyond our comprehension * not being individuatable into discrete entities like us schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/05/supe...

Happy 20th birthday, The Splintered Mind! Some reflections on what has kept me blogging for so long: schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/04/twen...

You think you know what belief is? No! At best you have an accidentally true opinion, unless you've read Jonathan Lewis-Jong's and my edited collection, The Nature of Belief, hot off the press at OUP. (Also available open access at OUP's website.)

Could "do your thing" -- harmoniously with the world and reflecting your specific predilections and talents -- serve as a general (Daoist-inspired) ethical motto? In this blog post, I argue yes, but not in a totalizing way. schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/04/do-y...

Some thoughts on Kim Stanley Robinson's remarks about the value of science fiction: schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/04/kim-...

Last week I submitted my latest book manuscript to Cambridge University Press (for their "Element" series of books about 100 pages long): AI and Consciousness: A Skeptical Overview -- because you haven't heard nearly enough about AI and consciousness recently, of course! 😉 Maybe you'll 1/3

So You're on the "Waiting List" for a Philosophy PhD Program a post of explanation and advice (link in comments)

Hot off the press: "Sacrificing Humans for Insects and AI", a critical review of recent work on animal and AI moral standing, with Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, in Ethics (discusses recent books by @birchlse.bsky.social, @jeffsebo.bsky.social, and Webb Keane). www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....

A Model of Disunified Human Experience: unity of experiences in the attended "global workspace" while many unattended, peripheral experiences remain disunified. schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/03/a-mo...

Today's blog post: Backup and Death for Humanlike AI If AI persons capable of duplication and backup ever come to exist, we will need to develop new words, concepts, and customs. "Death" and "same person" will be a matter of degree. schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/03/back...

Age and Fame in Philosophy Philosophers tend to peak in their influence around ages 55-70, though there's considerable individual variation. Blog post here: schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/03/age-...

Philosophy Should Be Among the Most Diverse Disciplines, Not the Least The productive engine of philosophy depends on novelty and difference. A fair and flourishing discipline would treasure rather than repel those who have historically been excluded. schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/03/phil...

New and free online: @msgjonhere.bsky.social & my edited collection of essays on belief with Oxford University Press: academic.oup.com/book/62410 Table of Contents in thread

Today's blog post: Discussion Arcs for Topics and Philosophers schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/02/disc...

Disunity and Indeterminacy in Artificial Consciousness (and Maybe in Human Consciousness Too) blog post: schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/02/disu...

Today's blog post: The Intrinsic Value of Diversity I think you'll join me in thinking that the world would be better, better for its own sake, if it were diverse rather than uniform. schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/02/the-... Oh, some of you disagree? Good!

Weirdness on sale! Paperback $15.36 at Princeton's website with discount code P330. Hardback more than half off (?!) -- $14.85 -- at Amazon. (At least that's what I'm seeing right now.) Welcome some Weirdness into your mind.

New paper in draft with Kendra Chilson: "Artificial Intelligence as Strange Intelligence: Against Linear Models of Intelligence" Abstract: We endorse and expand upon Susan Schneider's critique of the linear model of AI progress and introduce two novel concepts: "familiar intelligence" and 1/x

My paper with @jeffsebo.bsky.social , "The Emotional Alignment Design Policy", now live at Topoi [link in comments]. Artificial entities should be designed to elicit emotional reactions from ordinary users that appropriately reflect the entities’ capacities and moral status, or lack thereof.

Today's blog post: Does Global Workspace Theory Solve the Question of AI Consciousness? Hint: no. schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/01/does...

Is Signal Strength a Confound in Consciousness Research? today's blog post, critiquing @matthiasmichel.bsky.social and @hakwan.bsky.social -- link in comments

There's no shame in losing a long-form popular essay contest on AI consciousness to eminent neuroscientist @anilseth.bsky.social. His piece: www.noemamag.com/the-mytholog... My piece "AI Mimics and AI Children" appears among the shortlisted contenders here: loc.closertotruth.com/essay/ai-mim...

Today's blog post [link in🧵]: Humble superintelligence as a response to AI risk. Build it humble, cautious, and multilateral. Inspired by Burkean conservatism and philosophical Daoism.

Writings of 2025, with brief descriptions and links: schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/01/writ...

How Much Should We Give a Joymachine? a holiday post on gifts to your utility monster neighbors schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2025/12/how-...

Debatable AI Persons: No Rights, Full Rights, Animal-Like Rights, Credence-Weighted Rights, or Patchy Rights? schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2025/12/deba...

New interview at the Delving In podcast: "Eric Schwitzgebel on the Conundrums of the Mind-Body Problem and the Ethical Dilemmas of Possibly Conscious A.I." www.lccommunityradio.org/archives/del...

Fascinating piece in the New Yorker on Oliver Sacks, especially his homosexuality and -- unfortunately! -- the fabrications in his lovely and inspiring essays about his patients, esp. in Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. Since the latter is 1/2

We can introspectively test the Global Workspace Theory of consciousness: Just introspect your experience right now. Is there a welter of detail in many sensory modalities at once? If so, GWT must be false. Sadly, we are utterly incompetent at introspection. [link in 🧵]

LLMs overwhelming choose octopus as their favorite animal. But if asked 2nd-favorite animal first, they *also* choose octopus and say corvids are their top favorite, then mistakenly deny that their answers are affected by question order. Link to full blog post in thread.

Four Aspects of Harmony [today's blog post, link in thread] What is it to harmonize with the world? Inspired by @vonkriegstein.bsky.social, I suggest: 1. Mental correspondence (e.g., knowing, achievements in tune with the world) 2. Positive attitudes (e.g., joy, approval, appreciation) [1/2]

Today's blog post: Representational Realism and the Problem of Tacit Belief [link in comments] To avoid an infinite proliferation of stored representations, industrial-strength representational realists need to distinguished between core beliefs with explicitly stored [1/3]

We Are God's Equals in Intrinsic Moral Value [today's blog post; link in comments] A humanlike god running us in a simulation wouldn't have an intrinsically more valuable life than ours. Moreover, adding knowledge, power, and benevolence doesn't increase intrinsic moral worth.

On Friday, I'll be at Scripps College giving a talk titled "God Sucks" at a two-day (Fri-Sat) workshop on Virtual Reality as Metaphor. My thought is this: If we're living in a virtual reality/simulation, the managers ("gods") are incompetent, indifferent, or cruel. How this generalizes to gods 1/2

Arrived today: My 2024 Clarkesworld story “How to Remember Perfectly” reprinted in Joe Stech’s Think Weirder: Year’s Best Science Fiction ideas. Some great company in the ToC!

I met James Watson as a high school student in 1986, at an event in Washington DC for selected students to meet leaders in business, academia, and culture. Watson gave a talk about how the Japanese would dominate the world unless the US funded more science. Around a 1/3 apnews.com/article/jame...

Today's post: Debatable Persons in a Voluntary Polis [link in thread] A partial solution to the "full-rights dilemma" for future AI who might or might not be full moral persons: Create them in a voluntary polis where they and human volunteers dwell as equals.

New interview of me at Tevin Naidu's podcast, on whether we will know whether near-future AI systems are conscious: YouTube: youtu.be/zxNyX1kq9ro?... Blog Post: www.mindbodysolution.org/blog/the-epi... Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/0WHK...

Letting Pass For two months we kept the dog run, as if she might come back. But we had killed her ourselves, or rather the vet had, with that bright needle, in Pauline's arms. Pauline had thought she was ready; she was not. Our children's favorite toys, from when they were two, are stacked 1/5

Two Dimensionalism about Other Minds, and Its Implications for Brain Organoids and Robots [link in thread] Two-dimensionalism holds that we are justified in attributing consciousness to others only when *both* their physiology and their functional/behavioral patterns are similar.

Humanities majors in free fall in the US: Since 2008, English has declined from 3.8% to 1.7% of Bachelor's degrees awarded, history from 2.5% to 1.2%, foreign lang/lit from 1.9% to 0.9%, and philosophy from 0.6% to 0.4%. 22% of philosophy BAs are awarded by just 20 universities.

New in draft with Susan Schneider, David Sahner, Robert Lawrence Kuhn & Mark Bailey - a primer on central ideas and concepts in the AI consciousness debate. If you're looking for a toehold in the sea of jargon, this might help. philpapers.org/rec/SCHIAC-22

New book in draft: AI and Consciousness [link in thread] This book is a skeptical overview of the literature on AI and consciousness. Anyone who emails me comments on the entire manuscript will be thanked in print and receive an appreciatively signed hard copy.

Why Philosophy? has published a brief interview of me on the nature and practice of philosophy celineleboeuf.substack.com/p/eric-schwi...

Early Career Hugo Nominations -- Yes, They Definitely Happen a quantitative analysis [link in thread] Almost half of Hugo nominations go to early-career authors: 51/112 (46%)

The Searle Chair John Searle died a couple weeks ago. Since people are sharing stories, I'll share one of my own. As a philosopher of science studying developmental psychology, my dissertation committee initially consisted of Elisabeth Lloyd, Martin Jones, and Alison Gopnik. The topic led me 1/11

Today's blog post (link in comments): DigiDan's "Mistake": Fidelity vs Novelty in Digital Replicas Philosopher Dan Dennett's digital replica was sometimes arguably truer to the overall gist of his corpus than Dennett himself was at the end of his life.