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Text of the page (random words):
available to buy there are so many things in here that were written or given as talks long ago but never actually published and it s nice to know people will finally be able to reference them properly as readers of the blog may already know i ve struggled to write consistently and struggled even more to publish any of it in the last 10 years due to a mixture of bipolar disorder a couple surprise health problems inconsistent employment and a myriad of bad choices yet i ve somehow managed to build a modest reputation as a philosopher worth paying attention to and acquired a small following of people who pay such attention thanks to everyone who has listened and given support over the years this one is for you the book collects essays written over the last 15 years or so along with a couple interviews ranging across a wide variety of topics covering everything from realist metaphysics to the philosophy of games but it begins with a sequence of 5 essays written over the last 10 years that between them construct a coherent neorationalist perspective on the nature of mind agency selfhood and value this book might not contain a fully articulated philosophical system but it does present the outline of an integrated worldview in which questions about conceptual revision personal autonomy and the nature of beauty intersect anatomizing the deep philosopical bond between reason and freedom posted on november 1 2025 categories uncategorized leave a comment on the revenge of reason is here tfe on post searlean critiques of llms here s a recent thread on philosophy of ai from twitter x in which i address rather popular arguments made by emily bender and others to the effect that llm outputs are strictly speaking meaningless i think these argument are flawed as i explain below but i think it s worth categorising these as post searlean critiques following john searle s infamous arguments against the possibility of computational intentionality i think post searlean and post dreyfusian critiques form the main strands of contemporary opposition to the possibility of ai technologies developing human like capacities continue reading tfe on post searlean critiques of llms posted on june 22 2025 december 7 2025 categories uncategorized tags ai artificial intelligence chatgpt llm technology 1 comment on tfe on post searlean critiques of llms tfe the problem with bayes solmonoff here s a recent thread musing about problems with bayesian conceptions of general intelligence and the more specific variants based on solmonoff induction such as aixi i ve been thinking about these issues a lot recently in tandem with the proper interpretation of the no free lunch theorems in the context of machine learning i m writing something that will hopefully incorporate some of these ideas but i do not know how much detail i will be able to go into there continue reading tfe the problem with bayes solmonoff posted on october 18 2024 november 1 2024 categories uncategorized tags ai artificial intelligence bayesianism deep learning machine learning solmonoff induction 1 comment on tfe the problem with bayes solmonoff tfe what kind of computational process is a mind here s a thread from the end of last year trying to reframe the core question of the computational theory of mind i m still not entirely happy with the arguments sketched here but it s a good introduction to the way i think we should articulate the relationship between philosophy of mind and computer science there are a lot of nuances hidden in how we define the terms computation information and representation if we re to deploy them in resolving the traditional philosophical problems of mindedness but these nuances will have to wait for another day continue reading tfe what kind of computational process is a mind posted on may 20 2021 november 1 2024 categories theory thoughts from elsewhere uncategorized tags computation computational theory of mind cybernetics 7 comments on tfe what kind of computational process is a mind tfe the history of metaphysics and ontology if there s a subject i m officially an expert on it s what you might call the methodology of metaphysics the question of what metaphysics is and how to go about it i wrote my thesis on the question of being in heidegger s work trying to disentangle his critique of the metaphysical tradition from the specifics of his phenomenological project and the way it changes between his early and late work i then wrote a book on how not to do metaphysics focusing on a specific contemporary example but unfolding it into a set of broader considerations and reflections if there s one thing i ve learned over the years it s that there s no consistent usage of the terms metaphysics and ontology internal to philosophy let alone in the disciplines downstream from it and that though the analytic continental divide plays a role in this it s a deeper problem this causes a lot of confusion for students and academics alike and i towards the end of last year i took to twitter to help clear up this confusion as best i can this thread proved very popular so here s an edited version that s more easily linkable continue reading tfe the history of metaphysics and ontology posted on may 5 2021 may 5 2021 categories exegesis theory thoughts from elsewhere tags aristotle augustine heidegger heraclitus kant metaphysics ontology parmenides plato presocratics 1 comment on tfe the history of metaphysics and ontology meet the new blog same as the old blog for those of you who haven t already noticed deontologistics has undergone a bit of a redesign of late it s needed one for a while for various reasons but the thing that motivated me to finally do it was the realisation that this is the nexus of my philosophical work rather than some sideshow this site hardly has massive traffic by the standards of the internet but there are posts here that are easily more read than any of my publications moreover many of them are better for being written for a blog audience using casual hyperlinks rather than fussy references than they ever would have been if translated into a format that passed muster in some journal or other so i m not going to fight my natural inclination to write in this medium in favour of something more respectable any more if mark proved nothing else he showed that such outlets can be more influential and productive than the fodder churned out to fill cvs saying this differently i think i ve finally come to terms with the fact that i m never going to have a traditional academic career that ship has sailed the metrics aren t on my side no matter how much influence my work has exerted within and outside the halls of academia the question is what kind of hustle i can piece together from the bits and pieces of writing teaching speaking and sundry philosophical tasks i m intermittently capable of performing i m not sure what this will look like yet but i m eager to try new things i ve already guested on a few podcasts and i d like to try my hand at making some of my own audio and video content though the first real experiments are a while off at the moment in the meantime i recommend checking out my interviews i just completed one with coindesk on the topic of cryptocurrency the most unexpected turn in my philosophical practice in the last few months has been my return to twitter i ve been posting thoughts there for a few years and then transferring them over here as thoughts from elsewhere along with the odd facebook comment but towards the end of last year i started writing a lot more developing ideas in very long threads that are sometimes the size of full length essays these turned out to be surprisingly popular and just before new year i ran a competition where my followers could vote for a topic for me to write a thread on predictably they chose the topic i least wanted to write about françois laruelle the resulting thread is still unfinished though it s over 300 tweets long and is slowly growing into something like a small book i ll get it finished over the next few months even if it kills me it s been an interesting experience and i might try it again once it s done i now have quite a substantial hoard of writing ready to be ported from twitter to here where it can be edited extended and made available in ways more permanent than the endless river of the feed however my plan is to parcel it out over time in a way that produces a more consistent and less sporadic stream of content for people to read as i ve discussed at length in the past the bipolar cycle can make this sort of consistency hard but i m hoping that this way of writing will lead me to be more productive and generally less anxious about how uneven my productivity tends to be there will still be regular posts talks and maybe a book announcement or two as well wither the hustle then i m not entirely sure i ve had some people suggest that i move my writing to substack but i ve always seen my writing as a public practice i m not against being commissioned to write pieces that are put behind a paywall hint if i ve expressed a thought you d like to see in full length article form i m available for hire but i don t really want to build a paywall of my own after talking with a few people in similar positions i ve decided to start a patreon i m not asking for a lot as i m still feeling it out but if you like what i do and you d like to encourage me to do more of it do consider subscribing one off donations are also welcome one thing i m considering is producing audio recordings of some of my more accessible tweet threads for subscribers i ve already done a rough proof of concept using something i wrote about transcendental realism and empirical idealism several months back i m grateful for any and all feedback on this idea that s it for now thanks for reading here s to writing more posted on may 2 2021 may 3 2021 categories announcement leave a comment on meet the new blog same as the old blog normal service will resume shortly content notes mental health neurodiversity bipolar disorder plurality multiplicity terfism personal identity posthumanism length 18k pdf 0 vicious cycles another year another extended absence what a year though right given how 2020 has demolished any claim 2016 had to the title of worst year in living memory and that 2008 and 2012 weren t exactly peachy i m really not looking forward to seeing what 2024 will bring for me last year saw another entry added to the list of ways in which my body is trying to sabotage me and it wasn t even covid 19 i can now add mysterious metabolic problems that translate carbohydrates into crippling fatigue to a list that already includes chronic cervicogenic headaches and poorly managed bipolar disorder trying to sift discrete symptoms from the cacophony of miserable noise has been pretty difficult and it s taken a long time not just to glean what was going on but to find a dietary regime that leaves me cogent and capable most of the time worse this all started after a medication baclofen that really helped with the above mentioned headaches induced an extended period of hypomania which resulted in a significantly worse depressive crash than usual score one for the hypothesis that mania causes depression add in the nightmare that is caffeine withdrawal and january march 2020 was extremely unpleasant even before the pandemic hit and our collective perception of time coiled in upon itself turning each day into an exercise in coping with indefinite isolation in particular watching myself try and fail to deliver comprehensible lectures on aristotle to first year undergraduates as unbeknowst to me my morning croissant slowly sent me into a stupor felt like some special sisyphean punishment for my hubris in thinking i could ever be a university lecturer for much of last year i felt like an away message in human form i m afraid pete isn t here right now but he will be sure to get back to you when he is able normal service will resume shortly continue reading normal service will resume shortly posted on april 20 2021 april 24 2021 categories uncategorized 2 comments on normal service will resume shortly lost in the labyrinth content notes amateur genetics neurodiversity nick land nrx racism ignorance stupidity addiction as some people may have noticed my experiments in using twitter as a platform for philosophical writing have become a bit more interactive of late however it s hard to describe these interactions and explain their significance without somehow recapitulating them as such i m going to try and do something a little unusual in this post and see if i can effectively capture one of these interactions because i think it might be instructive it all begins with some thoughts i ve been developing on the politics of health inspired by mark fisher s take on mental health and my own experiences with healthcare more generally where it goes from there is hard to explain without simply showing you so traveller heed my words because things are going to get weird continue reading lost in the labyrinth posted on february 25 2021 categories discussion theory thoughts from elsewhere uncategorized 2 comments on lost in the labyrinth tfe varieties of rule following here s a thread from a few weeks ago explaining an interesting but underexplored overlap between a theoretical problem in philosophy and a practical problem in computer science okay it looks like i m going to have to explain my take on the rule following argument so everyone buckle themselves in almost no one agrees with me on this and i take this as a sign that there is a really significant conceptual impasse in philosophy as it stands so what s the rule following argument in simple terms wittgenstein asks us how it is possible to interpret a rule correctly without falling into an indefinite regress of rules for interpreting rules how do we answer this question what are the consequences no one agrees wittgenstein himself was concerned with examples regarding rules for the use of everyday words which is understandable given his claim that meaning is use e g he asks us how we determine whether or not the word doll has been used correctly when applied in a novel context kripke picked up wittgenstein s argument but generalised it by extending it to rules for the use of seemingly precise mathematical expressions i e he asks us how we distinguish the addition function over natural numbers plus from some arbitrarily similar function quus this becomes a worry about the determinacy of meaning if we can t distinguish addition from any arbitrarily similar function i e one that diverges at some arbitrary point perhaps returning a constant 0 after 1005 then how can we uniquely refer to plus in the first place here is my interpretation of the debate those who are convinced by worries about the doll case extend those worries to the plus case and those unconvinced by worries about the plus case extend this incredulity ...