Autonomously peeling an apple, from Sharpa. This company continues to produce the most impressive autonomous dexterous manipulation videos in the world. arxiv.org/pdf/2603.08122

There’s a lot of noise in politics but if you want to understand why we’ve had 8 Prime Ministers in the last 20 years and no leading politician has a positive approval rating, you might want to check out this chart

Lecturer in Philosophy of Cognitive Science at University of Sheffield Apply for the Lecturer in Philosophy of Cognitive Science role on jobs.ac.uk, the top job board for academic positions in higher education. View details and apply now.

Philosophy of cog sci job at Sheffield - 3yr post. Get in touch if you have questions! www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DQU853/l...
#philsky #Philosophy

If you’re still expected to do 8 hours work, and now you don’t have to do the parts that you could do on autopilot, it’s not surprising the result is more intense.

I made a philosophy cryptic crossword for our postgrad reading party last week. A few people asked about it, so I shared it with @dailynous.com, and it's now available on the Heap of Links: dailynous.com/wp-content/u...
So if you're a special kind of nerd, check it out!
#PhilSky #CrypticCrossword

I'm hiring again!!
Two Postdocs in Philosophy of Mind (one ot two years), Centre for Philosophical Psychology, University of Antwerp

- to work with me!

Deadline: March 20, 2026

More info on PhilJobs

The Epistemology of Desire and the Problem of Nihilism In this excellent book, Hazlett pursues two main goals. First, to defend the idea that desires have accuracy conditions—he says that a desire is a...

My review of Allan Hazlett's excellent book. /The Epistemology of Desire and the Problem of Nihilism/. The book is really great and I do recommend it highly.

ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/the-...

Humans have a strong tendency to hedonically adapt to their circumstances, so that something that once brought joy eventually brings only indifference. Does this tendency guarantee a kind of failure on our part? Happiness, like other emotions, seems subject to evaluation in terms of its fittingness. But it’s not clear how hedonic adaptation could possibly maintain fittingness: it involves changing one’s level of happiness in a way that doesn’t track the absolute goodness of one’s circumstances. This paper mounts a defence of hedonic adaptation against this concern. It does so by articulating a key difference between the scale of happiness and the scale of goodness, and shows how that difference guarantees an inability to track absolute levels of goodness with our levels of happiness. Given this background constraint, hedonic adaptation may be the most appropriate way for our happiness to change over time.

New article:

Alex Gregory, "Take In Your Hen: Fittingness and Hedonic Adaptation", Philosophers' Imprint 26: 4. doi: doi.org/10.3998/phim...

Abstract in alt text. #philsky

Eleven new papers up at @philimprint.bsky.social, including papers by @domlopes.bsky.social, @alexgregory.bsky.social and @daniwenner.bsky.social.

journals.publishing.umich.edu/phimp/

A Squash and a squeeze book

"Take in your hen: Fittingness and Hedonic Adaptation" is now available, open access at @philimprint.bsky.social. Come for the Julia Donaldson reference, stay for the question of whether hedonic adaptation is irrational.

journals.publishing.umich.edu/phimp/articl...

Book blogging, pt8. Ch8 explains Barbara Fredrickson's /Broaden and Build/ theory of happiness. It's a great theory - intuitive and insightful. I explain how this theory neatly meshes with the theory of fittingness to deliver my view of when happiness is fitting. alexgregory.name#HAPbook

This seems right too. Maybe it's good for lowish stakes things you are bad at, and for things you are bad at and can either do with ai or not at all

100% - in some ways this represents my coming to realise all the ways it is useful. And Y here can also be not just some theory you never learned, but also more practical stuff, e.g., standard expectations for grant applications, or newspaper pitches.

My growing take on AI: Right now it's good but only at things you aren't good at. Don't use it to help you with cutting edge research or to improve your special talent. But do use it to learn distant subjects you don't know at all, or improve your abysmal skills at things you've never learned.

Book blogging, pt7. What the heck is fittingness? Chapter 7 offers a systematic theory, which promises to (a) show why fittingness is worth caring about (i.e. solve the RKR problem), and (b) help us identify the fittingness condition for any given attitude in a principled way. This chapter=ambitious

Book blogging pt6. Ch6 discusses strategies for gaining happiness. We cannot be happy at will, but only in light of its seeming fitting. This connects to familiar claims about "wrong" vs "right" kinds of reason. It also explains various facts about happiness, such as why toxic positivity is toxic.

EPIC logo

Come and work with us on project EPIC at @unibirmingham.bsky.social. We are looking for a #Philosophy postdoc with an interest in the area at the intersection of philosophy, psychology, and mental health. edzz.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid... #philsky #jobs #epistemicinjustice

Book blogging, pt5. Ch5 of the book discusses the comparisons we make and that bear on happiness - with the recent past, or our expectations, or with our neighbours. I say that some comparisons are more apt than others. Along the way, I endorse the view that "good" only ever means "better than...".

Highly relevant when you read people talking about a genetic component of happiness.

rewriting a paper rejected by Analysis

drop me an email and I'll drop you a draft!

Alex Gregory, Take In Your Hen: Fittingness and Hedonic Adaptation - PhilPapers Humans have a strong tendency to hedonically adapt to their circumstances, so that something that once brought joy eventually brings only indifference. Does this tendency guarantee a kind of failure o...

Book, pt4. Ch4 is on hedonic adaptation. I explain why it is apt for happiness to subside over time. The key observation is that there is no limit to how good or bad things might be, and so no simple way to match degrees of happiness and value. See also this in PhilImprint: philpapers.org/rec/GRETIY

I also say a little about rival theories of happiness, and about the difference between happiness and happiness-adjacent things such as joy and contentment.
alexgregory.name#HAPbook

Book blogging, pt3. Ch3 of the book explains the idea that happiness is an emotion - a claim that seems at once obvious, but also not widely discussed in philosophy. I also explain why this emotion is so central ("happy" and "sad" are the first emotion words that children learn).

Mixing "me" and "I" sounds wrong to my ear.

Aaaand we're back!!

Two Postdocs in Philosophy of Mind (one ot two years), Centre for Philosophical Psychology, University of Antwerp

- to work with me!

Deadline: March 20, 2026

More info on PhilJobs

Book blogging, part 2. Ch2 of the book explains and clarifies the main idea: you should be happy about goods. But other things happen along the way. Here's one: what does it take to possess the concept GOOD? Here's one answer: a disposition to respond to deployment of that concept with happiness.

Book blogging, part 1. How happy should you be about the present state of the world? This is a coherent question. It is also neglected: the literature on norms for emotion almost never discusses happiness. This is effectively the gap the book aims to address. alexgregory.name#HAPbook

For World Logic Day, the ontological proof of God's non-existence (I think I heard it first from my late friend Aldo Antonelli):

God is a being such that there could none more awesome

It is pretty awesome to be all-powerful, all-knowing etc. ...

Thanks Anna!