Tag: philosophy
One Fire, Three Ways of Knowing
At a September campfire in South Brent, Lin Yutang’s poet, peasant and vagabond become three ways of knowing: seeing, touching and moving through life.
Wendell Berry
Since his passing last week I've been wanting to write something about Wendell Berry. Though I have read very little of his stuff he had a major impact on my life. It was 1976. I was trying to be a farmer on some borrowed plots near Eugene Oregon. I had a tractor and was taking organic gardening to the next level by growing at a larger scale and selling to local natural food stores and distributors. At some point I joined in with some other small farmers to form a kind of self help cooperative we called Organically Grown Inc. (which eventually morphed into Organically Grown Company [1] and is today one to the largest distributors of organic produce). One of our first projects was to empty out one member's barn of horse manure, using another member's front end loader, and another member's dump truck, and spreading it on our fields. The fellow with the barn full of horse manure was named Lynn Miller [2], the horses were Belgian draft horses, and he had just started publishing the Small Farmers Journal [3]. This was still about 4 years before I started farming with Belgians myself. Intrigued by the possibility or farming with draft horses I subscribed to the Small Farmers Journal (I still have a box full of old journals from the 70's) and became an avid reader. Besides learning a lot of the technical details, I was introduced to Wendell Berry, as many of the articles contained excerpts of his writing, and I believe he may have even contributed some articles himself. The idea of living on the land and farming with draft horses became firmly ingrained in my being. To get the big picture you have to understand what my generation was going through. The late 60's was a major upheaval. The realization that our government and our schools had been lying to us our whole childhoods, the disenchantment with the rat race work to get ahead at all costs, and the need to find meaning in life, had made us all seekers. For many the search ended with psychedelic drugs, but for most it continued down many paths of spiritual teachings, gurus, and lifestyles. By the time I first read Wendell Berry I already knew that for me it meant getting back to the land. So in many ways Wendell Berrys' writings were a confirmation of what I had been felling for some time. Basically what he was saying is the you won't find the answers you seek in books, or at the feet of a guru, but rather by living on the land and immersing yourself in the natural cycles of the seasons and the world around you. Grow your own food. Simplify your life, and shun the glitter and turmoil of the modern world. No doubt my life would be better today if I had been able to remain true to these ideas. The need to be able to support my kids took me down another road, but my heart is still out there sitting under a tree in the woods. [1] https://www.organicgrown.com/ [2] https://lynnrmiller.com/ [3] https://smallfarmersjournal.com/
Book Review: Kant Machine: Critical Philosophy after AI
David Roome reviews Yuk Hui’s Kant Machine, which recovers Kant’s critical philosophy as a diagnostic of what machine learning, artificial moral agency, and algorithmic governance can and cannot accomplish.
The cave has Wi-Fi now
What catches me in Angie Hobbs’s talk isn’t simply the claim that Plato anticipated fake news, demagogues and the slide from democracy into tyranny. Ancient philosophers are forever being advertised as having predicted the present. Give Marcus Aurelius a smartphone and he becomes a productivity guru. Give Plato an algorithm and suddenly the cave is...
Book Review: Kant Machine: Critical Philosophy after AI
David Roome reviews Yuk Hui’s Kant Machine, which recovers Kant’s critical philosophy as a diagnostic of what machine learning, artificial moral agency, and algorithmic governance can and cannot accomplish.
You're not lost, because you're not exploring
Is not that you can't find what you're supposed to be doing but, maybe, that you're not doing anything at all.
A Cable of Many Fibers: An Overview of Pragmatism for Graduate Students in the Humanities and Social Sciences
An accessible graduate-level overview of pragmatism's major thinkers, contested lineages, theories of truth and inquiry, and uses for humanities and social-science research.
I Want to be Unremarkable
A meditation on the contradiction of writing publicly while wanting to remain unremarkable, drawing on Daoist uselessness, Epicurean lathe biōsas, state legibility, and Deleuzian imperceptibility—and why the only peaceful path is to keep writing and surrender to shared oblivion.
Being a Toolshed of Optimism
Reflecting on a reader's description of me as 'nice' and the responsibility of having an audience, I commit to becoming a 'toolshed of hope and stubborn optimism' in my writing. Drawing on solutions journalism, restorative narrative, and thinkers like Rebecca Solnit, Mariame Kaba, Joanna Macy, adrienne maree brown, and Christiana Figueres, I explore how hope is a discipline and how to tether anger and grief to concrete, actionable repair.
The Petition as Actualization: Notes Toward a Political Philosophy of DMML
A real conversation about theodicy, immune systems, Simondon, Deleuze, Alexander, Benjamin, capability security, Hardt and Negri, and Ostrom — and how they all turned out to describe the same design decisions in a text-adventure engine's world-description language.
WEBMASTER@ a manifesto for everyone
I'm reclaiming the title of 'webmaster' as the multidisciplinary creator who designs, develops, writes, and advocates for their own corner of the web and will save the world. Tracing the history from 1993 to the present, I argue that anyone can become a webmaster with minimal tools. Webmastery is an act of digital repatriation and human agency against corporate platforms and AI orchestration.
Suspect Happiness in Pursuit: An Anti-Interview with Unstory
On the 50/10/40 split of happiness research, the Declaration of Independence's 'pursuit of happiness,' and an exchange with anonymous blogger Unstory about free will, determinism, and whether we can choose joy. A diptych of opposing worldviews: humanist optimism vs. anti-humanist determinism, and the strange beauty of two people staring at the same abyss.
Tabs, spaces, hand tools, and seat belts: a response
I read the blog post mentioned in the title recently, and found it a reasonable and coherent articulation of a certain viewpoint about AI, and indeed about programming (even society) in general. It presents its arguments clearly and sensibly. It has an ambivalence to it that suggests consideration. It is well-cited and well-written. You should read it. (in fact, you should read it before the rest of this blog post, or I’ll make even less sense than otherwise). This makes me extremely angry. As I take the opposite viewpoint from this point, it feels only appropriate that I should present it in the opposite manner: that is, unreasonably, incoherently, unclearly, insensibly, poorly considered and indeed inconsiderately. Enjoy.
I’ve been reading Daniel Quinn’s “Ishmael”
Written in VIM, mea culpa por formato EDIT: I pasted this into a preformatted block, I'm undoing that, it looks awful. I'm about 22% of the way through Daniel Quinn's Ishmael.I've never felt so strongly that I needed to read a piece of literature.It asks questions in earnest, that I've felt I needed answers to...
Kierkegaard’s “Subjectivity Is Truth”
Inwardness as a way of existing, choosing, and remaining committed
Kierkegaard’s “Truth Which Is True for Me”
How understanding becomes a commitment that gives a life direction
Limited output is a feature
Great startups don't win because they write more code, they win because they think differently.
Metamorphosis of a Death Symbol: The Transi Tomb in the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance
Sepulchral art offers insights into historical Northern European attitudes toward mortality.
Distinguishing Labor from Work
We should get rid of the former, if we can, but we should absolutely keep the latter.
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.
004: Virtue and Constitutional Design (feat. Christina Bambrick)
A conversation about the role of virtue in liberal theory.
Eq
What does being the `same` mean?
Skillful and Unskillful Politics
Skill is a combination of good intent and sufficient knowledge to act well.
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.
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.
003: Delight in Difference
A conversation about Aaron's book project on the relationship between personal and public flourishing.
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 bird that comes back
There's a grey heron that returns to the same spot on the water every morning.