Jonathan Birch @birchlse Twitter profile

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

18 days

Coming this summer - online (free Open Access PDF) and in print. Sign up at to get a PDF on release day.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

4 years

I always appreciate a courteous email from a student.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

2 months

On the Teaching Philosophy fb group, someone offered their students an amnesty if they admitted to using ChatGPT in their assignments, and 23/25 students replied...

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

2 years

I must have seen more than 40 tenure-track "job talks" by now. Here are some general reflections on what works and what doesn't work. (1/7)

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

1 year

This belongs in the "real articles that sound fake" hall of fame.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

3 months

People say large language models are a watershed because, for the first time in human history, we've invented a technology we cannot control - but we haven't been able to control printers for 40 years.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

5 months

As a child: Santa exists. As a teenager: Santa doesn't exist. As an adult: Santa is part of social reality like money, electrons and numbers.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

8 months

Schopenhauer said that we should address each other not as "Mr" or "Mrs", but as "fellow sufferer, companion in misery" - thinking of trying this out.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

4 years

Wittgenstein was ahead of his time - the first philosopher to express himself entirely in the form of Twitter threads.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

2 years

I was really pleased to find my local library has a "Philosophy" section. Less pleased to see the three subsections: "Angels", "Ghosts" and "Astrology".

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

1 month

Agree with Haidt that phone-based childhoods are a disaster. Kids need a good old-fashioned PC-based childhood with lots of Starcraft, Half-Life and FIFA 98.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

3 years

My favourite public speaking tip: you can pause for longer than you think.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

1 year

If AI finally convinces people that articulateness ≠ intelligence, that could be a great thing for our society in lots of ways.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

4 years

My tip for #VEDay is to follow @AuschwitzMuseum , perhaps the best and most important Twitter account that there is.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

1 year

How strong is the evidence for pain in insects? The idea has often been dismissed, but an emerging new picture suggests it should now be taken very seriously. We've just released a full review of all the current evidence (free to read here) (1/4):

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

3 years

Here are 10 philosophy articles I liked in 2020, in no particular order (a THREAD with links).

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

2 years

Being a Stoic is a bit easier when you're also the Roman Emperor, isn't it.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

2 years

The best job talks start by giving an overview of your emerging research programme, then "zoom in" to an example of your best recent work, then "zoom out" at the end to lay out future directions. Start and end by generating excitement around your long-term trajectory. (2/7)

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

3 years

Kant would never be able to use a computer because he could never tick the "I have read and understood the terms and conditions" box.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

1 year

Should biology retire the word "fish" in favour of "non-tetrapod vertebrate"? The continued use of "fish" allows the general public to carry on believing there is this one kind of thing, a fish.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

3 years

Most birdsong just means "get off my territory or mate with me" which is why Twitter is so aptly named.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

1 year

Promoted to professor!

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

5 months

10 philosophy papers I liked in 2023, in no particular order (a thread with open access links). Be warned, philosophy will be understood deliberately broadly. 🧵👇

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

1 year

William James's "Is Life Worth Living?" has perhaps the best ever opening to a philosophy lecture.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

3 years

The definition of "animal" in US animal welfare law has to be seen to be believed.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

4 years

Academic letters of recommendation: a guide for the perplexed. (This feels timely again.)

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

1 year

Whenever a new technology is invented, people say maybe the brain works like that. I want to be the first to say maybe the brain works like nuclear fusion.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

7 months

I've taught intro philosophy for 7yrs now, and over time have come to stress more and more the existential stakes of the questions. Take knowledge and scepticism. This is not a low-stakes topic. People who become ensnared in webs of false beliefs live absurd and tragic lives. 1/2

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

2 years

My team has edited a special issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies on "Animal Consciousness", and it's out today. Here is a thread introducing it. (1/13)

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

3 years

I'm surprised that so many philosophers are atheists yet believe in objective, non-natural facts about moral value. That's a weird stopping point. If you're willing to posit things outside the natural order, why go for valuer-independent values rather than a gigantic valuer?

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

3 years

It's very disorienting to live your life not knowing if you're at the very beginning of millions of years of history or in the last decades of a species about to burn itself out.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

3 years

Philosophy as a discipline venerates ancient dialogues but virtually never publishes new dialogues. Can we bring back the dialogue?

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

4 years

If philosophy journal editors took the same approach to headlines as their media counterparts... Jackson, F. (1982). "I Locked a Girl in a Room for Years to See What Would Happen. Here's My Story". Putnam, H. (1973). "The Great New Alternative to Water No One Is Talking About".

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

9 months

The bravest "problem of evil" take I've seen is from Soame Jenyns (1756), who argued: animal suffering is for the best because we enjoy it so much. By analogy, human suffering is for the best because higher beings (e.g. angels) must be able to derive yet greater pleasure from it.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

2 years

Here are 10 philosophy articles I liked in 2021, in no particular order (a THREAD with open access links).

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

4 years

Philosophy is like the drawer where you keep all your old cables. Every generation adds a new cable and thinks "that'll come in useful."

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

23 days

Dan Dennett was a lifelong champion of (1) the explanatory power of cognitive science and evolutionary biology in relation to the big questions of philosophy, and (2) the integration of philosophy with scientific disciplines. An inspiration to me and many others in these ways.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

4 years

The world's best universities (in my opinion) are ones that educate lots of people (e.g. the Open University, the UC system, CUNY). There's nothing impressive about universities that have the resources to educate large numbers but choose to educate a tiny elite.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

2 years

My "Foundations of Animal Sentience" project is at the halfway stage. A good moment to take stock of what we've done in the past 2.5 years. Here is a thread with links to some personal highlights. (1/14)

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

2 years

I love it when philosophers write "recently, _____ has argued..." and cite a paper from 8 years earlier.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

2 years

It is hard to get all this right, of course, but that's mainly because it's hard to develop an exciting and credible research programme. The tragic thing is when candidates *have* done this but don't *explain* it. You've done the hard bit, now do the easy bit! (7/7)

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

2 years

The work in the middle should be an example of your BEST work, not some half-baked, unfinished new thing. Save the unfinished new thing for informal chat. (3/7)

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

3 months

My new book The EDGE of SENTIENCE: Risk and Precaution in Humans, Other Animals, and AI will be coming out later this year. There will be a print book and a FREE Open Access PDF. If you'd like a free PDF on release day, you can sign up for updates now:

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

10 months

Too harsh? (This is from a blog post I'm writing.)

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

3 years

Consciousness science is sociologically fascinating: it shows that a field can hold together without any agreement on what it is studying. It's like astronomy holding together when some people think stars are balls of gas and others think they are the souls of ancestors.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

2 years

People in the hiring dept will be thinking: Why is this work important for the discipline? What is its significance beyond the discipline? What is excellent about it? What is original about it? A great job talk will answer these questions so that no one needs to ask them. (6/7)

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

6 months

Always enjoy it when philosophers are all "physics is our best guide to what there is" and physicists are like "literally all we do is crunch numbers, you may as well get your ontology from an accountant."

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

2 years

My colleague Mike Otsuka ( @MikeOtsuka ) has put a phenomenal amount of effort into facilitating informed debate on pensions - and into formulating reasonable proposals that deserved a lot more respect from employers than they've received. Thanks Mike!

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

2 years

I would love to see more attention in philosophy to Kant's neglected question: what may I hope? Here is a thread on why I think the question is a good and important one. (1/5)

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

1 year

Unlikely moment in which I present the Dalai Lama with a copy of our special issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies on "Animal Consciousness".

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

2 years

I really dislike introductions to philosophy that make the subject seem frivolous, coffee-tablish - one day I want to write one that makes the subject seem as deadly serious as I think it is - a collision between different visions of how to live and how the world is.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

2 years

I suspect the only cognitive enhancers of any real value are sleep, daylight, water and not overworking yourself.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

23 days

An exciting moment for animal consciousness research: we are launching today the New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness () with 39 initial signatories, world-leading experts on🧠🐦‍⬛🦜🦇🐟🐙🦀🦞🐝🪰. We now invite anyone with relevant expertise to sign.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

8 months

Exciting day for me - @LChittka and I have been awarded a grant of around $1m by @open_phil to look for markers of sentience in insects, and we are recruiting *TWO* postdocs. The ads are here, and please DM or email if you have questions:

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

2 years

Hobbes' response to Descartes' First Meditation is pure Reviewer 2.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

5 months

There's a line attributed to Feynman (probably apocryphally) that "philosophy of science is as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds". I've always taken it as a compliment. Imagine putting birds in charge of their own conservation programs.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

1 year

We're approaching the end of Year 3 of my "Foundations of Animal Sentience" project, so a good time for a roundup of what we've been doing in 2022. A thread with open access links. (1/18)

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

1 year

I've written an @aeonmag piece on animal and AI sentience with @KristinAndrewz . It's the first time I've written about what I see as the hardest problem in the AI case, the "gaming problem". 🧵(1/5)

To understand AI sentience, first understand it in animals | Aeon Essays

As the power of AI grows, we need to have evidence of its sentience. That is why we must return to the minds of animals

aeon.co

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

10 months

Summer special: here are five recent philosophy books I can recommend, starting with 1/ Mara van der Lugt's Dark Matters, a history of the battle between pessimism and optimism in philosophy, from Bayle to Schopenhauer.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

3 years

In science a normal talk is a showreel of what your lab has been doing for the last 5-10 years. In philosophy a normal talk is on whatever you just started writing and haven't yet finished. It can make interdisciplinary meetings quite embarrassing.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

7 months

Think of those who sincerely believe emergency alerts turn the vaxxed into zombies - these are tragic lives, deserving our sympathy. We study epistemology because we cannot live like this. We need knowledge and contact with the truth in our lives for them to have any meaning. 2/2

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

2 months

Something I love about academia is that, whatever you're interested in, there will be fascinating and insanely neglected books on it gathering dust in libraries, and you can (for sure) be among the first 1000 readers globally of those books.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

2 years

For the same reason, it's better if the work in the middle is developing a positive idea, not just saying "Big shot X says this, but they're wrong because…". Present YOUR ideas. Be the Big Shot X of the future. (5/7)

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

3 years

Do some people watch Star Trek and quietly mourn every time the main characters step into the transporter and die?

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

4 years

Caffeine, tannins, nicotine, capsaicin... whenever plants evolve something to deter herbivores and insects, we absolutely love it.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

3 years

Unbelievable.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

2 years

One of the pleasures of this time of year is re-reading Descartes' Meditations. The seriousness of it, the gravity, the intensity, the sense of everything being at stake. This is what philosophy is supposed to be.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

3 years

Hybrid conferences are the best of both worlds: I can still do my session at 8am on a Saturday, but I get to skip seeing old friends, meeting new people and developing new projects.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

3 years

The philosophy journal spiral: growth in submissions drives down acceptance rates, so each paper goes to more journals, driving down acceptance rates. We now have at least 10 journals with sub-5% acceptance rates, lower than Science or Nature. It's mind-numbing, Sisyphean.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

3 years

Big news for philosophers.

Lizzie Platt

@HenlakeBats

3 years

Bats have different song cultures and chatter about food, sleep, sex and other bats via @physorg_com

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

3 years

Laws on animal sentience must follow the science - my op-ed for the Guardian.

Which animals should be considered sentient in the eyes of the law? | Jonathan Birch

Government proposals to recognise vertebrates as sentient beings are welcome, but this should be just the start, says philosopher Jonathan Birch

www.theguardian.com

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

2 years

Peter Lipton once gave me some advice that I like quite a lot: if a footnote says something important, put it in the main text where people will read it. If it says nothing important, delete it.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

4 years

The post-truth era began the day someone said "lol" even though they were not literally laughing out loud.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

11 months

A puzzling thing about consciousness science is that many consider themselves materialists because they hold that the brain 'causes', 'gives rise to' or 'produces' consciousness. In philosophy these are all statements of dualism... (1/2)

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

3 months

What I love about Mill is that he writes like a first-year philosophy student who hasn't done the reading and has to get to 1500 words somehow.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

4 years

I don't know why they say "face-to-face teaching", when faces can be seen much more clearly on Zoom, without masks. Shouldn't we call it "shared-air teaching"?

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

2 years

The point is to establish that your wider research programme is not bluster - you're already doing excellent work, so the exciting future directions are also credible. (4/7)

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

2 years

Cephalopod molluscs 🐙 and decapod crustaceans 🦀 should be regarded as sentient in the eyes of the law. This is the key recommendation of a report commissioned by @DefraGovUK from me and a team of excellent collaborators, released today. (1/11)

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

2 months

This will be fantastic - don't miss it. 8yrs after the founding of Animal Sentience, the first journal dedicated to the topic, it's time to review progress, map out agreements and disagreements, and lay out the next steps. Register now to be part of it!

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

1 year

When giving an example of a conscious experience, philosophers always go with "the smell of coffee". We need to have some more experiences.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

2 years

Animal sentience should be central to "sustainability", in my view. The question should be: what is needed to create and sustain a planet of flourishing sentient life? And invertebrates have to be part of that. We have a new paper on this in Nature Food:

Invertebrate sentience and sustainable seafood

Nature Food - Octopuses, crabs and lobsters are probably sentient, yet their welfare needs are poorly protected in the food system. Upholding animal welfare in the seafood industry presents...

www.nature.com

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

4 years

I admit I am frustrated by the uselessness of philosophy in a crisis. I want coronavirus to publish a book so that I can write an acerbic, devastatingly witty essay review.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

2 months

The news that Frans de Waal has died will come as a blow to anyone working on animal sentience. There is a major shift in science towards recognising other animals as conscious beings with inner lives of their own, and Frans was at the forefront of it. He still had more to give.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

29 days

The problem of consciousness is a test of our humility and open-mindedness. We don't have the answers. Even if we're very confident our favoured theory is correct, we should avoid talking as though the matter had somehow been conclusively settled.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

3 years

When I read philosophy from the 1960s/70s, it feels very free and unencumbered - like there was no perceived need to frame ideas in relation to those of more famous people in the previous generation. I wonder how that was sociologically possible - and how we can get it back.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

1 year

I like sci-fi most when the science is social science. Explorations of alternative social orders, forms of government, ways of life. This seems not just fun but also important.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

1 year

Some say: I realize invertebrates may suffer, but I just don't care about it. Important to see that this is not an argument, just a report of a psychological state. Ethics is concerned not with whether you care but with whether you ought to care. (1/2)

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

1 year

The BBC has a report today about octopus farming and why it is a bad idea. They have obtained leaked documents that show (i) 10-15% mortality before slaughter, (ii) slaughter by dropping into ice-cold water.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

2 years

The airport security guard said "let's unpack this" and I thought "you've clearly had philosophical training."

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

1 month

If "3 Body Problem" isn't a romcom about polyamorous academics on the job market, I'm calling false advertising.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

5 months

Academic publishers really crack me up some times.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

11 months

Didn't realise (until now) that Thomas Nagel wrote a very helpful 3-page introduction to Wittgenstein in 1971.

Thomas Nagel, Wittgenstein: The Only Genius of the Century? - PhilArchive

philarchive.org

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

23 days

What is the New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness and what do we hope to achieve with it? You can read our collective view at () but for my personal view, see the slides of my talk here:

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

3 months

It's truly the end times for UK philosophy if top departments like Kent (ranked 5th on GPA in the most recent REF) are being shut down. @UniKent should value its reputation for excellence in this area, it seems to me.

Jon Williamson

@Jon_Williamson_

3 months

Sadly, @UniKent has announced plans to axe a number of smaller departments, including philosophy. We perform well on all measures, including student recruitment. But smaller subjects have less clout and are easiest to cut. Help us shout out our value to the uni! They need to hear

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

4 years

Are some animals "more conscious" than others? It makes more sense to regard consciousness as varying along multiple dimensions, leading to multidimensional consciousness profiles, or so I argue with @Dr_AlexSchnell and @nickyclayton22 in @TrendsCognSci .

Dimensions of Animal Consciousness

How does consciousness vary across the animal kingdom? Are some animals ‘more conscious’ than others? This article presents a multidimensional framework for understanding interspecies variation in...

www.cell.com

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

10 months

I like the phrase "with all due respect" because it leaves open the possibility that no respect is due.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

2 years

The tragedy of philosophy peer review is that we know a lot of good philosophy happens in it - a lot of back and forth, objection and reply - and the discipline would actually seem quite healthy if this were happening in print.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

5 months

I'm the kind of person you want at parties because I can deftly steer either of the standard conversation topics (Taylor Swift and AI) round to my preferred topic of bees.

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

2 years

Something that troubles me: the emotional weight of engaging fully with the world, being fully open to the suffering of others, is overwhelming for anyone. So we all live by deliberately turning our attention away from suffering. How to do this just enough, but not too much?

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Jonathan Birch

@birchlse

2 years

Wittgensplaining: when you tell someone how a word in their own language is used, and assure them all their confusions would dissolve if they could just understand this.

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