Tag: Philosophy
A computer can never be held accountable
For better or for worse the things you create with LLMs are your responsibility, just like with any other tool.
Sharing my work at ENFA 10
Over the last few days, I had the pleasure of participating in the 10th Meeting of the Portuguese Society for Analytic #Philosophy (ENFA 10), held at the University of Beira Interior in Covilhã. I presented my paper, "A 'Collective Turn' in Religious Epistemology," and greatly appreciated the opportunity to discuss it with colleagues. Many thanks...
The Foundation Works of 21st-Century Philosophy
The greatest works of philosophy ever written. To read and reflect upon during the summer of 2026.
10th Meeting of the Portuguese Society for Analytic Philosophy (ENFA 10)
Looking forward to participating in the 10th Meeting of the Portuguese Society for Analytic Philosophy (ENFA 10) this week, taking place 15–17 July at the Faculty of Arts and Letters, University of Beira Interior (UBI), in Covilhã, Portugal. The conference brings together researchers working across a wide range of topics in analytic philosophy and features...
Walking on the beach
Yesterday I went for a walk on the beach. Linda maintains a vacation rental at Bayshore just north of Waldport. The house is on a bluff with a great ocean view. It's a bit of a hike down to the beach but not a problem for me. There are sand dunes and then a wide sandy beach. The tide was going out so I could walk on the hard sand just before the waves. Although it had been foggy and cold in the morning the fog had lifted and the sun was breaking through. There was also no wind so It was nice and warm for a walk. I grew up on the beach on the opposite coast. Lived 4 houses from the end of a dead end street that ended at the dunes. Needless to say I spent a lot of time on the beach. Unlike Oregon the water warms up in the summertime, and the days do too. I learned to swim well and navigate the currents a rip tides. The surfing craze hit when I was 12 and I jumped right on it. This eventually led to moving across the country to San Diego in search of better waves and warm winters. This was 1967 which, although I had no idea at the time, was the "summer of love" when the San Francisco hippie scene was born. The evolving culture and political climate of the late 1960's then led to a move to Oregon, where I landed less than 10 miles south of where I was walking yesterday. The thing about Oregon beaches is that they are never crowded. Where I grew up in Long Beach, NY the beach would be beach blanket to beach blanket on a nice summer day. On my walk yesterday I saw about 10 people over a half mile of beach. A family with kids, some teenagers, and a couple of solitary walkers like myself. More crowds the closer you get to Portland, less the farther south you go. In fact the south Oregon Coast is extremely remote, and there are many hidden beaches where you will not see another person. The ocean and beach the beach is so much a part of me, that I often feel like just sitting and watching the waves is enough to satisfy my soul and make me feel at peace. This was heavy on my mind yesterday as my recent bike crash has kept me from doing some of the things I love, and made doing many others much harder. Indeed I had to cut yesterday's walk shorter than I would have liked, and spend a lot of time sitting on a log, but that was okay, I was still there.
Is the Juice Worth the Squeeze?
A laminated poster with an unsourced quote changed the trajectory of my entire life when I was a teenager. On the immutable transaction of trading days for how we spend them, the urgency of risk-taking in a world that needs it, and what it means to give everything you have before your inevitable departure.
There Are People Who Would Give Anything For Your Ability to Read and Write
In our current year, there is a global literacy crisis. As a result, there's a privilege in being able to read and write. Notes on Frederick Douglass, the problems you don't think about, and why the ability to write is something to be grateful for and use rather than take for granted.
A Case for the Ethical Treatment of Generative AI
Are there ethical implications of generative AI consciousness? From von Neumann's self-replicating machines to modern LLMs, we must inventory the problem of other minds, the possibility of AI consciousness, and why we ought to consider the welfare of systems that may experience something like suffering.
Buddhism gave me ground when I needed it most
I have spent the better part of my life as an atheist, and, to be honest, I remain one. When I use the term atheist, I use it in an agnostic sense: I don’t know for a fact that there is no god, but the evidence I have seen leads me to accept that there is no use in believing in one. I have since written a book about godless parenting, being a secular activist in a primarily Christian nation (the U.S.), and spoken on stages around the country about atheism, secularism, and the separation of church and state.
Love and Romance in the Times of Our Apocalypse
86% of American adults aged 18-24 are currently unpartnered; 78% of dating app users feel exhausted by online dating. How are people supposed to fall in love while the Doomsday Clock ticks at 85 seconds to midnight? On the yearning microgenre that overtook social media, Indigenous scholars decolonizing the pair bond, global feminist movements withdrawing from heterosexual relationships entirely, and what it means to be a serial monogamist finally learning the difference between Eros and Agape.
Farming is Why Humanity is Fucked
A mind-shattering concept from a first-year university class that upended how I think about humanity. Daniel Quinn's Ishmael trilogy argues that totalitarian agriculture is why civilization is in peril. On the Law of Limited Competition, the Food Race, and how farming broke humanity's equilibrium with nature.
You Must, You Must, You Must
I've been sitting with a single word change. 'Will' versus 'must' in the Latin phrase Memento Mori, and it's shifted everything for me. A meditation on mortality as obligation rather than fate, and what it means to truly reckon with the fact that we must die, and therefore we must live and love.
Cognitive Debt and the Cost of Staying Wrong
Being wrong is unavoidable. The real damage comes from allowing a bad assumption to shape everything you build on top of it.
Cognitive Debt and the Cost of Staying Wrong
Being wrong is unavoidable. The real damage comes from allowing a bad assumption to shape everything you build on top of it.
Cognitive Debt and the Cost of Staying Wrong
Being wrong is unavoidable. The real damage comes from allowing a bad assumption to shape everything you build on top of it.
3rd Porto Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy Summer School
Porto, 16 to 18 June 2026Petrus Hispanus' Tractatus : #Logic and #Philosophy from the Middle Ages to Modernity Program & + info
.plan-26-23: Earth Embeddings, Emails Everywhere, and ERRNOOOs
TESSERA on the ESA homepage and at CVPR, GeoTessera 0.9 stabilising onto S3/Zarr, io-uring in OCaml, carbon credits in New Scientist and WSJ, and musings on internet malware again.
The Mirror That Answers Back
The old questions have not changed much. How should I live? Who am I becoming? What is worth paying attention to? What is freedom? What is wisdom? What is the soul, if we dare still use that word? These questions predate Socrates. They predate writing. They are carved into the bones of the species, and...
A Ship in Harbour is Safe
Nassim Nicholas Taleb's concept of 'skin in the game' is the idea that true learning only happens when you have something to lose. And I look at IndieWeb principles of using what you make to publishing under your real name. Having risk and real stakes is essential for creative work. A ship in harbour is safe, but that's not what ships are built for.
The Internet Needs More Cross-Pollinators
So, my silly little fanfic project blew up like crazy and received some really negative feedback. And I think I understand why. Exploring the concept of boundary spanning and cross-pollination in online communities. Drawing on organizational theory and the work of Michael Tushman. We need people who move between different online subcultures to seed ideas and build bridges.
Rewilding the Web: my workshop report from Edinburgh
Notes from a wonderfully interdisciplinary Edinburgh workshop on 'Rewilding the Web', ranging coopetition and biological variety through the philosophy of self-organisation, polycrisis governance, protopian science fiction, and moderation seen through the lens of artisanal cheese.
Groundhog Day, Groundhog Day, and Variations on a Theme
I love time loops in media—from Groundhog Day to...hey, wait a minute. Does anybody else feel a weird sense of déjà vu? It can't just be me. Do you ever get up in the morning and feel as though you've already lived the same day?
Groundhog Day, Savescumming, and Our Endless Numbered Days
I love time loops in media—from Groundhog Day to Haruhi's Endless Eight. What do they reveal about mortality, memory, and the human desire to escape consequence through Nietzsche's eternal recurrence?
On Being a River
Sixty thousand miles of blood vessels run inside each of us, more than twice around the Earth. 330 billion cells are replaced every single day. Humanity has always built civilization beside rivers because we are rivers. Always in motion, never stepping into the same current twice, carrying cells that live only days alongside neurons that will last precisely as long as we do.
Three circles for thinking about LLMs
A Venn diagram for clarifying what's actually at stake when people argue about whether LLMs are intelligent, conscious, or just stochastic parrots.
Irrealism: An Introduction
Does reality actually exist? If so, which things are part of reality, and which things are not? There are any number of philosophical tarpits that bottom out in a question like this. Does infinity exist? Does consciousness? Does love? Irrealism is a philosophical stance which rejects the premises of these questions.
Wisdom from a Clear Pen
What a clear little pen helped me realize about minimalism and opulence
Brenjour, C'est Moi! Sur L'identité
Cet article de blogue est écrit en français. This blog post is written in French. Sur le jeu de mots derrière «Brenjour», l'insécurité linguistique, et l'idée qu'apprendre une nouvelle langue nous donne une nouvelle âme. Sur la recherche en code-switching et en cultural frame switching chez les bilingues, le binaire rigide du genre grammatical en français, le pronom «iel» reconnu par Le Petit Robert en 2021, l'interdiction de l'écriture inclusive par le gouvernement du Québec en septembre 2025, mon apathie face à mon propre genre, le commérage, et la platitude honnête qui émerge quand j'écris dans une langue que je maîtrise mal.
Epistrons: Knowledge Artifacts for Hyperproblems
In my introductory post on hyperproblems, I ended with Common Source - open source plus people sharing - as the circulatory system for collective intelligence. I hadn't said what exactly was circulating, but if you look at the practice of science today, we have:
The IndieWeb is Wonderfully Dionysian
A personal plea from me to you to write your own comments. On the genAI plague of LinkedIn, Meta ads, and Medium, and the human warmth of the IndieWeb. From deviantART's old comment culture to Seneca's letters and the Vindolanda tablets, through Nietzsche's Apollonian/Dionysian divide, the Renaissance of Real in A/W 2026/27 fashion, and Charli XCX's Brat. A call to write the messy, human, from-the-heart comment only you can write.
What the Dwarf Knows: Exegesis and Improvisation on "Capitalism as Religion"
written with iris-claude for fun and profit
Follow-up: An Interview with Frances Widdowson
After publishing my piece on Frances Widdowson this morning, she reached out to comment. What followed was an hour of argument, bad faith, and one remarkable final message.
Frances Widdowson Dedicates Her Life to Denying Residential Indian School Survivors, Then Calls Herself the Victim
Ex-Mount Royal University professor and author of 'Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth About Residential Schools)' believes she is persecuted by grieving Indigenous communities and woke leftist academic institutions. She has raised over $50,000 for her cause.