Philosophy Should Be Among the Most Diverse Disciplines, Not the Least
The productive engine of philosophy depends on novelty and difference. A fair and flourishing discipline would treasure rather than repel those who have historically been excluded.
schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/03/phil...
13 A Planning Theory of Incoherence in Belief: Sara Aronowitz @aronowitz.bsky.social
14 The Nature of Believing: David Hunter
15 The Trinity and the Light Switch: Two Faces of Belief: Neil Van Leeuwen
4/4
8 Belief as Commitment to the Truth: @keshavsingh.bsky.social
9 Cognitive Architectures, Kinds, and Belief: Joshua Mugg
10 Belief as a Feeling of Conviction: Declan Smithies
11 Translucent Beliefs: @bencenanay.bsky.social
12 Dispositionalism, Yay! Representationalism, Boo! Eric Schwitzgebel
3/
5 Belief: Dumb, Cold, and Cynical: @nicporot.bsky.social and Eric Mandelbaum @ericman.bsky.social
6 A Minimalist Threshold for Epistemically Irrational Beliefs: Marianna B Ganapini @mbergam.bsky.social
7 Why Think That Belief Is Evidence-Responsive? Carolina Flores @floresophize.bsky.social
2/
1 Three Theories of Belief: D A King and Aaron Zimmerman
2 Beliefs as Self-Verifying Fictions: Angela Mendelovici @braininavat4eva.bsky.social
3 Lack of Attitude: @timcrane.bsky.social and Katalin Farkas
4 In Defense of Ontic Austerity for Belief: Ema Sullivan-Bissett @emas-b.bsky.social
1/
New and free online: @msgjonhere.bsky.social
& my edited collection of essays on belief with Oxford University Press:
academic.oup.com/book/62410
Table of Contents in thread
Today's blog post: Discussion Arcs for Topics and Philosophers
schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/02/disc...
Disunity and Indeterminacy in Artificial Consciousness (and Maybe in Human Consciousness Too)
blog post: schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/02/disu...
Today's blog post: The Intrinsic Value of Diversity
I think you'll join me in thinking that the world would be better, better for its own sake, if it were diverse rather than uniform.
schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/02/the-...
Oh, some of you disagree? Good!
Weirdness of the World, by Eric Schwitzgebel, snail cover
Weirdness on sale!
Paperback $15.36 at Princeton's website with discount code P330. Hardback more than half off (?!) -- $14.85 -- at Amazon. (At least that's what I'm seeing right now.)
Welcome some Weirdness into your mind.
Congratulations!
intelligence, such errors on their own do not demonstrate a system's lack of outstanding general intelligence. Conversely, excellent performance on one type of task, such as an IQ test, cannot warrant assumptions of broad capacities beyond that task domain.
5/6
reduction to a single linear quantity. We conclude with implications for adversarial testing approaches to evaluating AI capacities. If AI is strange intelligence, we should expect that even the most capable systems will sometimes fail in seemingly obvious tasks. On a nonlinear model of AI 4/x
surprising errors that few humans would make. We develop and defend a nonlinear model of intelligence on which "general intelligence" is not a unified capacity but instead the ability to achieve a broad range of goals in a broad range of environments, in a manner that defies nonarbitrary 3/x
"strange intelligence". AI intelligence is likely to be strange intelligence, defying familiar patterns of ability and inability, combining superhuman capacities in some domains with subhuman performance in other domains, and even within domains sometimes combining superhuman insight with 2/x
Artificial Intelligence as Strange Intelligence: Against Linear Models of Intelligence, by Kendra Chilson and Eric Schwitzgebel
New paper in draft with Kendra Chilson: "Artificial Intelligence as Strange Intelligence: Against Linear Models of Intelligence"
Abstract:
We endorse and expand upon Susan Schneider's critique of the linear model of AI progress and introduce two novel concepts: "familiar intelligence" and 1/x
Don't create nonconscious AI systems that people react to as if they are genuinely conscious persons. And if we ever do create AI persons with genuine moral standing, don't encase them in a bland box that people are tempted to disregard or devalue.
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
The Emotional Alignment Design Policy, Topoi, Eric Schwitzgebel & Jeff Sebo
My paper with @jeffsebo.bsky.social , "The Emotional Alignment Design Policy", now live at Topoi [link in comments].
Artificial entities should be designed to elicit emotional reactions from ordinary users that appropriately reflect the entities’ capacities and moral status, or lack thereof.
Today's blog post: Does Global Workspace Theory Solve the Question of AI Consciousness?
Hint: no.
schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/01/does...
It might be, depending on how one thinks of the capacity to discriminate. If you think about it stochastically, then you might have a 50% capacity and thus the same capacity in the two cases, but different responsiveness by chance.
Thanks for linking to that thread. Yes, that’s a very similar concern!
title of Michel's Consciousness Doesn't Do That
Is Signal Strength a Confound in Consciousness Research?
today's blog post, critiquing @matthiasmichel.bsky.social and @hakwan.bsky.social -- link in comments
Berggruen header: AI Mimics and AI Children, by Eric Schwitzgebel
There's no shame in losing a long-form popular essay contest on AI consciousness to eminent neuroscientist @anilseth.bsky.social. His piece: www.noemamag.com/the-mytholog...
My piece "AI Mimics and AI Children" appears among the shortlisted contenders here:
loc.closertotruth.com/essay/ai-mim...
Congratulations!
Of course that's a serious worry!
Today's blog post [link in🧵]: Humble superintelligence as a response to AI risk. Build it humble, cautious, and multilateral. Inspired by Burkean conservatism and philosophical Daoism.
