Tim Crane

Our very special call for abstracts for the (En)Active Minds and AI Workshop 🫴🪼⚙️ is now open!
We'll explore themes from the work of
@tobiasschlicht.bsky.social.
Submit by Aug 20, decision letters will be sent within 3 days!
Join us Sept 5 in Porto! ifilosofia.up.pt/activities/w...

Zoe you have excellent judgement too

Thanks Tobias! You have exceptional taste as usual

This has got to be the most batshit interpretation of what language model "thought" is that I can't comprehend how you could come to it, especially in the face of very clear evidence that it's not!

Saint Francis was totally not consulted about this visit from a dragon. By Juan de Flandes, 1505. Today was his day.

The Mechanical Mind | A Philosophical Introduction to Minds, Machines How can the human mind represent the external world? What is thought, and can it be studied scientifically? Should we think of the mind as a kind of machine? Is

Don’t despair! This is a really good point. I began my first book talking about Voyager. No one seemed to pay any attention to this example unfortunately www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/1...

The Mechanical Mind | A Philosophical Introduction to Minds, Machines How can the human mind represent the external world? What is thought, and can it be studied scientifically? Should we think of the mind as a kind of machine? Is

Good point. I said something similar in 1995. www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/1...

Regarding vehicles, encoding and decoding, informational content and its semantics, and related stuff: has anyone written about the Voyager Golden Disc and its contents? Why did they think the record was even *remotely* self-explanatory to a sentient race that doesn't share our cognitive history?

Philosophy Bites Podcast Philosophy Bites Top philosophers interviewed on bite-sized topics About US Philosophy Bites is a podcast that brings philosophical ideas to life through short, engaging conversations with some of the...

Philosophy Bites, which I make with @nigelwarburton.bsky.social has a fancy new website. philosophybites.com with all the interviews now easier to find, and with transcriptions

Jo I should probably read this. I learned so much from your political philosophy intro :)

me showing my wife posts of mine that deserved to be more popular and detailing why

Philosophers realising the advantages of working in a discipline that has no agreed method, no agreed aims, and no agreed measure of success.

In 1967, philosopher of language Michael Dummett and his wife, the author Ann Dummett, were arrested for picketing against racial discrimination, charged with public disorder, but acquitted upon an official admission that the police, not protesters, had obstructed passage.

The comments on this deeply peculiar Daily Nous guest post remind me of Bernard Williams's remark that analytic philosophers are trained to make their claims 'invulnerable to objections even from the malicious and the clinically literal-minded'

Book Review: Power and Freedom in the Space of Reasons: Elaborating Foucault’s Pragmatism, by Tuomo Tiisala - David Owen, 2025

Wonderful and insightful review of Tuomo Tiisala's 'Power and Freedom in the Space of Reasons' by @artsofdenial.bsky.social. Tuomo is a postdoc with Knowledge in Crisis in Vienna @knowledgecrisis.bsky.social journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Actually, I didn't put this very well. I should have said 'there is no particular sensory feel that all episodes of this type have'. You are right that an individual episode may have a sensory character. But my point is about all experiences of that type. Thanks for drawing attention to this.

A third of UK universities have now ceased posting on X.

I've updated my data to see whether they are adopting Threads and/or Bluesky as a microblogging alternative.

The simple answer is that they are, slowly.
1/9

That wasn't the first movement of the Souvenir de Florence

Crab and Avocado Salad With Japanese Dressing Now that I can find good, fresh tubs of crab meat at the supermarket I can really rely on this as a table-and-tummy filler when I don't have much time for slow, store-by-specialist-store shopping. Th...

It’s not often I go in for starters, but #RecipeOfTheDay began life as one, even if I more customarily make this to serve just two for a rather deluxe but nevertheless simple summer main course. Allow me to introduce my Crab and Avocado Salad with Japanese Dressing! www.nigella.com/recipes/crab...

Or gets excited by recreational violence, which is not uncommon

Thanks. I have some agreement with The Schwitz too, but some disagreement. Glad you agree about Austria!

Jaffa Cakes According to Wikipedia, Jaffa Cakes  were in 2012 'the best selling cake or biscuit in the United Kingdom'. But this just raises the question: are they cakes or biscuits? Jaffa Cakes had always been.....

The details explained: www.timcrane.com/jaffa-cakes....

#PhilosophyOfSnacks

Thanks — I explain my assumptions in a paper called ‘unconscious belief and conscious thought’ on my website

It is also one of the products of our New Directions project. It took its time to get this one out...

My alternative is that there is really no such natural property/relation as intentionality (or 'aboutness'), although there are many intentional mental capacities (perception, memory, imagination, decision-making etc). So the project of 'naturalising intentionality' is misconceived.

So the puzzle of the ant, proposed by Putnam in Ch 1 of Reason Truth and History, is not really a puzzle.

I'm not saying that there are no reasons to address that question in that way, but only that it involves heavy duty assumptions. There is no *quite general* problem of intentionality which any philosophy of mind has to solve, regardless of their theoretical assumptions.

The point of this paper is to question the idea that in order to explain intentionality, we must answer the 'aboutness question': 'what makes it the case that any representation is about something?', where that answer (a) uses no intentional concepts, and (b) applies to all kinds of representation.

Thanks to Raamy Majeed (is he here?) for his expert editing of this issue