Kranti Saran

Ph.D. Programme in Philosophy - Ashoka University The PhD in Philosophy programme conforms to all Ashoka PhD programme guidelines. Additional guidelines specific to the Philosophy PhD programme […]

We're starting a PhD programme in Philosophy at Ashoka! Anyone can apply by April 15 for admission this year, and we will ensure that admitted applicants receive enough funding to support them for the 5 year programme. More info here:
www.ashoka.edu.in/programme/ph...

Hannah Arendt did not mince words, did she?

'Totalitarianism replaces all first-rate talents with crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.'

From "The Origins of Totalitarianism" (1951)

Dictatorial propaganda demands obedience and even considerable financial and other sacrifices; but by way of compensation it assures the individual that, as a member of a chosen nation, race, or class, he is superior to all other individuals in the world; it dissipates his sense of personal inferiority by investing him with the vicarious glory of the community; it gives him reasons for thinking well of himself; it provides him with enemies whom he may blame for his own shortcomings and upon whom he may vent his latent brutality and love of bullying.

Huxley on dictatorial propaganda
#philsky

“Bloodless Pedantry” - The Ideas Letter The academic study of philosophy tends to inspire contempt, from within and from without. Stephen Hawking’s pompous pronouncement in 2010 that “philosophy is dead” is just one version of a…

I wrote something about analytic Philospphy, and Christoph Schuringa’s book for the Ideas Letter @stefanschubert.bsky.social @lbenardo.bsky.social www.theideasletter.org/essay/bloodl...

Nobody throws shade like Nabokov:

“What Can a Global Turn in
Philosophy of Science Look Like?”, forthcoming in Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, by former Ashoka philosophy undergrad Kabir S. Bakshi.

Congratulations Kabir!

philsci-archive.pitt.edu/26382/

they even exclude one another. The whole plea - for this dream is nothing else - recalls vividly the defence offered by a man who was accused by his neighbour of having returned a kettle in a damaged condition. In the first place, he said, he had returned the kettle undamaged; in the second place it already had holes in it when he borrowed it; and in the third place, he had never borrowed it at all. A complicated defence, but so much the better; if only one of these three lines of defence is recognised as valid, the man must be acquitted.

From Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams. Now known as The Trump Defence.

Cover of “every one still here” by Liadan Ni Chuinn

A unique, searing voice, and exceptionally good:

It seems so — he even has a reel explaining why he joined social media.

Werner Herzog is on Instagram:

www.instagram.com/reel/DNyVOOR...

#IndependenceDay

Cover of Edna O’Brien’s The Country Girls Trilogy

Easily the best novel(s) I’ve read all year:

Evelyn Waugh

The key argument against delimitation shouldn’t be population policy but the ‘one person, one vote’ principle Supporters of delimitation say that “one person, one vote” justifies delimitation based on population size. But this conclusion is false

A novel and enlightening intervention on the delimitation debate by Bastian Steuwer:

indianexpress.com/article/opin...

Who actually runs Columbia University? | Arjun Appadurai and Sheldon Pollock Trustees aren’t academics – and they’re often political wolves in sheep’s clothing. We need reform to save the American university as we know it

“Boards are accountable to no one – only to themselves, and to some vague set of norms, often unwritten, about their obligations. Accountability is for faculty, administrators, and students.”
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

A welcome Luce cannonade:
archive.ph/EZ8Ys

Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science The Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science is a new, multidisciplinary guide to understanding the mind: a freely-available, growing collection of peer-reviewed articles introducing key topics to a bro...

The MIT Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science is a growing resource, expertly edited and designed, with high quality contributors (OK OK I am one of them) oecs.mit.edu

Pratap telling it like it is. This truly is the land of Maya.

Back in the classroom tomorrow. For the first time ever, my elective Intro. to Philosophy course has more students than the required foundation course I taught last semester (139 vs. 132). Go Ashoka philosophy!

Word.

YouTube video by J. Krishnamurti - Official Channel The computer is taking over | J. Krishnamurti

"If the machine can take over everything man can do and do it still better than us, then what is a human being?... What have we left?" Prescient thoughts circa 1981 by Krishnamurti that bear on the AI-revolution:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kut5...

YouTube video by Robinson Erhardt Ned Block: Consciousness, Artificial Intelligence, and the Philosophy of Mind

Excellent interview of @neddo.bsky.social (www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM1f...)

Fara Dabhoiwala · A Man of Parts and Learning: Francis Williams Gets His Due The only certainty about the picture is that it shows Francis Williams. No one has ever been able to discover who...

This is brilliant. Best thing I’ve read in 2025 (!) but more seriously, one of the best things the LRB has published in recent years. Fara Dabhoiwala on Francis Williams www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Plutocrats and Authoritarian Leaders: Like Flies to Flypaper Curtis Yarvin, darling authoritarian ideologue of many tech billionaires, is back in the news, along with his deep links to J.D. Vance, via Peter Thiel. It’s no secret that plutocrats tend to…

Elizabeth Anderson is on a roll at Crooked Timber these past few weeks:
crookedtimber.org/2024/12/24/p...

Last swim in the ocean for the year.

The highest quality backlit screen I’ve ever seen at any conference at the Saxena Auditorium at IIT-Bombay. @somakrc.bsky.social we should get one of these!

😂

Discussions of machine versus living intelligence need more clarity - Nature Machine Intelligence Sharp distinctions often drawn between machine and biological intelligences have not tracked advances in the fields of developmental biology and hybrid robotics. We call for conceptual clarity driven ...

Nic Rouleau & I: checklist to go through when settling on opinions about AI, diverse intelligence, unconventional cognition, consciousness, mind/machine issues, etc. When you read (or write) about these topics, run the perspective through this, to kick the tires. 🧪
www.nature.com/articles/s42...

IIT-Bombay has pretty sunsets and… unusual signage.