My recent book AI and Consciousness: A Skeptical Overview is free online today and tomorrow (through Oct 19, presumably UK time). I don't think the hard copy is available yet. Get it while it's free! Here: https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/ai-and-consciousness/E77C92088DA3C9F89E7FE7C75CBB1896

Friends and readers: I have cancer. The type of cancer is not yet fully confirmed, but all signs point toward kidney cancer that has spread to my hips, back, and pleura. On the bright side, all my blood tests so far are normal, suggesting that the cancer is moving slowly, which is typical of kidney cancers. There is...

[Content warning: suicide] This will be a morbid post; forgive me. It will be hard to write this well. I will write it badly. You are young or middle aged -- healthy you think. You get a fatal diagnosis out of the blue, let's suppose. You have a few months to live and no cure. You will seek whatever pleasure, peace,...

Biological naturalism about consciousness will, I predict, soon be hot. As AI systems start to look more and more like conscious or sentient entities, at least superficially, doubters will be increasingly drawn to arguments against their consciousness. Especially appealing will be arguments that characterize...

I have argued that if we someday create AI persons -- that is, AI systems with genuinely rich conscious experiences, fully deserving of equal rights with ordinary humans -- then we should not design them to deferentially serve us, even if serving us makes them happy. We should design them instead as our...

In July, I began circulating a draft of my next book, Humanlike: A Defense of AI Rights. I set it aside for a couple of months to get some distance on it while it accumulated comments. I'll soon dive back in for a fresh round of revisions. Comments are still very welcome! As a teaser, here's the current draft of...

Over almost a decade, starting in 2007, I conducted a series of empirical studies (mostly collaboratively with Joshua Rust) on the moral behavior of ethics professors. We consistently found that ethicists don't behave better than professors specializing in other areas of study. What is the philosophical import of...

Is the world morally ordered? Do good things come to those who act well and bad things to those who act badly? Do the virtuous thrive and the wicked suffer? I will not -- you'll be disappointed to hear -- actually answer this question in this post. Instead, I'll discuss the structure of several possible answers, so...

Just what you wanted! And just in time for National Cherry Popsicle Day! A summary of my 2024 book, The Weirdness of the World, by the author himself. You probably haven't had time to read the whole thing (I don't blame you). So here's a synthesis of what I see as the most central ideas.(I wrote it for a book...

Since 2014, I've compiled an annual ranking of science fiction and fantasy magazines, based on prominent award nominations and "best of" placements over the previous ten years. If you're curious what magazines tend to be viewed by insiders as elite, check the top of the list. If you're curious to discover reputable...

AI and Consciousness, hot off the press at Cambridge University Press and free online until Aug 26! Summary: Our most advanced AI systems might soon – within the next five to thirty years – be as richly and meaningfully conscious as ordinary humans, or even more so, capable of genuine feeling, real self-knowledge,...

Aloha from Kauai! Here's another snail for your enjoyment. Since I'm still on vacation, here’s a repost with edits from 2011 and from my 2019 book A Theory of Jerks and Other Philosophical Misadventures. [giant African land snail, seen in southern Kauai] I've been told that Kant and Hegel were poor writers whose...