My latest occasional piece of writing: open.substack.com/pub/beasley/...

Hot off the press: Michael Kremer’s and my resurrection of Margaret Macdonald.

It occured to me a while back, reading Margaret Cavendish to teach her as a critic of Descartes, that, because her vitalism is closely linked to her ideas about mind (and given some of the specific claims she makes), one might see her view as a proto-embodied cognition theory.

(Kant & Hegel) + (19th century advancements in biology) + (19th century physiological psychology) + (statistics) = Pragmatism

"We know now that in the early years of the 20th century, this world was being watched closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own. We know now that as human beings busied themselves about their various concerns, they were scrutinized and studied...

"Spirit is...the movement that is...the transformation of...substance into subject, of the object of consciousness into the object of self-consciousness... This transformation is the circle returning back into itself, which presupposes its beginning and reaches its beginning only at the end."

I oppose "GenAI" for many reasons, but one of the worst things for me personally is ruin my favourite punctuation mark: the em dash. Its overuse of them is often a signal that a piece of writing was produced by "AI", so I now often hesitate to use them. I want my punctuation back! *shakes fist*

Check out my good friend @niallroe.bsky.social's new paper on Charles S. Peirce on Experiment: philpapers.org/rec/ROECPA-2

of my use of ‘experience’ are, for all practical purposes, insurmountable. I would substitute the term ‘culture’ because with its meanings as now firmly established it can fully and freely carry my philosophy of experience.” (2/3)

Wishing I could be at The Dewey Center at SIU Carbondale (@deweycenter.siu.edu) for the *Experience and Nature* Centennial conference. I was supposed to be there & give a talk, but my travel plans did not work out and I'm unable to be there.

how to have an analog fall a syllabus for lower screen time and cortisol levels juliannasalguero.substack.com/p/how-to-hav...

I enjoy the effect that teaching Peirce typically has on my philosophy of science students; for them he's like a breath of fresh air, blowing out so many of the previous confusions without sacrificing rigor.

New post on my substack: Human Meanings open.substack.com/pub/beasley/...

Hello, #AcademicSky! We are the Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science (CLPS) at KU Leuven. Our senior and junior researchers focus on #logic, #epistemology & #philsci. We’re here to share our work and connect with logicians and philosophers of science worldwide—help us spread the word! #philsky

My other insight from crude translation? Hegel's notorious "Aufheben". In crude English? "Up-heave". Captures the dual sense well: to lift or raise (or heave) up, but also to disrupt, destroy, change (cf. 'upheaval'). Here endeth the lesson. 👨‍🏫

Sometimes translating German philosophical terms into crude, literal English is illuminating. Case in point: Kant's "Anschauung", translated into English since time immemorial using the Latinate word "intuition", which in English has a completely different meaning which confuses the issue.

"[There is a] need for a philosophy that will…set Reason itself in harmony with nature, not by having Reason renounce itself or become an insipid imitator of nature, but by Reason recasting itself into nature out of its own inner strength." -- G.W.F. Hegel (see below for citation)

New post on my substack: Human Meanings open.substack.com/pub/beasley/...

So-called "Whiggish histories" are not histories at all, but philosophical arguments for the adoption of a certain (aspect of a) worldview or approach to a concept or an aspect of life. So, they cannot exactly be "disproven" by histories which are more detailed, complicated, and strictly accurate.

Even accepting the premise that AI produces useful writing (which no one should), using AI in education is like using a forklift at the gym. The weights do not actually need to be moved from place to place. That is not the work. The work is what happens within you.

Finished reading this today, the latest in some reading I've been doing about the history of science and the role played by what we would now think of as occult, mystical, or magical ideas in the progress of science in the 14th to 17th centuries.

"All we sought was the truth that the facts didn’t tell us." -- Philip Marlowe, in Raymond Chandler's *The Long Goodbye*.

Melanie Mitchell @melaniemitchell.bsky.social is always worth reading on AI, and this is no exception. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Idea: Sellars' claim that "means" statements ("... means ___") are metalinguistic and display the functional roles of concepts, is basically his version, in the idiom of analytic philosophy ("the new way of words"), of Peirce's 'pragmatic maxim'. (I cannot be the first to think this)

It’s kinda fun that “substance”, “hypostasis” and “understand” all kinda have the same base meaning, looking at their etymology. Stand under. When we hypothesize we place something under, try it as a foundation. When we gain the right kind of confidence, we stand there with it.

"The traditional mind-body problem is...a veritable tangle of tangles. At first sight but one of the 'problems of philosophy,' it soon turns out, as one picks at it, to be nothing more nor less than the philosophical enterprise as a whole." -- Wilfrid Sellars, "Intentionality and the Mental", 507

Of old, those who were called scholars were mysterious, subtle, and with knowledge so profound that it cannot be understood. Because we cannot understand, we can only know them by their outward appearance:

No witty comment; I'm just very happy to see this. doi.org/10.1017/apa....

Me imperturbe, standing at ease in Nature, Master of all, or mistress of all—aplomb in the midst of irrational things, Imbued as they—passive, receptive, silent as they, Finding my occupation, poverty, notoriety, foibles, crimes, less important than I thought; [...]

The writer Trevanian (nom de plume of film scholar Rodney William Whitaker), described the typical fan of his novels in a peculiar way, which it seems to me is apt to describe what is best in pragmatism and something I recognize in myself: "An idealist mugged by reality".

I have a blog--it's actually a substack, but I'm old enough to still call it a blog--here: beasley.substack.com. So far it only has one post, "Are We in the Anthropocene or Not?" (beasley.substack.com/p/are-we-in-...) from over a year ago, but I intend to publish more regularly starting soon.

The advance version of latest article, "What is Pragmatism's Language and Experience Debate Really About?" in Contemporary Pragmatism is now out: brill.com/view/journal... If you would like me to send you a copy, I'm happy to do so; email me at bbeasley[at]ucalgary.ca

Not two minutes on here and already I'm reminded why I quit social media! Haha. So, don't expect to see me much. But I will post little updates from time to time, and the occasional substack post, once I start that up. In the mean time, as my therapist says: take good care.

Got this in a fortune cookie a while back. Sums up my philosophical project rather well (if in French).