Thanks!

Mind, Language and Embodied Cognition MSc - Postgraduate taught programmes This programme provides the intellectual foundation and practical skills required for engaging in linguistics research, either by itself, or as part of cross-disciplinary research.

If you or your undergrad students are interested in philosophy of mind, this excellent MSc program at U Edinburgh is open for applications until April 30. An exceptional opportunity to study with the best in the field. Please share widely! #philsci #philsky #philai study.ed.ac.uk/programmes/p...

My first year at Amherst I took a seminar at Hampshire College on Heidegger's Being and Time with this amazing professor. Ten of us sitting in a circle talking about the book, guided by Ken, whose knowledge was even higher than his 6'5" height. www.hampshire.edu/news/hampshi...

Closure Information A message from President Jennifer Chrisler and the Board of TrusteesSeven years ago, the Hampshire community presented the College with a powerful mandate: to maintain independence and remain true to ...

This is very sad. What a terrible loss. I took a course and attended many events at Hampshire College when I was an undergrad at Amherst College. It was a special place and will be missed by very many. www.hampshire.edu/closure-info...

There is a powerful pressure among academic philosophers nowadays to take seriously claims of artificial general intelligence or AI sentience. Serious engagement with such propositions requires many layers of intellectual dishonesty combined with a willingness to watch the world burn.

The More You Study Consciousness, the Weirder It Gets | The Ezra Klein Show YouTube video by The Ezra Klein Show

Thank you @michaelpollan.bsky.social for mentioning @adamfrank4.bsky.social's Marcelo Gleiser's and my book The Blind Spot in your book recommendations at the end of this interview youtu.be/hYrgLn7pWp8?...

Thinking Beyond Materialism

"Synthesizing physics with a philosophy based on the primacy of experience and contemplation, Zajonc provides a decisive alternative to materialism, offering a new path forward for science and human experience in the twenty-first century. A landmark book." sunypress.edu/Books/T/Thin...

Here's my response to the recent commentaries on @adamfrank4.bsky.social Marcelo Gleiser's and my book The Blind Spot link.springer.com/epdf/10.1007...

Reality is not a controlled hallucination <p><em>The idea that 'reality is a controlled hallucination' has been recently popularised by figures such as neuroscientist Anil Seth. But this claim, which purports to be hard, down-to-earth science...

Evan Thompson speaking characteristic good sense about the idea that perception is ‘controlled hallucination’ @evanthompson.bsky.social @anilseth.bsky.social iai.tv/articles/rea...

A non-paywalled version is available here: archive.is/PDP41

Reality is not a controlled hallucination <p><em>The idea that 'reality is a controlled hallucination' has been recently popularised by figures such as neuroscientist Anil Seth. But this claim, which purports to be hard, down-to-earth…

Evan Thompson, an APA Pacific Division past president and philosophy professor at UBC, contends that "Reality is not a controlled hallucination." iai.tv/articles/rea...

@evanthompson.bsky.social

Consciousness is the hidden architecture behind fundamental and quantum physics <p><em>Physics, and science as a whole, attempts to paint an objective picture of reality. Consciousness, experience, and subjectivity are forcibly pushed out of this picture. Even where science is em...

Fantastic article by @haraldwiltsche.bsky.social iai.tv/articles/con...

COMMENT 02 February 2026 Does AI already have human-level intelligence? The evidence is clear The vision of human-level machine intelligence laid out by Alan Turing in the 1950s is now a reality. Eyes unclouded by dread or hype will help us to prepare for what comes next.

Nature published another pile of trash

i am trying to catch up on some of my reading but this one is getting under my skin so here’s a thread highlighting why this piece is either ill-informed or intentionally ignorant of a wealth of knowledge from embodied cog sci and related fields

1/

‘My ideas are a little revolutionary’: ecologist Suzanne Simard on intelligent forests, the climate and her critics Her research popularised the idea of the wood wide web, but the scientific backlash was brutal. As the author of The Mother Tree returns to the forest in a new book, she discusses her battle to reimag...

Inspiring story and ideas from a UBC colleague www.theguardian.com/environment/...

A short interview with @ubcphilosophy.bsky.social about my research: Dr. Evan Thompson on the ideas that shape his research philosophy.ubc.ca/news/profess...

I definitely do not mean to ignore what people say about their experiences! Hallucinations can certainly seem perception like. I know that from my own experience too (see my book on dreaming).

My point is about the semantic content of perception. It's relational (inherently object involving) whereas hallucination is not. You can't get the semantics of perception out of hallucination, so it's a mistake to assimilate the former to a case of the latter.

I think we're talking past each other. As I say in the article, perceptions and hallucinations can be subjectively indistinguishable to the person having them and can involve similar brain processes, but it doesn't follow that perception is a kind of hallucination, for the reasons given there

I'm aware of the evidence about hallucination you're mentioning. None of it entails that perception is a controlled hallucination.

What I'm arguing against is that our perception (hence knowledge) of reality is a controlled hallucination. Some neuroscientists think this is a scientific statement, but I think it's misguided philosophy sedimented into neuroscience. Neuroscience doesn't need it. That's my point in the article.

I never said they didn't, though I'd say they also involve the whole active animal.

Or, if you prefer, the evidence is that in perception the object in the world is really there and is related to perception in the right way, in hallucination not.

I give reasons in the article. It's a conceptual-theoretical point, not one decided by experimental evidence.

Of course not. There can be also sorts of various context-dependent causes. Some hallucinations can be known to be such when they happen, others not. The point of the article isn't to give a theory of hallucination, but to say it's different in kind from perception.

It's a sensorimotor misfire that presents a mere appearance rather than a perceptual manifestation of the thing in person.

He says our experience of reality is a controlled hallucination, and that's what I take issue with.

If you send me an email, I'll send it to you.

The Blindspot Podcast, episode 22: Physics, Reality, and Consciousness. YouTube video by The Blind Spot Podcast

Our fantastic podcast conversation with the inimitable philosopher and physicist Michel Bitbol has just dropped. Check it out for a wide ranging discussion of physics, reality, and consciousness. www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Z0N...

I am paywalled from reading this whole thing but this quote sticks:

“Thinking that perception happens inside the brain is like thinking that flying happens inside the bird’s wings or that dancing happens inside the dancer’s nervous and musculoskeletal systems. This is a category error.”

No paywall here: archive.is/PDP41