Chris
@multiplicityct.bsky.social
PhD student in philosophy at the University of Staffordshire. Heidegger, analytic ethics (trust and mistrust), philosophy of tech/AI. Marylander. MA Staffs, MBA Duke. Wittgenstein and Cantor handshake numbers = 3 (via John Conway).
Philosophers, why does everything you do turn into a “plague of distinctions” descending on innocent people just trying to live their lives??
Amélie Oksenberg Rorty is giving me joy this morning. (From “Explaining Emotions”) #philsky
Amélie Oksenberg Rorty is giving me joy this morning. (From “Explaining Emotions”) #philsky
November 11, 2025 at 2:56 PM
Philosophers, why does everything you do turn into a “plague of distinctions” descending on innocent people just trying to live their lives??
Amélie Oksenberg Rorty is giving me joy this morning. (From “Explaining Emotions”) #philsky
Amélie Oksenberg Rorty is giving me joy this morning. (From “Explaining Emotions”) #philsky
I think this is exactly right, in part because intelligence is not a very interesting fact about us. Normativity is different - and far more interesting. Not at all clear that *intrinsic* normativity will apply to AI anytime soon, or how we would test for it (vs faking for users' benefit). #aiethics
Maybe I'm in the minority of neuroscientists, but I'm deflationary about terms like intelligence. If AI passes tests that were designed to measure these things, then we can say they have them (like we do for humans). And this is mostly what the original article says (the headline is inaccurate)
As a neuroscientist, I’d suggest there is a profound disconnect between what *some* computer scientists think is representative of “intelligence”, cognitive ability, or descriptions of consciousness from some in AI work.
LLMs are not how neural systems process information, nor how brains function.
LLMs are not how neural systems process information, nor how brains function.
November 8, 2025 at 10:41 PM
I think this is exactly right, in part because intelligence is not a very interesting fact about us. Normativity is different - and far more interesting. Not at all clear that *intrinsic* normativity will apply to AI anytime soon, or how we would test for it (vs faking for users' benefit). #aiethics
Reposted by Chris
When I started my doctorate, I had to complete the standard research ethics training. Particularly with prisoner populations, I saw many parallels to AI. #ai #artificialintelligence #llms #largelanguagemodels #aiethics
When We Decide Who Can Feel
Should AI be protected by ethical research guidelines?
open.substack.com
November 8, 2025 at 12:55 AM
When I started my doctorate, I had to complete the standard research ethics training. Particularly with prisoner populations, I saw many parallels to AI. #ai #artificialintelligence #llms #largelanguagemodels #aiethics
"The Aesthetic encourages us to entertain the thought that there could be differently formed sensibilities, which would be associated with different 'formal intuitions'." (John McDowell, "The Apperceptive I and the Empirical Self")
I'd gladly read 10 more papers of speculation on Kant's aliens!
I'd gladly read 10 more papers of speculation on Kant's aliens!
I’m interested in thinking more about how sci-fi challenges anthropocentrism in philosophy. Kant is sometimes seen as an anthropocentric philosopher. But he also thinks that there could be (or even are) morally superior extraterrestrial agents. Does this matter at all for his anthropocentrism?
November 7, 2025 at 6:18 PM
"The Aesthetic encourages us to entertain the thought that there could be differently formed sensibilities, which would be associated with different 'formal intuitions'." (John McDowell, "The Apperceptive I and the Empirical Self")
I'd gladly read 10 more papers of speculation on Kant's aliens!
I'd gladly read 10 more papers of speculation on Kant's aliens!
Sounds about right.
maybe we’re “pro science” but also “anti scientific method”
November 7, 2025 at 6:12 PM
Sounds about right.
Fascinating. I grew up near this fault line and still remember Iben Browning’s crazy 1234567890 earthquake prediction when I was in grade school.
Free ebook of Conevery Bolton Valencius's book The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes
press.uchicago.edu/books/freeEb...
#HistSci ⚒️
press.uchicago.edu/books/freeEb...
#HistSci ⚒️
New free ebook every month from the University of Chicago Press ebook
Get a new free ebook every month from the University of Chicago Press. We publish over 5000 ebook editions.
press.uchicago.edu
November 6, 2025 at 3:12 AM
Fascinating. I grew up near this fault line and still remember Iben Browning’s crazy 1234567890 earthquake prediction when I was in grade school.
What work of philosophy (especially secondary literature) do you admire but would never want to write yourself?
I just read Henry Allison's Kant's Theory of Freedom this weekend and it's my prime candidate! Exhaustive, erudite, and chasing phantoms in the form of pure Kantian consistency. #philsky
I just read Henry Allison's Kant's Theory of Freedom this weekend and it's my prime candidate! Exhaustive, erudite, and chasing phantoms in the form of pure Kantian consistency. #philsky
November 3, 2025 at 4:12 PM
What work of philosophy (especially secondary literature) do you admire but would never want to write yourself?
I just read Henry Allison's Kant's Theory of Freedom this weekend and it's my prime candidate! Exhaustive, erudite, and chasing phantoms in the form of pure Kantian consistency. #philsky
I just read Henry Allison's Kant's Theory of Freedom this weekend and it's my prime candidate! Exhaustive, erudite, and chasing phantoms in the form of pure Kantian consistency. #philsky
Reposted by Chris
[3/9] The common "foundationalist" view – which bases personhood on properties like consciousness or rationality – forces an untenable, all-or-nothing choice: an AI must either be a full person or a "mere thing". We argue this rigid binary is ill-suited for the challenges ahead.
October 31, 2025 at 12:33 PM
[3/9] The common "foundationalist" view – which bases personhood on properties like consciousness or rationality – forces an untenable, all-or-nothing choice: an AI must either be a full person or a "mere thing". We argue this rigid binary is ill-suited for the challenges ahead.
This just happened where I live.
Comment: "How did this happen? That would be what you should add to this story."
Comment: "How did this happen? That would be what you should add to this story."
Two Rescued After Car Lands on Two Vehicles - The MoCo Show
Two people were trapped after a vehicle ended up on top of two occupied cars in the parking lot of the Camalier Building on Fernwood Road in North Bethesda on […]
mocoshow.com
October 31, 2025 at 12:08 AM
This just happened where I live.
Comment: "How did this happen? That would be what you should add to this story."
Comment: "How did this happen? That would be what you should add to this story."
We can tell ourselves we're creatures of habit, little more than automatons a la Vaucason's shitting ducks. Kant says these excuses still cannot "silence the prosecutor within".
Might seem hand-wavy in argumentative terms but it's one of my favorite passages of the 2nd Critique.
Might seem hand-wavy in argumentative terms but it's one of my favorite passages of the 2nd Critique.
October 28, 2025 at 12:14 PM
We can tell ourselves we're creatures of habit, little more than automatons a la Vaucason's shitting ducks. Kant says these excuses still cannot "silence the prosecutor within".
Might seem hand-wavy in argumentative terms but it's one of my favorite passages of the 2nd Critique.
Might seem hand-wavy in argumentative terms but it's one of my favorite passages of the 2nd Critique.
My weekend accomplishment: I have a draft I don't hate of a possible journal article. Writing is hard but worth it, y'all!
October 27, 2025 at 6:38 PM
My weekend accomplishment: I have a draft I don't hate of a possible journal article. Writing is hard but worth it, y'all!
I did not know about these. @euthyphro.bsky.social, up for a read of Un nouveau dans la ville, his small-town Maine novel??
Some of Georges Simenon's best novels are his romans Américains, a baker's dozen surgical dissections of the American way of life in the 1950s -- most of them out of print, two of them never translated into English.
neglectedbooks.com/?...
neglectedbooks.com/?...
October 24, 2025 at 2:06 PM
I did not know about these. @euthyphro.bsky.social, up for a read of Un nouveau dans la ville, his small-town Maine novel??
Could we conceivably know what it is like to be an AI model, and thus what its ethical status should be? Intriguing argument from Helen Yetter-Chappell that we're in a worse epistemic position than wrt animal consciousness. #aiethics
Helen Yetter-Chappell, Guessing at Ghosts in the Machine - PhilPapers
As AI grows ever more complex and ubiquitous, its moral status becomes ever more pressing. But knowing whether an AI has moral status is only part of the ethical puzzle. To ...
philpapers.org
October 23, 2025 at 1:48 AM
Could we conceivably know what it is like to be an AI model, and thus what its ethical status should be? Intriguing argument from Helen Yetter-Chappell that we're in a worse epistemic position than wrt animal consciousness. #aiethics
This from Tim is really insightful and pragmatic. I find LLMs really useful for workmanlike, practical writing too, just like the “slop” code Tim describes. But they’re totally useless for writing that is really a form of thinking and communicating thinking.
Karpathy called AI-generated code "slop". It should be slop!
It should be boring, unsurprising, predictable. Those are bad qualities in writing or art, but it's the ideal for code
But wait! If it's only good for boilerplate, then work with that, make more boilerplate
timkellogg.me/blog/2025/10...
It should be boring, unsurprising, predictable. Those are bad qualities in writing or art, but it's the ideal for code
But wait! If it's only good for boilerplate, then work with that, make more boilerplate
timkellogg.me/blog/2025/10...
AI generated code is slop, and that's a good thing
timkellogg.me
October 19, 2025 at 9:09 PM
This from Tim is really insightful and pragmatic. I find LLMs really useful for workmanlike, practical writing too, just like the “slop” code Tim describes. But they’re totally useless for writing that is really a form of thinking and communicating thinking.
Hanging out in Wilmington, DE. This killer lactose sour from Dewey Brewing Co. is the star of the trip so far.
October 18, 2025 at 10:18 PM
Hanging out in Wilmington, DE. This killer lactose sour from Dewey Brewing Co. is the star of the trip so far.
Another 1000 words tonight. I had to become a PhD student before I understood how precious horrendous, drafty writing can be!
October 17, 2025 at 2:59 AM
Another 1000 words tonight. I had to become a PhD student before I understood how precious horrendous, drafty writing can be!
The technologically extended mind means that we are open to new threats and ethical dilemmas. Orestis Palermos explores this hypothesis in a provocative new book & analyzes the ethical and legal implications. #aiethics
Cyborg Rights: Extending Cognition, Ethics, and the Law
This book explores the ethical, legal, and rights-related ramifications of the Hypothesis of Extended Cognition and the Extended Mind Thesis. Focusing on technologies designed to extend our cognitive ...
www.routledge.com
October 15, 2025 at 12:35 PM
The technologically extended mind means that we are open to new threats and ethical dilemmas. Orestis Palermos explores this hypothesis in a provocative new book & analyzes the ethical and legal implications. #aiethics
I wrote 400 words and finally got out the biggest idea that is currently in my head. It’s been there (in my head) all year, and now it’s on a page. Hope springs eternal!
Another night in the philosophy mines. Surely there is a good idea in this very drafty draft??
October 15, 2025 at 3:42 AM
I wrote 400 words and finally got out the biggest idea that is currently in my head. It’s been there (in my head) all year, and now it’s on a page. Hope springs eternal!
Another night in the philosophy mines. Surely there is a good idea in this very drafty draft??
October 15, 2025 at 2:29 AM
Another night in the philosophy mines. Surely there is a good idea in this very drafty draft??
This "use case" is just deeply demoralizing. These tools are ripe for usage that undermines human-to-human trust. Putting them into an app widely like TikTok used by children and teenagers -- and I'm sure the Sora app will get there very quickly, too -- is irresponsible. #aiethics
Police are asking kids to stop pulling AI homeless man prank
The AI #homelessmanprank has gone viral, causing headaches for law enforcement.
www.theverge.com
October 12, 2025 at 7:30 PM
This "use case" is just deeply demoralizing. These tools are ripe for usage that undermines human-to-human trust. Putting them into an app widely like TikTok used by children and teenagers -- and I'm sure the Sora app will get there very quickly, too -- is irresponsible. #aiethics
I regret to inform you that I’ve just given Kant’s second Critique five stars on Goodreads. I actually enjoyed it a lot!
October 12, 2025 at 3:00 PM
I regret to inform you that I’ve just given Kant’s second Critique five stars on Goodreads. I actually enjoyed it a lot!
Whenever scholars claim a great work of philosophy is loose and disunified, I assume that a) we haven’t collectively worked hard enough at it, and b) it’s probably got serious juice that we’d benefit from. (Cf. Heidegger’s Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics.)
Excited about this on Kant’s 3rd C.!
Excited about this on Kant’s 3rd C.!
Kant on Freedom, Nature, and Judgment: The Territory of the Third Critique
One may wonder why we had to wait for so long for a book like Kristi Sweet’s to be published. It is in the Second Introduction to the Critiq...
ndpr.nd.edu
October 11, 2025 at 9:02 PM
Whenever scholars claim a great work of philosophy is loose and disunified, I assume that a) we haven’t collectively worked hard enough at it, and b) it’s probably got serious juice that we’d benefit from. (Cf. Heidegger’s Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics.)
Excited about this on Kant’s 3rd C.!
Excited about this on Kant’s 3rd C.!
“I try to get a likeness,” Hockney says, “but in the end, I don’t care what the other person thinks of it, it’s what I think of it that counts.”
Hockney is my favorite living artist — maybe my favorite, period. Lovely (and lively) interview in the Telegraph.
Hockney is my favorite living artist — maybe my favorite, period. Lovely (and lively) interview in the Telegraph.
David Hockney: ‘I assume I’ll die soon, so I want to work every day’
Ahead of a show revealing his transcendent new direction, our greatest living artist discusses why at 88 he’s still happiest when painting
www.telegraph.co.uk
October 11, 2025 at 4:56 PM
“I try to get a likeness,” Hockney says, “but in the end, I don’t care what the other person thinks of it, it’s what I think of it that counts.”
Hockney is my favorite living artist — maybe my favorite, period. Lovely (and lively) interview in the Telegraph.
Hockney is my favorite living artist — maybe my favorite, period. Lovely (and lively) interview in the Telegraph.
Reposted by Chris
I know there's a million worthy causes to fund but may I suggest this teacher in Maryland who wants to buy two Albert Camus novels for his AP students? Please and thank you?
www.donorschoose.org/project/2-no...
www.donorschoose.org/project/2-no...
2 Novels From Albert Camus, a project from Dr. Michael Buso
Help me give my students a physical copy of a book we will read in our AP Literature classroom. This will allow each student to read the novels of Albert Camus in printed form. Since his novels are...
www.donorschoose.org
October 10, 2025 at 8:44 PM
I know there's a million worthy causes to fund but may I suggest this teacher in Maryland who wants to buy two Albert Camus novels for his AP students? Please and thank you?
www.donorschoose.org/project/2-no...
www.donorschoose.org/project/2-no...