Pat McConville
@ptmcconville.bsky.social
Philosopher, bioethicist, unionist, father. Interested in phenomenology of health and illness, embodiment, medicine, and cardiology. Host of the Concept : Art podcast. Living in lutruwita Tasmania.
After a not-so-short hiatus, in our latest episode, @ptmcconville.bsky.social speaks with @alexcainphilosophy.bsky.social. They discuss the duty to paint, the hopefulness of Hannah Arendt, and the importance of the banality of evil. Follow the show and listen wherever you find your podcasts!
Season 2, Episode 9: S2E9 Duty, Banality, and Hopefulness with Alex Cain – Concept : Art
conceptart.fm
Up today: New Books Network podcast (*Note that the New Books Network mis-titled the book, including the link, but not Lilly Goren, who conducted the interview & summarizes/semi-reviews the book on the launch page)
Kathleen J. Frydl, "Liberalism and the Reinvention of Corporate Personhood" (Oxford UP, 2026) - New Books Network
newbooksnetwork.com
I don't see any value in a paper length LLM-Summary on a topic. What sense does it make to engage with such a paper, if I cannot dabble with understandings and interpretations? What does reviewing look like if I have to assume the authors don't know the topic they're publishing on? (2/2).
American workers just took home their smallest share of the nation's wealth since 1947 — even as corporate profits soar. Why? This chart has the answer.
One philosophy department's policy on AI use by students...
Does Your Department Have an AI Policy? Here’s Edinburgh’s - Daily Nous
Has your department instituted an AI policy? If so, whom does it govern, and what does it say? What should such a policy say? Has your department considered an AI policy but held off on writing or imp...
dailynous.com
In this extract from his newly published essay collection, the author traces the imperial British origins of a quintessential Kiwi chore.
Mowing the lawn: the colonial ghosts haunting our suburban ritual
theconversation.com
There is no NYC without unions. A people united and organized cannot be defeated. Together, we're showing the world what solidarity means.
Just 1 example of the kind of thing unis are getting for their massive spend on consultants. ANU spent $6k on a "non-significant meeting" with a reputation management firm at which apparently no one took a note. That's more than a tutor gets for a semester's work thepoint.com.au/opinions/260...
ANU spent $6k on a 'non-significant' meeting. Then why do they pay tutors even less for a semester?
Last year the Australian National University (ANU) was getting some bad press, so they engaged a company called Bastion Reputation to help with the media fallout from restructures and the heavily crit...
thepoint.com.au
OpenAI ”acknowledged in its own research that LLMs will always produce hallucinations due to fundamental mathematical constraints that cannot be solved through better engineering, marking a significant admission from one of the AI industry’s leading companies.” You can’t trust chatbots.
OpenAI admits AI hallucinations are mathematically inevitable, not just engineering flaws
In a landmark study, OpenAI researchers reveal that large language models will always produce plausible but false outputs, even with perfect data, due to fundamental statistical and computational limi...
computerworld.com
mill's dedication: this is a jointly authored work a century & a half of male editors: mill exaggerated out of a sentimental fondness for his wife mill's letters: no, really, most of "my" work was partly by her, i really could not be clearer on this
Nikhil Venkatesh @nikvenkatesh.bsky.social · 6mo agoHarriet Taylor Mill officially recognised as co-author of 'On Liberty'! dailynous.com/2026/03/19/o...
yesss shove it in my veins Chapter 11 Strategies for organising against AI in higher education Robert Ovetz and Lindsay Weinber > the future of AI in higher education is not a foregone conclusion. Academic workers can organise to contest, refuse and ban extractive AI
I'm excited to share my last paper of 2025, which is out now in Human Studies. This one means a lot to me, as I draw on my own experience of synaesthesia in grappling with Merleau-Ponty's claim that 'synaesthetic perception is the rule'. link.springer.com/article/10.1...
‘Phenomenology’ is Blue: The Synaesthetic Dynamics of Being-in-the-World - Human Studies
Human Studies - Synaesthesia, in which particular perceptual or cognitive stimuli trigger anomalous secondary sensations, has proven to be remarkably difficult to explain. The way it complicates...
link.springer.com
A publication for a special issue of the International Journal of Philosophical Studies to close out the year. I examine the role of the heart as a temporalising and motivating organ for human experience in the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and María Zambrano. www.tandfonline.com/eprint/KSBQS...
'Condemned to Proceeding': Time, Motivation and the Human Heart in Merleau-Ponty and Zambrano
Work on Merleau-Ponty has tended to overlook the role of the internal body in his phenomenology. In this paper, I examine the role of the heart as a temporalising and motivating organ for human exp...
tandfonline.com
Leadership would have you so tired, so poor, so disempowered, that you only watch your own back. This is what happens when we don’t watch each others back. Join a union that cares about *everyone* and work hard to keep everyone safe. Including people that are at risk from viruses.
Congratulations to my @emorylaw.bsky.social colleague Deepa Das Acevedo on her new book The War on Tenure. www.cambridge.org/us/universit... Zoom in for the 9/26 book launch:
AI is the asbestos we are shoveling into the walls of our society and our descendants will be digging it out for generations”
Mike Dickison@adzebill.bsky.social · 12mo agoDoctorow on the impending economic collapse when the AI bubble bursts. pluralistic.net/2025/09/27/e...
Back after a short hiatus, in our latest episode, @ptmcconville.bsky.social speaks with Anya Daly. They discuss meditation and perception, the divide between continental and analytic philosophy, and human and animal lifeworlds. Follow the show and listen wherever you find your podcasts!
Season 2, Episode 6: Conceptual Digestion with Anya Daly – Concept : Art
conceptart.fm
"How Are the Very Rich Feeling About New York’s Next Mayor?" A Dramatic Reading of The Recent New York Times Dispatch from the Hamptons. Presented by The Gilded Age's Morgan Spector.
Here's me in Guardian Australia on the total debacle with Meanjin. www.theguardian.com/books/commen...
The end of Meanjin after 85 years is as sad as it is infuriating | Ben Walter
MUP says it is ‘no longer viable’ to make the literary magazine – but almost none of them are financially viable. That’s not their purpose or value
theguardian.com
Illinois Gov. Pritzker vows to pursue Trump officials who participate in an illegal National Guard deployment to Chicago: "If you hurt my people, nothing will stop me - not time or political circumstance - from making sure that you face justice under our constitutional rule of law."
“Universities educate students, but they are also incubators of new knowledge and discovery. ... For example, by supporting areas of research that might not be economically “efficient” but which will be required for our future.” theconversation.com/universities...
Universities have lost their way, but cost-cutting and consultants are not the answer
Last week in Sydney, we saw a melodrama acted out that could stand in for the state of Australian universities more generally.
theconversation.com
Exemptions to copyright legislation for AI would disadvantage Australian writers – and set a bad precedent. 👉 Read the full story: theconversation.com/the-pro...
One of the best experiences I had in graduate school was joining a reading group on @bryanvannorden.bsky.social's Introduction to Classical Chinese Philosophy (and the accompanying books of readings). There is still so much missing from mainstream philosophy.
Five Books - Expert Book Recommendations@fivebooks.com · last yr.“It was a very heated response, and one that reflected immense ignorance” fivebooks.com/best-books/w...
“It was a very heated response, and one that reflected immense ignorance” fivebooks.com/best-books/w...
World Philosophy
Want to expand your knowledge of world philosophy but don't know where to start? Bryan Van Norden chooses foundational texts of traditions around the globe.
fivebooks.com
