We are having a workshop here in Oxford: philevents.org/event/show/1... See the link under "Registration" if you'd like to come. #philsky

The 16th Oxford Workshop on Global Priorities Research

We are inviting applications to attend the 16th Oxford Workshop on Global Priorities Research. Talks at the workshop will address philosophical questions relevant to identifying, prioritising among, a...

philevents.org

Peanut butter taste test!

Really enjoyed both Juice and Film Club on iplayer recently (the intersection of which is Nabhaan Rizwan). Would recommend!

So many good ones

Vincent Conitzer@conitzer.bsky.social · 12mo ago

"is it possible to touch the back of my friend's head with my nose"

Here's a long thread trying to explain the confusing terminology surrounding the sure-thing principle in decision theory - total clickbait, amirite? #philsky

'Slime mould and philosophy' - what a great topic, and currently free to download www.cambridge.org/gb/universit...

Seems like the stuff one casually picks up about black holes can be a bit misleading. For example, my son asked me...

This week reading a bit about impossible worlds... So, here's an self-indulgent thread trying to understand this paper by Giacomo Sillari philpapers.org/rec/SILQLO

Giacomo Sillari, Quantified logic of awareness and impossible possible worlds - PhilPapers

Among the many possible approaches to dealing with logical omniscience, I consider here awareness and impossible worlds structures. The former approach, pioneered by Fagin and Halpern, distinguishes b...

philpapers.org

Sure, the carryings on in parliament are messy, but, setting all else aside, I'm glad to see a party checking its leadership in the name of compassion.

The WHO guidance on the ethics of health research priority setting is out today! It was a privilege to be a part of the expert writing group (led by Joe Millum) over the past two years. I think the guidance is practical and important, especially now. Short thread + link below!

Teaching political philosophy and reading Brian Barry's 1977 essay "Justice between generations". Pretty cool how it gestures at a load of issues we're still grappling with almost 50 years later. And it has some entertaining snark.

Great podcast - interesting guests and topics, and the hosts are really on the ball.

Bio(un)ethical Podcast@biounethical.bsky.social · last yr.

Hi Bluesky! We're Bio(un)ethical, the podcast questioning existing norms in medicine, science, and public health via long-form interviews with philosophers, policymakers, physicians, and other experts. Seasons 1 + 2 are available on all platforms and our website: www.biounethical.com

Four whole citations is enough to make my paper with Nick Beckstead one of the 10 most cited in Noûs from 2023. LOL? You should read it anyway. And then read the (radically less popular) papers in the same issue by my brilliant colleagues Tim L Williamson and Brad Saad.

A paradox for tiny probabilities and enormous values

We begin by showing that every theory of the value of uncertain prospects must have one of three unpalatable properties. Reckless theories recommend giving up a sure thing, no matter how good, for an...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Reading this: arxiv.org/abs/2502.08640 From the abstract: "We uncover problematic and often shocking values in LLM assistants despite existing control measures. These include cases where AIs value themselves over humans and are anti-aligned with specific individuals." Big if true...

Utility Engineering: Analyzing and Controlling Emergent Value Systems in AIs

As AIs rapidly advance and become more agentic, the risk they pose is governed not only by their capabilities but increasingly by their propensities, including goals and values. Tracking the emergence...

arxiv.org

Here's my newly appearing paper on the simulation argument. Open access at Erkenntnis. It presents an improvement on the old argument that we're more likely to be living in a computer simulation than in ground-level reality. Or that I am, anyway!

Simulation Expectation - Erkenntnis

I present a new argument that we are much more likely to be living in a computer simulation than in the ground-level of reality. (Similar arguments can be marshalled for the view that we are more like...

link.springer.com

Within 10 years we'll be trepanning ourselves with kimchi

Fish Have a Brain Microbiome. Could Humans Have One Too? | Quanta Magazine

The discovery that other vertebrates have healthy, microbial brains is fueling the still controversial possibility that we might have them as well.

quantamagazine.org

Reading "On the Triviality of Higher-Order Probabilistic Beliefs" by Dov Samet. Occasionally I see this unpublished #epistemology paper cited and wonder what's up with it... Let's see...

On the Triviality of High-Order Probabilistic Beliefs

Several axioms concerning probabilistic beliefs are examined here, and the relations between them are established, using belief spaces that generalize Harsanyi type spaces. Two axioms concerning high-

ideas.repec.org

Well, at least they found the pies.

We’re excited to announce our new research agendas – for philosophy, economics and psychology – have now been published! You can read them here: globalprioritiesinstitute.org/research-age...

Research agenda - Global Priorities Institute

The central focus of GPI is what we call ‘global priorities research’: research into issues that arise in response to the question, ‘What should we do with a given amount of limited resources if our a...

globalprioritiesinstitute.org

Today I'm reading "The Principal Principle Implies the Principle of Indifference" by James Hawthorne, Jürgen Landes, Christian Wallmann & Jon Williamson, arguing against subjective Bayesianism. Main thought: the title is a bit overstated! A read-along thread:

James Hawthorne, Jürgen Landes, Christian Wallmann & Jon Williamson, The Principal Principle Implies the Principle of Indifference - PhilPapers

We argue that David Lewis’s principal principle implies a version of the principle of indifference. The same is true for similar principles that need to appeal to the concept of admissibility. ...

philpapers.org

Our book came out today 🥳 In 'What Are Zoos For?' we examine the common justifications for zoos and argue that zoos are (or should be) for animals, placing animal welfare at the centre of their operations. Order here, or through most online booksellers: bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/trade/what-a...

What Are Zoos For?

What Are Zoos For?; Heather Browning and Walter Veit test the common justifications for zoos (entertainment, education, research, conservation) against the evidence and suggest what the best zoos of t...

bristoluniversitypress.co.uk

I had idly wondered about the connection between presupposition and vagueness. Let's see if Benjamin Spector sorted it out (Jeremy Zehr seems to have written important things here too). A read-along thread… (1) philpapers.org/rec/SPEMSF

Benjamin Spector, Multivalent Semantics for Vagueness and Presupposition - PhilPapers

Both the phenomenon of presupposition and that of vagueness have motivated the use of one form or another of trivalent logic, in which a declarative sentence can not only receive the ...

philpapers.org

Not sure why I’m here, but for now I’m just thinking of having short threads about random things I happen to be reading or writing. Mostly philosophy!

My book on Knowledge is out today (World Philosophy Day) with Open Book Publishers. It's freely downloadable in PDF and Epub form, and cheap to order in hardback or paperback. #philsky

Knowledge: A Human Interest Story

In this book the author argues for a groundbreaking perspective that knowledge is inherently interest-relative. This means that what one knows is influenced not just by belief, evidence, and truth, bu...

openbookpublishers.com

This was fun, but I'm left feeling that I don't understand (or just don't believe?) first-person realism. Why would the relationship between <T is in conscious state X> and <I'm in conscious state X> be different from the relationship between <T is wearing a hat> and <I'm wearing a hat>...

Christian List@clist.bsky.social · 2y ago

Any theory of consciousness can satisfy at most three of the following but not all four: (1) first-person realism ("there are 1st-person facts"), (2) non-solipsism ("there are other conscious minds"), (3) non-fragmentation ("the world is coherent") and (4) one world ("there is one world, not many").