Jason Chen interviewed me for his podcast series The Ethical Frontier. We began by discussing a recent paper of mine on the fear of death, and branched out from there. Fascinating stuff! www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynjg...

I feel bad for my friends at Adelaide University. Philosophy has been reduced to 8 generic topics that every student must now take. And because it's all laid down as recorded lectures, topics will be harder to update in the future to reflect new ideas or relevant issues.

quote-skeeting because this is an issue I've worked on a lot. Moods/emotions can be distinguished in a way that is in retrospect obvious. It comes down to the fact that most emotional episodes involve both a cognitive appraisal and a pattern of bodily responses... 1/6

How literally can we take the idea that we have a psychological immune system and that depression is a dysfunction of it?

Please help me out! Best examples in film where the music moves from non-diagetic to diagetic or vice versa? Youtube clips if possible 🙏 Here's one: www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfJc...

Exciting news! I just learned that @levgrossman.com is going to be the 2025 Flinders writer in residence. This new book of his is going straight to the top of the pile events.flinders.edu.au/events/lev-g...

A proposed measure for happiness: Amount of time either 1) experiencing the final value of things or .5) instrumentally nurturing things, multiplied by how much one loves/endorses them, minus the time spent in conflict with one’s attachment to things multiplied by how much one loves/endorses them.

I did not expect a performance of Bach's Air to be such a blatant thirst trap. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cvgl...

Where can you find Pope Leo XIV next to Bruce Lee? On this poster I made of famous people who studied philosophy! (I hear Leo XIV is also wicked on the nun-chucks) #philosophy #philsky

@lindsaybrainard.bsky.social‬ has written a beautiful short paper about the harms to a student who uses AI for a creative assignment. Since it is around 4000 words however, I fear that no student considering cheating will read it. philpapers.org/rec/BRASAF-4

If you know an Australian teenager, please encourage them to enter the Flinders Thought Experiment Competition. All they need is a short description up to 300 words. Deadline is 7th July. The winning entry will be animated! For details and last years winner see: www.flinders.edu.au/study/humani...

I no longer believe in clouds.

I gave a talk at the University of the Third Age. A hundred people enthusiastic to hear and talk about metaphysics. A significant contrast from my usual teaching experience.

Every artwork must be loved into existence. But to extend the metaphor, they often have an awkward adolescent phase where they are rather less lovable and you have to keep the faith.

Friends, I am excited to share with you the cover of my forthcoming book 'Identity in Science Fiction'. www.bloomsbury.com/au/identity-...

Any international candidates out there looking to do a PhD? I'm available to supervise in the areas of mind, aesthetics, well-being and personal identity. Scholarship applications are due in August www.flinders.edu.au/scholarships...

check out this version of Caravan by Ken Peplowski and Diego Figueiredo #jazz www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb8Y...

Apparently the South Australian government is considering support for recruiting 'top level' researchers from the USA. Any US philosophers out there looking to get out of your troubled land and moving to free and peaceful Adelaide? If so, get in touch, seriously.

Today I received a PhD supervision-request email that was pretty clearly AI generated- including bullshit rhetoric and hallucinating what I've worked on. Pro-tip for candidates: you've got to be fucking kidding me.

If you have two minutes, you might enjoy this little piano piece youtu.be/nTgUS8sYglE #jazz #piano #jazzpiano #jazzsky

I've changed my mind on this. Now I think that the raw material of philosophy is truth, but our art is to generate meaning, where meaning implies not just truth but also significance.

Peer review is the practice of sending your work to the people with the highest potential of being harmed by it, to see if they like it. It's a bit like animal testing in this way.

Looks like the pope has conformed to the 'death takes a holiday' effect- holding out until just after Easter.

Dammit- *another* Tom Cochrane has turned up, and this one in my home city too. There can be only one. www.portadelaidefc.com.au/players/9611...

Yesterday This Day’s Madness did prepare; Tomorrow's Silence, Triumph, or Despair: Drink! for you not know whence you came, nor why: Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where. www.netnik.com/khayyam/ruby...

I must admit I’m still on twitter. In fact because it’s now a lot more right-leaning, it’s become a relatively useful source to challenge confirmation bias. I don’t find all your left wing gotchas illuminating.

Matt Nestor is new on bluesky! Give him a follow.

New publication! Perceptual Control Theory is an essential framework for the mind. This 2500 word article co-authored with Matthew Nestor reviews the last 5 years of work in this area, focusing particularly on how PCT explains teleology/goal-directedness www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Academics complain, but I've never minded compiling the indexes for my books. The process gives you a new perspective on how your ideas are organised.

Serious question: does anyone think there can be an actual infinite, or completed infinite series? Bonus points if you think it could be physical rather than merely mathematical.

I keep writing pieces of music in Bb minor. I start out in all sorts of different ways and yet end up back there again. It's like that's the key my soul is in.

What's this? A scholarly volume about Severance? Shame they didn't include any philosophers working on identity, but looks like there's some fun political stuff in there link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

Here's the winning entry from the Flinders thought experiment competition that we ran in 2024. 'The Vertebrata conundrum' is by Yesha Patel and Miranda Li from Glenunga International High School. www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh1b... It's a very interesting and entertaining case.

I sometimes suspect that there's a publishing bias in philosophy towards non-physicalist, Platonist positions. I mean, given how wrong those positions are.

Everyday I try to do at least one thing that isn't futile. I do not always succeed.

A nice edited collection would be of fictions about music. What short stories or excerpts would you include in such a collection? Two suggestions: Olaf Stapledon's 'A World of Sound' and Orson Scott Card's 'Unaccompanied Sonata'.

If you think the world is going to hell, what do you think is the ultimate cause? Stupidity? Inequality? Selfishness?

This guest post on Daily Nous about the problems for philosophy PhDs in the alt-academic job market is mostly scary and occasionally hilarious. Basically the threats come from off-shoring, AI automation for technical writing, and the gig economy dailynous.com/2025/03/12/t...

I just finished reading 'The Mind Body Problem' by Rebecca Goldstein. Literary stuff, drawing a lot on the author's orthodox Jewish background. It's as much about the worship of intelligence as anything else. The most barbed comments are about Princeton philosophy in the 1970s.

I have a beautiful solution to why there is something rather than nothing, but I'm afraid to submit the paper. I've been wrong so many times before.

My Flinders colleague Lisa Bennett has a new book out on how the thinking cultivated by sci-fi and fantasy can have real world policy benefits. Interesting stuff! You can read the introduction chapter via the Bloomsbury site. www.bloomsbury.com/au/story-thi... @flindersuniversity.bsky.social

Mixed messages from my local liberal MPs fridge magnet calendar. On the one hand he has a dog and a blonde wife so he must be a good guy, but on the other hand they seem to be sitting in front of a concentration camp.

Although philosophy aims at truth, it does not aim at consensus as a means to truth. This is unlike science (and more like art), and so can seem pointless and frustrating to outsiders.

Looked at philjobs.org lately? 26/187 jobs want AI ethics as an AOS or AOC. That's 14% or nearly 1 in 7- and 17 of those are tenure track! This ratio won't reflect the current batch of early career scholars, so weaker candidates who are luckily in fashion are more likely to be hired.

The Substance is in the end the stupidest film I've seen since Old (2021). I miss intelligent science fiction movies.

Just realising why there are so many David Lynch posts today and… oh man

My attitude towards Christianity is pretty much exactly my attitude to the Narnia stories.

IAI are sharing an article I wrote in 2023. If you can't get past the subscriber access you can get the pdf off my website sites.google.com/view/tomcoch...

Have any philosophers out there published any papers in the last 5 years broadly relating to a control-theory approach to mind/action/perception/mental health? I'm working on a review.

Just re-read Stephen King's 1982 novel The Running Man. The setting: "In 2025, the world's economy is in shambles and America has become a totalitarian dystopia." Apparently a new film remake, much more faithful to the novel is coming out! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Run...