A Pluralist Theory of Perception Veridically perceiving an ovoid yellow mango in ordinary circumstances differs from hallucinating a matching scene. In hallucination, there is no mango....

My review of Neil Mehta's "A Pluralist Theory of Perception" is now up at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews:
ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/a-pl...

#PhilSky

A Pluralist Theory of Perception Veridically perceiving an ovoid yellow mango in ordinary circumstances differs from hallucinating a matching scene. In hallucination, there is no mango....

My review of Neil Mehta's "A Pluralist Theory of Perception" is now up at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews:
ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/a-pl...

#PhilSky

Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1 August 1816:

Nations may war, but in my small community of philosophers of perception we count amongst us philosophers from Iran, Isreal, Lebanon, America, the UK, India... and as we puzzle and argue over perception, I like to think we are in our own small way contributing to peace.

As you know, the establishment of social justice in our nation is of profound concern to me. This great struggle is in the interest of all Americans and I shall not be turned from it. Yet no sane person can afford to work for social justice within the nation unless he simultaneously resists war and clearly declares himself for non-violence in international relations. What will be the ultimate value of having established social justice in a context where all people, Negro and White, are merely free to face destruction by strontium 90 or atomic war. If we are to find a new method to avoid such terrible possibilities, it will be based on love not hate; it will be based on reconciliation and not retaliation; it will be based on forgiveness and not on revenge.

Address at the Thirty-sixth Annual Dinner of the War Resisters League by Martin Luther King, Jr., February 2, 1959:

Uncanny parallels with what Pythia said to Croesus:

Come and visit!!

Image of a peacock

From my morning walk:

Page of text from Jimmy Carter's account of his time in office, describing the resignation of Cy Vance.

How it ended the last time a Vance negotiated with Iran:

Picture of the novel “This is Where the Serpent Lives”

Highly recommended:

From the philosopher and soldier J. Glenn Gray’s “The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle” (1959):

This was so much fun -- thanks to Sean Smith and Alex Moran for organising it!

Ph.D. Programme in Philosophy - Ashoka University The PhD in Philosophy programme conforms to all Ashoka PhD programme guidelines. Additional guidelines specific to the Philosophy PhD programme […]

We're starting a PhD programme in Philosophy at Ashoka! Anyone can apply by April 15 for admission this year, and we will ensure that admitted applicants receive enough funding to support them for the 5 year programme. More info here:
www.ashoka.edu.in/programme/ph...

Hannah Arendt did not mince words, did she?

'Totalitarianism replaces all first-rate talents with crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.'

From "The Origins of Totalitarianism" (1951)

Dictatorial propaganda demands obedience and even considerable financial and other sacrifices; but by way of compensation it assures the individual that, as a member of a chosen nation, race, or class, he is superior to all other individuals in the world; it dissipates his sense of personal inferiority by investing him with the vicarious glory of the community; it gives him reasons for thinking well of himself; it provides him with enemies whom he may blame for his own shortcomings and upon whom he may vent his latent brutality and love of bullying.

Huxley on dictatorial propaganda
#philsky

“Bloodless Pedantry” - The Ideas Letter The academic study of philosophy tends to inspire contempt, from within and from without. Stephen Hawking’s pompous pronouncement in 2010 that “philosophy is dead” is just one version of a…

I wrote something about analytic Philospphy, and Christoph Schuringa’s book for the Ideas Letter @stefanschubert.bsky.social @lbenardo.bsky.social www.theideasletter.org/essay/bloodl...

Nobody throws shade like Nabokov:

“What Can a Global Turn in
Philosophy of Science Look Like?”, forthcoming in Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, by former Ashoka philosophy undergrad Kabir S. Bakshi.

Congratulations Kabir!

philsci-archive.pitt.edu/26382/

they even exclude one another. The whole plea - for this dream is nothing else - recalls vividly the defence offered by a man who was accused by his neighbour of having returned a kettle in a damaged condition. In the first place, he said, he had returned the kettle undamaged; in the second place it already had holes in it when he borrowed it; and in the third place, he had never borrowed it at all. A complicated defence, but so much the better; if only one of these three lines of defence is recognised as valid, the man must be acquitted.

From Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams. Now known as The Trump Defence.

Cover of “every one still here” by Liadan Ni Chuinn

A unique, searing voice, and exceptionally good:

It seems so — he even has a reel explaining why he joined social media.

Werner Herzog is on Instagram:

www.instagram.com/reel/DNyVOOR...

#IndependenceDay

Cover of Edna O’Brien’s The Country Girls Trilogy

Easily the best novel(s) I’ve read all year:

Evelyn Waugh

The key argument against delimitation shouldn’t be population policy but the ‘one person, one vote’ principle Supporters of delimitation say that “one person, one vote” justifies delimitation based on population size. But this conclusion is false

A novel and enlightening intervention on the delimitation debate by Bastian Steuwer:

indianexpress.com/article/opin...

Who actually runs Columbia University? | Arjun Appadurai and Sheldon Pollock Trustees aren’t academics – and they’re often political wolves in sheep’s clothing. We need reform to save the American university as we know it

“Boards are accountable to no one – only to themselves, and to some vague set of norms, often unwritten, about their obligations. Accountability is for faculty, administrators, and students.”
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

A welcome Luce cannonade:
archive.ph/EZ8Ys