Fintan Mallory
@fintanmallory.com
Philosopher at Durham University fintanmallory.com
Hannah Arendt arguing that granting epistemic significance to direct experience requires communal existence. This is three years before Sellars attacked the Myth of the Given in 'Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind'.
February 9, 2026 at 11:47 AM
Hannah Arendt arguing that granting epistemic significance to direct experience requires communal existence. This is three years before Sellars attacked the Myth of the Given in 'Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind'.
What the world would look like if it were literally just Valencia
February 8, 2026 at 11:34 AM
What the world would look like if it were literally just Valencia
Since the launch date has been delayed, NASA have no excuse not to get the Artemis 2 crew on Hot Ones. It would save the space program.
February 7, 2026 at 9:23 PM
Since the launch date has been delayed, NASA have no excuse not to get the Artemis 2 crew on Hot Ones. It would save the space program.
Here's a fun documentary David Lodge made of the 'Linguistics of Writing Conference' in 1986 with occasional talking heads from Edward Said, Stuart Hall, Fredric Jameson, Jean-Luc Godard and many more: www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqeS...
'Big Words... Small Worlds' (feat. Raymond Williams)
YouTube video by Raymond Williams Society
www.youtube.com
February 7, 2026 at 7:08 PM
Here's a fun documentary David Lodge made of the 'Linguistics of Writing Conference' in 1986 with occasional talking heads from Edward Said, Stuart Hall, Fredric Jameson, Jean-Luc Godard and many more: www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqeS...
The last decade of work on the question-sensitivity of cognitive attitudes (incl. inquisitive semantics, etc.) seems like a good example of philosophers of language, mind and epistemology working together to make meaningful progress and I think that’s cool.
February 7, 2026 at 1:40 PM
The last decade of work on the question-sensitivity of cognitive attitudes (incl. inquisitive semantics, etc.) seems like a good example of philosophers of language, mind and epistemology working together to make meaningful progress and I think that’s cool.
It seems the Telegraph are reporting on my recent move to Spain
February 5, 2026 at 8:08 PM
It seems the Telegraph are reporting on my recent move to Spain
Can’t believe I’ve only now learned how people handle gender ambiguity typographically in Spain
February 5, 2026 at 3:02 PM
Can’t believe I’ve only now learned how people handle gender ambiguity typographically in Spain
Just realised that the cover of Topoi does not, in fact, depict the 12 links of dependent origination as I had always assumed
February 4, 2026 at 10:29 AM
Just realised that the cover of Topoi does not, in fact, depict the 12 links of dependent origination as I had always assumed
“Yeah they’ve got Bridgerton in Spain but they call it Los Bridgerton.”
February 2, 2026 at 9:18 PM
“Yeah they’ve got Bridgerton in Spain but they call it Los Bridgerton.”
Weird new paper alert! What happens if you apply a consumer-based teleosemantics to the simplest case of neural word embeddings? philpapers.org/rec/MALTFN-2
Fintan Mallory, Teleosemantics for Neural Word Embeddings - PhilPapers
This paper applies a consumer-based teleosemantic framework to give a detailed analysis of a particular algorithm for generating word embeddings. In the process, it addresses several of the challenges...
philpapers.org
February 2, 2026 at 3:08 PM
Weird new paper alert! What happens if you apply a consumer-based teleosemantics to the simplest case of neural word embeddings? philpapers.org/rec/MALTFN-2
Sometimes it’s nice to just sit and try to comprehend yourself as a massively complex bundle of chemical processes, to try to grasp the sheer remarkable wonder of your existence.
February 2, 2026 at 12:58 PM
Sometimes it’s nice to just sit and try to comprehend yourself as a massively complex bundle of chemical processes, to try to grasp the sheer remarkable wonder of your existence.
As someone born and raised on an island, there’s always something magical about coming to the continent. I’m in Spain right now but if I just faced east and started walking, I could reach Vietnam or Malaysia.
February 1, 2026 at 2:24 PM
As someone born and raised on an island, there’s always something magical about coming to the continent. I’m in Spain right now but if I just faced east and started walking, I could reach Vietnam or Malaysia.
A distant star is likely the largest single object you’ll ever see but, because it’s just a speck of light, it’s also one of the smallest.
February 1, 2026 at 10:29 AM
A distant star is likely the largest single object you’ll ever see but, because it’s just a speck of light, it’s also one of the smallest.
Someone was posting this old CIA sabotage manual for how to disrupted political organisations and it’s also a pretty good guide to being an analytic philosopher
January 29, 2026 at 11:46 PM
Someone was posting this old CIA sabotage manual for how to disrupted political organisations and it’s also a pretty good guide to being an analytic philosopher
Reposted by Fintan Mallory
I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good.
Stay free
Stay free
Bruce Springsteen - Streets Of Minneapolis (Official Audio)
YouTube video by Bruce Springsteen
youtu.be
January 28, 2026 at 5:02 PM
I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good.
Stay free
Stay free
Dagfinn Føllesdal’s sad account of trying to help Quine revise Word and Object just before he died.
January 26, 2026 at 5:37 PM
Dagfinn Føllesdal’s sad account of trying to help Quine revise Word and Object just before he died.
People complain about Avatar being the highest grossing film of all time but for the first 50 years of cinema it was just Confederate Lost Cause propaganda.
January 26, 2026 at 12:57 PM
People complain about Avatar being the highest grossing film of all time but for the first 50 years of cinema it was just Confederate Lost Cause propaganda.
I love my job and rarely have career envy but this is making me question my life direction.
January 25, 2026 at 7:18 PM
I love my job and rarely have career envy but this is making me question my life direction.
Reposted by Fintan Mallory
Lotta people making claims using plural forms without quantifiers (e.g. Americans..., Europeans...) which designate groups but don’t seem to involve predicating things of every member of that group. I sure hope nothing follows from this.
January 21, 2026 at 6:36 PM
Lotta people making claims using plural forms without quantifiers (e.g. Americans..., Europeans...) which designate groups but don’t seem to involve predicating things of every member of that group. I sure hope nothing follows from this.
Quine said 'no entity without identity' because you can’t quantify over things you can’t individuate. This was a *really* influential assumption for people like Davidson - can’t individuate conceptual schemes/languages, okay, they aren’t real etc.
January 20, 2026 at 11:40 AM
Quine said 'no entity without identity' because you can’t quantify over things you can’t individuate. This was a *really* influential assumption for people like Davidson - can’t individuate conceptual schemes/languages, okay, they aren’t real etc.
A cow's natural lifespan is around 20 years but to ensure a rapid return on investment, they are typically slaughtered at around 18-20 months so I suspect we don't see the complex, social intelligence that would emerge if human's weren't industrially slaughtering them so young
Back-scratching bovine leads scientists to reassess intelligence of cows
Brown Swiss in Austria has been discovered using tools in different ways – something only ever seen in humans and chimpanzees
www.theguardian.com
January 19, 2026 at 5:50 PM
A cow's natural lifespan is around 20 years but to ensure a rapid return on investment, they are typically slaughtered at around 18-20 months so I suspect we don't see the complex, social intelligence that would emerge if human's weren't industrially slaughtering them so young
I know it’s silly but this stuff makes me very proud of our weird little monkey species and I think this kind of pride is politically important: www.theguardian.com/science/2026...
Nasa readies its most powerful rocket for round-the-moon flight
Artemis II mission could launch on 6 February, sending astronauts on a 685,000-mile journey
www.theguardian.com
January 17, 2026 at 12:04 PM
I know it’s silly but this stuff makes me very proud of our weird little monkey species and I think this kind of pride is politically important: www.theguardian.com/science/2026...
The sequoia, General Sherman, is roughly the same age as western philosophy and I think you could spend the whole day just contemplating this fact and it would be a day well spent.
January 17, 2026 at 9:42 AM
The sequoia, General Sherman, is roughly the same age as western philosophy and I think you could spend the whole day just contemplating this fact and it would be a day well spent.