Alex Gregory

drop me an email and I'll drop you a draft!

Alex Gregory, Take In Your Hen: Fittingness and Hedonic Adaptation - PhilPapers Humans have a strong tendency to hedonically adapt to their circumstances, so that something that once brought joy eventually brings only indifference. Does this tendency guarantee a kind of failure o...

Book, pt4. Ch4 is on hedonic adaptation. I explain why it is apt for happiness to subside over time. The key observation is that there is no limit to how good or bad things might be, and so no simple way to match degrees of happiness and value. See also this in PhilImprint: philpapers.org/rec/GRETIY

I also say a little about rival theories of happiness, and about the difference between happiness and happiness-adjacent things such as joy and contentment.
alexgregory.name#HAPbook

Book blogging, pt3. Ch3 of the book explains the idea that happiness is an emotion - a claim that seems at once obvious, but also not widely discussed in philosophy. I also explain why this emotion is so central ("happy" and "sad" are the first emotion words that children learn).

Mixing "me" and "I" sounds wrong to my ear.

Aaaand we're back!!

Two Postdocs in Philosophy of Mind (one ot two years), Centre for Philosophical Psychology, University of Antwerp

- to work with me!

Deadline: March 20, 2026

More info on PhilJobs

Book blogging, part 2. Ch2 of the book explains and clarifies the main idea: you should be happy about goods. But other things happen along the way. Here's one: what does it take to possess the concept GOOD? Here's one answer: a disposition to respond to deployment of that concept with happiness.

Book blogging, part 1. How happy should you be about the present state of the world? This is a coherent question. It is also neglected: the literature on norms for emotion almost never discusses happiness. This is effectively the gap the book aims to address. alexgregory.name#HAPbook

For World Logic Day, the ontological proof of God's non-existence (I think I heard it first from my late friend Aldo Antonelli):

God is a being such that there could none more awesome

It is pretty awesome to be all-powerful, all-knowing etc. ...

Thanks Anna!

At last I have a shareable draft of my book on Fitting Happiness! Drop me a line if you'd like to see.

alexgregory.name#HAPbook

Alex Gregory, Fitting Happiness: On The Nature and Normativity of A Central Emotion - PhilPapers If someone is happy about a certain politician’s death, you might think that their happiness is inappropriate. Likewise, perhaps your pension fund is changed in some way: this might seem to ...

Added an entry on philpapers for my book draft - that counts as progress, right? philpapers.org/rec/GREFHO

Interestingly, even Feldman-Barrett seems open to the idea that happiness, at least, is culturally universal.

Call for Nominations: Onora O’Neill Political Theory Prize European Consortium for Political Research

Pls share/re-post! New Onora O'Neill Prize! Here's a brand new @ecpr.bsky.social book prize in pol-theory, regardless of whether it's your 1st/10th book! Had honour of asking Onora myself if she would lend us her good name: ecpr.eu/news/news/de... @biapt.bsky.social @psapolthought.bsky.social

Earned settlement The government is consulting on how the current settlement system should be reformed and how those reforms should be implemented.

Filling this out as individual. Telling them that if I had to wait for ten years to apply for indefinite leave to remain I would not have thrown myself into my community as I did. I’d be aloof and shorttermist w/ little to none affective commitment to the U.K.

Interesting! I look forward to reading it - perhaps I'll drop you a line in the summer? Mine is now under contract with OUP; I said I'd have it done by next September but I have a full draft if you wanted to see a more recent version.

Ah! I will take another look when I get a moment

Alex Gregory, Take In Your Hen: Fittingness and Hedonic Adaptation - PhilPapers Humans have a strong tendency to hedonically adapt to their circumstances, so that something that once brought joy eventually brings only indifference. Does this tendency guarantee a kind of failure o...

Sounds interesting! I'd love to see the paper! Have you seen my forthcoming piece on this topic? philpapers.org/rec/GRETIY

Kent bug splat survey shows 'troubling' fall in flying insects - BBC News A new 'splat' survey shows bug numbers have plummeted, but experts say this can be reversed.

66% decline in five years. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

One for my introduction to philosophy module.

Yes please!

Lukas Beck, Desires in Economics - PhilPapers At the heart of economics is a concept that bears a striking resemblance to a desire. Economists use preferences to explain and predict people's choices. However, what exactly we are talking ...

I am sharing a preprint of my chapter forthcoming in the Routledge Handbook on the Philosophy of Desire (edited by @alexgregory.bsky.social): "Desires in Economics."
philpapers.org/rec/BECDIE-3

Feedback or any thoughts are welcome!
Contains references to a galaxy far, far away🌌
More details below👇

Usenet - Wikipedia

I originally got into philosophy largely by hanging around on philosophy newsgroups on usenet (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet). This would have been around the mid-late 90s. I wonder if this makes me the one of the oldest academic philosophers who got into the subject through "social media"?

My article on structural rationality in desire is now out, open-access, at Utilitas. Amongst other things, it explains why instrumental desires are not just ultimate desires combined with relevant beliefs: they are more plausibly independent states of mind.

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Python was awarded a funding grant, funding grant asked Python foundation to remove all diversity and inclusion initiatives they have.

Python foundation said no and rejected the grant.

If you use Python, send a few dollars to the charity to keep it going. I’m pushing a dono on behalf of ScamGuard.

Found some time this morning to continue some work on my manuscript on fitting happiness (alexgregory.name#HAPbook). One question: The English word "Happy" clearly has many meanings - it is polysemous. Is there yet some single core meaning common to the various uses? Luckiness?

Do groups include pairs and other smaller unions? I can see the reasoning for thinking that group intentions are progressively rarer in larger groups, but not the reason for thinking that (e.g.) married couples could not have joint intentions.

Center for the Alignment of AI Alignment Centers We align the aligners

Very glad to see that someone is doing the important work of aligning AI alignment. alignmentalignment.ai

Congratulations!

UK Higher Ed friends, we are MASSIVE.

www.kcl.ac.uk/policy-insti...