Matthew Inglis

Most importantly, I strongly disagree with Bill's apparent view that experimental work in philosophy should avoid testing competing theories and instead stick to "unproblematic common ground" with minimal "theoretical baggage". How could you make theoretical progress with such a view?

This wasn't a "curious methodological choice" which supported a non-ontic picture "only by accident". It was a deliberate attempt to empirically test a prediction made by non-ontic Zelcer-like accounts. I don't see where the "confounded results" or "muddled interpretations" are.

4. They didn’t, therefore participants couldn’t have only used ontic criteria when making their judgements.

3. If they had only used ontic criteria, the two purported explanations would have ended up with similar CJ parameters.

2. We asked mathematicians to make ontic explanations about two 'identical' proofs (same underlying argument, different presentation).

1. Some people (e.g., Mark Zelcer) believe that ontic explanations don’t exist in mathematics. If they're right, then when you ask mathematicians to make judgements about the ontic notion of explanation, they will actually make judgements about the epistemic notion.

I'm very puzzled by this criticism. The logic of this methodological choice was the following.

Bill goes on to suggest that "experimentalists ought to avoid designing studies around controversial ideology" and that they should stick to "unproblematic common ground".

In a section entitled "Experiment and Ideology", Bill suggests that our decision to prompt participants to think about explanation onticly (roughly, in a manner independent of how a reader might react to the purported explanation) was a "curious methodological choice" which "courted confusion".

Mathematicians’ Assessments of the Explanatory Value of Proofs - Global Philosophy The literature on mathematical explanation contains numerous examples of explanatory, and not so explanatory proofs. In this paper we report results of an empirical study aimed at investigating mathem...

Bill discusses a comparative judgement study that Pablo Mejía Ramos, @drtanyaevansnz.bsky.social, Colin Rittberg and I did a few years ago, concerning mathematicians' intuitions about mathematical explanations: doi.org/10.1007/s105...

Very niche thread, apologies!

I want to reply to a criticism made in this preprint by Bill D'Alessandro (who I think isn't on bluesky?). philpapers.org/archive/DALT...

Attacked by the Charnwood Borough Council mace at today’s graduation ceremony.

Can your fear of maths shape your child's future?

New research from @lborouniversity.bsky.social & University of Bologna finds link b/ween parents’ maths anxiety & lower achievement in children.

Read Kinga & Carlo's @theconversation.com article on our blog today:

blog.lboro.ac.uk/cmc/2025/06/...

This is a great summary of a very peculiar interaction. I wonder how Geraint Rees is coping with the new OfS duty that requires him and his UCL colleagues to “support constructive dialogue on contentious subjects”.

Fully-funded PhD studentship to work on children’s financial literacy. Deadline end of June. https://ufncollaboratory.ac.uk/childrens-financial-literacy/

'I slept with the FA Cup': The magical inside story of Pompey's 2008 Wembley triumph On the 17th anniversary of Pompey’s FA Cup win, three figures from behind the scenes tell the magical inside story

A really lovely article about the 2008 cup-winning squad. I particularly enjoyed the Hermann Hreidarsson bloodied-pigeon “That’s how we deal with things in Iceland” anecdote. www.portsmouth.co.uk/sport/footba...

I wrote a blogpost about how the REF may have influenced how British academics write papers.

Evidence of @driro.bsky.social’s photography skills on show at Megan Foulkes’s PhD viva celebrations.

That’s more than Jimmy Dickinson.

“Stewart Highmore Pearce (1818-1851) went to sea and married imprudently. He is probably the child whose head is painted out and replaced by a bible in the picture which used to hang in the front hall at West Stoke House.”

“George Pearce (b 1794) was a ship-broker at Lloyd’s. He was twice married. His second wife, Mrs Dipnall, squinted but was a good woman.”

“Little is known of Charles Woodman Eastwood (1829-1867) who went to Australia under a cloud, it is said. His daughter, Jeannie, returned to England and died here. Her circumstances are not known but she was something of a poor relation. She was also rather simple, sickly and godly.”

This Christmas I discovered my grandfather got interested in family history before he died. In amongst his folders of stuff there are some enjoyable one-paragraph biographies of distant relatives. Examples follow.

Could be. But the person who names the components needs a talking to.

“August was your Entertaining Moog Krautrock season”

February was your Goth Movie Tunes New Wave phase

Spotify makes up musical genres.

Screenshot of a letter from a journal editor. Text reads: Dear Dr Inglis, Thank you for your message and for the submission of your joint MS, [BLANK]• I'll get back to you when I have something to say about it. If that seems to you to be taking too long, please feel free to get back to me. Your MS does pose an interesting problem to me. The member of the Editorial Board of the journal that was particularly concerned with [BLANK] has been dead some time (and you wouldn't have wanted [BLANK] as a referee anyway). Yours truly, [BLANK]

Was reminded today of this email from an editor I once received in response to a manuscript submission.

YouTube video by Leamington History Group Leamington Spa: University Town

Excited to discover that this important new documentary about the history of students in Leamington Spa offers two photos of me as evidence for the claim “Leamington has always offered an appealing social scene for students”. See 14:45 here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0Lg64GR1Mo

My sister has a giant photo of Tony Blair saying “hello is it me you are looking for?” in her toilet.

Turns out that Semmelweis, the guy who invented antiseptics, was actually Willie Thorne.

Do you plan to measure Approximate Number System in children? Check recommendations at doi.org/10.1016/j.dr... by @krajcsi.bsky.social D Chesney @krzysztofcipora.bsky.social @coolenilse.bsky.social @camillakgilmore.bsky.social @mjinglis.bsky.social M Libertus @tuebang.bsky.social V Simms, B Reynvoet