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Yesterday
I’m on holidays this week, spending some time in Cracow (Poland) and Slovakia. Today’s post is a bit off-topic compared to what I’m used to publish here, but still I hope you will enjoy it! If not the case already, do not hesitate to subscribe to receive for free essays on economics, philosophy, and liberal politics in your mailbox! …
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15 April
In interactions characterized by agential epistemic injustice, the interpreter avoids engaging with the speaker’s perspective and challenges or distorts the speaker’s contribution before taking time to explore it. Where the success of the interaction depends on a genuine knowledge exchange between interpreters and speakers, epistemic injustice compromises the success of the interaction. Building on recent qualitative work on communication in youth mental health, I argue that clinical interactions are less likely to achieve their aims when practitioners fail to engage with the perspective of the person seeking support, and challenge or distort the person’s contribution before taking time to explore it.
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158940.077062
This paper argues that biostatistical theory (BST) cannot categorically exclude pregnancy from pathology. Common harmful conditions in typical pregnancies are integral to the notion of pregnancy per se. Given this definition, there are two potential ways to classify pregnancy as non-pathological within the BST: (i) most common conditions in pregnancy are not pathological within the appropriate reference class; or (ii) pregnancy’s reproductive value counterbalances its pathological survival harms, rendering it non-pathological. I challenge both views, arguing that non-pregnant women of the same age should be the reference class, making pregnancy a survival pathology that cannot be offset by reproductive value.
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216834.077072
This paper examines the historical split of microbiology into the fields of medicine and ecology from a feminist perspective, using Helen Longino’s contextual empiricism and her onto-epistemic view of interactions. Examining microbial interactions is interesting for two reasons, one is ontological as microbial metabolic interactions constitute the bio-geo-chemical cycles that are the driving force of life on Earth. The second reason is epistemic, involving our conceptual challenges in understanding microbial traits and classification, as their activities and ability to evolve are, for the most part, driven by their interactions. I follow the work and methodology of Sergei Vinogradskii (1856-1953) and Robert Koch (1843-1910), as two main founders each of a different microbiology field. Koch focused on medicine, developing pure mass cultures and the Koch postulates. Vinogradskii focused on soil microbiology and ecosystem ecology, developing the elective culture technique, and is known for the Winogradsky Column. I use contextual empiricism to discuss their methodological differences in classification and cultivation and reflect on their position regarding microbial individuality and interactions. For instance, Vinogradskii’s research focused on metabolic interactions and microbial life cycles, considering individual microbes as part of their environment and never in isolation. This view emphasizes the individual, the interactions, and the environment as equally focal in causal explanations.
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14 April
A friend and I were discussing whether there’s anything I could possibly say, on this blog, in 2025, that wouldn’t provoke an outraged reaction from my commenters. So I started jotting down ideas. Let’s see how I did. …
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266214.077099
The View from Everywhere is now available for those with an Oxford Scholarship Online subscription; hardcopies ship next month (but you can preorder now). I’ll probably write more about it as the print publication date approaches. …
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10 April
Bet On It reader Ian Fillmore recently sent me a very insightful email on natalism, which I encouraged him to expand upon. In fact, I’ll put it squarely in the obvious-once-you-think-about-it category. …
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615533.077119
In a recent essay, I explained that the right to exit is often given great importance in liberal thought. In some cases, it is almost as if nothing else matters than the guarantee that individuals can —in principle or effectively— exit a group, a community, or a society. …
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9 April
Karl Marx rejected the ideal of equality as bourgeois. And yet, the most significant attempt in recent years to distinguish socialist theory from liberal egalitarian theory, G.A. Cohen's critique of John Rawls, relies almost entirely on an egalitarian principle. Although Cohen’s critique often seems to have a great deal of intuitive force, a number of Rawls’ defenders have argued, quite convincingly, that Cohen’s critique is unsuccessful. For those of us attracted to broadly socialist ideals, there does seem to be something importantly right about Cohen’s criticisms of Rawls, and more substantively, something deeply problematic in the kinds of market-based leveraging of productive abilities that would be permitted in a fully just Rawlsian society. My diagnosis is that Cohen has the right target, but the wrong fundamental value. I develop an alternative to these liberal egalitarian approaches in contemporary socialist ethics, building on the famous slogan: ‘from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs.’ This alternative ideal of Caring Solidarity draws on rich socialist, Christian, and feminist traditions, and emphasizes the importance of care, recognition, and solidarity in political and economic organisation. This alternative approach leaves a certain amount of inequality legitimately in place, whilst providing a moral framework for a radical reorganisation of production.
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681676.077142
On my flight back from Spain, I watched Subservience, yet another a cautionary tale of artificial general intelligence. I kept laughing at its many absurdities. If Robin Hanson viewed it, I fear that his head might explode in social scientific outrage. …
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8 April
This entry takes as its focal point the philosophical contributions of
Anna Julia Cooper with an emphasis on her scholarship and some
attention to her commitments as an educator and activist. Authoring
one of the earliest book-length analyses of the unique situation of
Black women in the United States, Cooper offers clearly articulated
insights about racialized sexism and sexualized racism without
ignoring the significance of class and labor, education and
intellectual development, and conceptions of democracy and
citizenship.[ 1 ]
With an academic training deeply rooted in the history of Western
philosophy and the classics, Cooper’s philosophical significance
also lies in her foundational contributions to feminist philosophy,
standpoint theory, and epistemology, as well as critical philosophy of
race and African-American philosophy (including African American
political philosophy).
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7 April
Pseudo-consciousness bridges the gap between rigid, task-driven AI and the elusive dream of true artificial general intelligence (AGI). While modern AI excels in pattern recognition, strategic reasoning, and multimodal integration, it remains fundamentally devoid of subjective experience. Yet, emerging architectures are displaying behaviors that look intentional—adapting, self-monitoring, and making complex decisions in ways that mimic conscious cognition. If these systems can integrate information globally, reflect on their own processes, and operate with apparent goal-directed behavior, do they qualify as functionally conscious? This paper introduces pseudo-consciousness as a new conceptual category, distinct from both narrow AI and AGI. It presents a five-condition framework that defines AI capable of consciousness-like functionality without true sentience. By drawing on insights from computational theory of mind, functionalism, and neuroscientific models—such as Global Workspace Theory and Recurrent Processing Theory—we argue that intelligence and experience can be decoupled. The implications are profound. As AI systems become more autonomous and embedded in critical domains like healthcare, governance, and warfare, their ability to simulate awareness raises urgent ethical and regulatory concerns. Could a pseudo-conscious AI be trusted? Would it manipulate human perception? How do we prevent society from anthropomorphizing machines that only imitate cognition? By redefining the boundaries of intelligence and agency, this study lays the foundation for evaluating, designing, and governing AI that seems aware—without ever truly being so.
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851171.077172
Despite widespread scientific agreement that human biological diversity is real, the question of whether “race” corresponds to a natural kind remains deeply contested. While some philosophers and scientists continue to explore ways of biologically grounding racial categories, this paper argues that the project of racial naturalism—whether in its essentialist or reformulated variants—remains conceptually, empirically, and metaphysically untenable. Yet this is not a rejection of the reality of race. Rather, I contend that race is a real and powerful social construct, historically forged and materially entrenched, but not a natural kind in the biological or taxonomic sense.
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854335.077182
This paper argues that lockdown was racist. The terms are broad, but the task of definition is not random, and in §2 we motivate certain definitions as appropriate. In brief: “lockdown” refers to regulatory responses to the Covid-19 (C-19) pandemic involving significant restrictions on leaving the home and on activities outside the home, historically situated in the pandemic and widely known as “lockdowns”; and “racist” indicates what we call negligent racism, a type of racism which we define. Negligent racism does not require intent, but beyond this constraint, we do not endorse any definition of racism in general. With definitions in hand, in §3 we argue that lockdown was harmful in Africa, causing great human suffering that was not offset by benefits and amounted to net harm, far greater than in the circumstances in which most White people live. Since 1.4
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854352.077193
This paper argues against the view, proposed in Langland-Hassan (2020), that attitudinal imaginings are reducible to basic folk-psychological attitudes such as judgments, beliefs, desires, decisions, or combinations thereof. The proposed reduction fails because attitudinal imaginings, though similar to basic attitudes in certain respects, function differently than basic attitudes. I demonstrate this by exploring two types of cases: spontaneous imaginings, and imaginings that arise in response to fiction, showing that in these cases, imaginings cannot be identified with basic attitudes. I conclude that imagining is a distinct attitude: it enables us to freely conjure up scenarios without being bound by the restrictions that govern basic folk-psychological attitudes.
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854368.077203
According to the desire-satisfaction theory of welfare, something is good for me to the extent that I desire it. This theory faces the “scope problem”: many of the things I desire, intuitively, lie beyond the scope of my welfare. Here, I argue that a simple solution to this problem is available. First, I suggest that it is a general feature of desires that they can differ not only in their objects but also in their “targets,” or for the sake of whom one has the desire. For example, I can desire that my child win an award either for their sake or for my own sake. Second, I show that we can use this idea to solve the scope problem by holding that something is good for me to the extent that I desire it for my own sake. Despite first appearances, this solution is not ad hoc, incomplete, or circular.
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854423.077214
I argue that there are Kantian grounds to endorse a Universal Basic Income (UBI) and that Kant’s practical philosophy can contribute to current debates about the ethics of UBI. I will make two points that mutually support each other. Firstly, there is a pro tanto argument for Kantians to work towards a UBI. A UBI, more so than conditional welfare schemes, enables agents to live up to their duty to be a useful member of the world. This should be conceptualized as an indirect duty to implement a UBI. Secondly, Kant’s ethics suggests a way to tackle the most pressing ethical objection against a UBI, the unfairness or surfer objection. The requirement that agents be useful for others is ethical and thus cannot be enforced externally. Yet, there is rational pressure on agents to do their part. Kant and UBI advocates can learn a great deal from each other.
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854472.077269
LOGOS Research Group in Analytic Philosophy, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Perception is said to have assertoric force: It inclines the perceiver to believe its content. In contrast, perceptual imagination is commonly taken to be non-assertoric: Imagining winning a piano contest does not incline the imaginer to believe they actually won. However, abundant evidence from clinical and experimental psychology shows that imagination influences attitudes and behavior in ways similar to perceptual experiences. To account for these phenomena, I propose that perceptual imaginings have implicit assertoric force and put forth a theory—the Prima Facie View—as a unified explanation for the empirical findings reviewed. According to this view, mental images are treated as percepts in operations involving associative memory. Finally, I address alternative explanations that could account for the reviewed empirical evidence—such as a Spinozian model of belief formation or Gendler’s notion of alief—as well as potential objections to the Prima Facie View.
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6 April
Philosophers have struggled to explain the mismatch of emotions and their objects across time, as when we stop grieving or feeling angry despite the persistence of the underlying cause. I argue for a sceptical approach that says that these emotional changes often lack rational fit. The key observation is that our emotions must periodically reset for purely functional reasons that have nothing to do with fit. I compare this account to David Hume’s sceptical approach in matters of belief, and conclude that resistance to it rests on a confusion similar to one that he identifies.
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983629.077293
1. Milton’s final work, Samson Agonistes, is built on an historical and aesthetic foundation many layers deep—as one might expect from this poet: ancient greek tragedy; the Aristotelian theory of tragedy it inspired; the Biblical story of Samson, of which this is a transformational re-telling; and Samson’s place in the larger history of Israel. …
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5 April
If this all sounds feasible, or even fun, then I’m afraid my description has been misleading. The description in question is by Sally Rooney, in an essay in the New York Review of Books, and it’s a description of playing snooker, aimed at an American audience familiar with the exponentially easier game of pool. …
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4 April
How is it that individuals who deny experiencing visual imagery nonetheless perform normally on tasks which seem to require it? This puzzle of aphantasia has perplexed philosophers and scientists since the late nineteenth century. Contemporary responses include: (i) idiosyncratic reporting, (ii) faulty introspection, (iii) unconscious imagery, and (iv) complete lack of imagery combined with the use of alternative strategies. None offers a satisfying explanation of the full range of first-person, behavioural and physiological data. Here, I diagnose the puzzle of aphantasia as arising from the mistaken assumption that variation in imagery is well-captured by a single ‘vividness’ scale. Breaking with this assumption, I defend an alternative account which elegantly accommodates all the data. Crucial to this account is a fundamental distinction between visual-object and spatial imagery. Armed with this distinction, I argue that subjective reports and objective measures only testify to the absence of visual-object imagery, whereas imagery task performance is explained by preserved spatial imagery which goes unreported on standard ‘vividness’ questionnaires. More generally, I propose that aphantasia be thought of on analogy with agnosia, as a generic label for a range of imagery deficits with corresponding sparing.
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3 April
Philosophy and Society Vol. 30, No. 4, 463–644 Mega-Labs is a Challenging Task That Requires a Combination of Case-Based and Formal Epistemic Approaches. Data-Driven Studies Suggest That Projects Pursued by Smaller Master-Teams (Fewer Members, Fewer Sub-Teams) Are Substantially More Efficient Than Larger Ones Across Sciences, Including Experimental Particle Physics. Smaller Teams Also Seem to Make Better Project Choices Than Larger, Centralized Teams. Yet the Epistemic Requirement of Small, Decentralized, and Diverse Teams Contradicts the Often Emphasized and Allegedly Inescapable Logic of Discovery That Forces Physicists Pursuing the Fundamental Levels of the Physical World to Perform Centralized Experiments in Mega-Labs at High Energies. We Explain, However, That This Epistemic Requirement Could Be Met, Since the Nature of Theoretical and Physical Constraints in High Energy Physics and the Technological Obstacles Stemming From Them Turn Out to Be Surprisingly Open-Ended.
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1254782.077337
Large Language Models (LLMs) increasingly produce outputs that resemble introspection, including self-reference, epistemic modulation, and claims about internal states. This study investigates whether such behaviors display consistent patterns across repeated prompts or reflect surface-level generative artifacts. We evaluated five open-weight, stateless LLMs using a structured battery of 21 introspective prompts, each repeated ten times, yielding 1,050 completions. These outputs are analyzed across three behavioral dimensions: surface-level similarity (via token overlap), semantic coherence (via sentence embeddings), and inferential consistency (via natural language inference). Although some models demonstrate localized thematic stability—especially in identity - and consciousness-related prompts—none sustain diachronic coherence.
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1 April
This paper explores the theme of human limitedness and the virtues in David McPherson’s The Virtues of Limits. I survey some of the main themes of his discussion— including kinds of human limits and the idea of “limiting-virtues”—and indicate salient themes in Buddhist and classical Chinese philosophical traditions. I then suggest that McPherson is too quick to dismiss forms of moral quietism and that his discussion of our limitedness rests on a latent pessimism worthy of further articulation.
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1370183.07736
The (dis)continuism debate in the philosophy of memory revolves around the question of whether memory and imagination belong to the same natural kind. Continuism, on the one hand, defends that they belong to the same natural kind. Discontinuism, on the other hand, defends that they do not belong to the same natural kind. By adopting a minimal notion of natural kind, one can recognize that there are different legitimate ways of sorting kinds, which lead to different positions in the debate. In this paper, I interpret continuism as a mechanistic thesis, according to which memory and imagination belong to the same natural kind because they are underpinned by the same constitutive mechanism. I clarify the implications of this thesis and show that most of the discontinuist attacks on continuism do not constitute a challenge to the mechanistic thesis. I also present a possible challenge to mechanistic continuism. This suggests that there may be multiple (dis)continuism debates. Keywords: Continuism. Discontinuism. Natural kinds. Mechanism. Episodic Memory. Episodic Imagination.
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31 March
We draw on value theory in social psychology to conceptualize the range of motives that can influence researchers’ attitudes, decisions, and actions. To conceptualize academic research values, we integrate theoretical insights from the literature on personal, work, and scientific work values, as well as the outcome of interviews and a survey among 255 participants about values relating to academic research. Finally, we propose a total of 246 academic research value items spread over 11 dimensions and 34 sub-themes. We relate our conceptualization and proposed items to existing work and provide recommendations for future scale development. Gaining a better understanding of researchers’ different values can improve careers in science, attract a more diverse range of people to enter science, and elucidate some of the mechanisms that lead to both exemplary and questionable scientific practices.
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30 March
1. You can make your child learn the cello, and refuse to serve them candy for breakfast. Parents have these, and other, rights. What is the source, and extent, of these rights? As for source, the welfare of the child is a natural answer: in general and on average, granting parents certain rights is in the best interest of children. …
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1600840.077394
I argue that chatbots create a peculiar new kind of responsibility gap, which I call the “speech act responsibility gap”. Unlike the responsibility gaps commonly discussed in the context of self-driving cars and autonomous weapons, speech act responsibility gaps arise from the fact that paradigmatic speech acts like assertions (statements), promises or orders always generate linguistic commitments and entitlements. Unlike more familiar kinds of responsibility gaps, speech act responsibility gaps are inherently interpersonal and directed. I first argue that currently dominant treatments of chatbot speech acts as proxy agents cannot bridge these gaps. I also discuss why current arguments against the existence of responsibility gaps don’t apply in the case of chatbots. Instead, responsibility appears to be best attributed to the chatbot itself. However, this poses a dilemma. Either these machines don’t speak (we are fundamentally mistaken about their output), or we need to engineer (broaden) our notion of responsibility.
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29 March
Mexican existentialism grows out of the encounter, engagement, and
appropriation with French and German existentialist philosophies in
Mexico mid-way through the twentieth-century. Key players in this
tradition were José Gaos (1900–1969), Antonio Caso
(1883–1946), and, especially, el grupo Hiperión
(the Hyperion Group). Members of Hyperion, but particularly Emilio
Uranga (1921–1988), Leopoldo Zea (1912–2004), Jorge
Portilla (1918–1963), and Luis Villoro (1922–2014),
focused their efforts on existential reinterpretations of that
which is Mexican (“lo mexicano” or Mexicanness), a
focus that lends this tradition its historical and conceptual
uniqueness and importance.