Looking forward to heading back up to Aberdeen this Friday to give a talk at this workshop

A 🧵 of iconic closing sentences of influential books in philosophy:

'And that's the 411 on what matters.' - Derek Parfit, On What Matters vol. 3

'Not the first sex, not the second sex, but a secret third thing.' - Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

Cover image for What It’s Like to Be a Bat by Finn Streuper, featuring multiple black bat silhouettes in varying shapes and sizes arranged on a light background

Bandcamp page for Finn Streuper's album 'What It's Like to Be a Bat.' Shows the pre-order details, with the vinyl album priced at €10.

For a refutation of Nagel's view, see Streuper (2026)

We face two urgent challenges concerning consciousness and AI. Challenge One is that millions of users will soon misattribute human-like consciousness to AI friends, partners, and assistants on the basis of mimicry and role-play, and we don’t know how to prevent this. Challenge Two is that profoundly alien forms of consciousness might genuinely be achieved in AI, but our theoretical understanding of consciousness is too immature to provide confident answers one way or the other. Centrism about AI consciousness is the position that we must take both challenges seriously. The two challenges interact in ways that make this difficult. Steps to address Challenge One might undermine attempts to address Challenge Two by portraying the idea of conscious AI as impossible or inherently unlikely. Conversely, attempts to address Challenge Two might lead to higher levels of misattribution from ordinary users. This “manifesto” attempts to construct mutually consistent strategies for addressing both challenges.

Since people are doing "is AI conscious?" discourse on here again I feel like this philpapers.org/rec/BIRACA-4 by @birchlse.bsky.social remains my favourite piece on the current state of affairs.

Call for Abstracts
The British Society for the Theory of Knowledge invites contributions to its 2026 conference (Exeter College, University of Oxford, 2nd-4th 09 2026).
bstk.org.uk/events.html

Please submit abstracts (500 words, suitable for blind review) to info@bstk.org.uk by April 30 2026.

Boycotts and Beyond: How should we respond to ethically compromised sporting events? Major sporting events can be ethically charged. They may be hosted by fascist regimes, as a way to gain a perception of legitimacy on the world stage. Notably, the 1936 Olympic games was hosted by Naz...

I'm organising a workshop in Glasgow in May, about how people should respond to ethically tainted sporting events. I've just made a PhilEvents page. If you've got any questions about it, send me an email!
philevents.org/event/show/1...
#PhilSky #PhilosophyOfSport #Ethics #Boycotts

Labour Party 2024 Manifesto poster showing Kier Starmer in black and white next to the word 'change' in red

Screenshot of Guardian News article. The image shows Kier Starmer holding a portfolio. Headline reads: "Kier Starmer must lead 'moment of change' after Labour turmoil, says Ed Miliband.

Change (2024)
Change 2: the Changening (2026)

Keith Harris, Epistemic magnetism - PhilPapers An agent’s epistemic prospects depend on a combination of that agent’s individual characteristics and features of that agent’s epistemic environment. Such factors cannot always be cleanly separated. O...

Doing my part for All Epistemic Everything with a new (open access!) paper on "Epistemic Magnetism"

The gist is that agents' local epistemic environments are pervasively shaped by properties of agents that, on the surface, have nothing to do with epistemology
#philsky

philpapers.org/rec/HAREMJ

EPISTEMIC Insane Clown Posse

2 year Postdoctoral Research Fellow opportunity at the University of St Andrews on my project "Aesthetic Values and the Social Dimensions of Science"

www.vacancies.st-andrews.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/...

#philosophy #philsci

Alt text: headshot of a man wearing a suit and tie. His bio reads: Lord True, Conservative, Life Peer.

Just found out there is a Tory peer whose name is Lord True. Must be embarrassing for him anytime he gets things wrong.

Started new job last week as a Lecturer in Philosophy at Glasgow. First lecture today on the regress problem went well, though I did discover there's a limit to the number times I can say the word 'infinitism', ironically.

Picture of a houseplant sitting in a seat on a commuter train

Happy take-your-plant-to-work day for those who celebrate

Me looking at the camera and smiling, holding up a copy of my book Epistemic Injustice An Introduction

Publication day! It’s been a long journey to get to this point, and I’m grateful to everyone who’s supported that, and to @routledgebooks.bsky.social for publishing it.

PITCH: Biblical era Home Alone with Herod going the houses around trying to slay childer but getting caught in all sorts of traps.

I’ve been seeing this cover over and over and I just…

In the original you’re aware of the horror of falling, but the body positions of the workers are solid on the beam. Here, most of them should be falling off, yet they don’t, because they live in an unreal, consequence-free space.

Upon reflection, I acknowledge it was a mistake to enter the LHC wearing a purple dinosaur costume and roller skates. This was a moment of poor of judgement and not reflective of my profound commitment to citizen science. I will be taking time away from my youtube channel and from social media.

Upon reflection, I acknowledge it was a mistake to enter the LHC wearing a purple dinosaur costume and roller skates. This was a moment of poor of judgement and not reflective of my profound commitment to citizen science. I will be taking time away from my youtube channel and from social media.

Call-for-papers: Hypatia Special Issue on Feminist Philosophy of Mind

Guest Editors: Gloria Andrada and Carolina Flores

Deadline for submissions: 15th January 2026

Details and links to submit on the website:

Hope so, otherwise seems like pretty solid grounds for despair

I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor my first Reith Lecture.

They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1

It’s publication day! Spread the word. The perfect Christmas gift for the pessimist in your life.

‘People still blame me for their perforated eardrums’: how we made the Tango ads ‘Gil Scott-Heron did the closing voiceover. He was giggling away, saying, “You English guys are crazy!”’

I am just now learning that Gil Scott-Heron did the voiceover for the "You've been tangoed" ads in the 90s

Rome is nice, you should check out the old town. Though some of it has fallen into disrepair, sadly.

And just like that, the notes could, in fact, note the noted.

On a train down to England and noticed random guy sitting next to me is writing a paper on truthmaker semantics. We are legion.

RFK is gonna be so mad when he finds out Descartes did this bit already

Everyone should be allowed one turn each on the Large Hadron Collider, just to check the results for themselves

Society of Applied Philosophy conference is back in Edinburgh next summer, and has @jennysaul.bsky.social and Ishani Maitra, amongst others, as keynotes - the call for abstracts has just gone out.