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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦

@drbeasley.bsky.social
112 followers 99 following 122 posts

Philosopher at the University of Calgary and Mount Royal University. I work on mind, language, and metaphysics at the intersection of pragmatism, German Idealism, and analytic philosophy. Website: www.brandonbeasley.net Substack: beasley.substack.com

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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 8h
We either value an individual's ability to read, interpret, think, & write for themselves, or we don't. If we don't, then the University is of no use. If we do, then Universities must commit to a core of required courses in which AI is not allowed. How else will students learn those abilities?
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
AI "agents" are not agents in the same sense of human (and some animal) agency. But that doesn't mean they don't *do* things autonomously, and do them effectively. The fact that they do not exhibit genuine intentionality is irrelevant to recognizing the threat they pose.
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
How to understand what Hegel means by "spiritual substance". First thought that occurs to most people is: Descartes' immaterial mental substance. That's not it at all. Instead, some helpful analogies: "Spirit" as in "team spirit" "Substance" as in "a book of real substance".
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
To breed an animal with the right to make promises--is not this the paradoxical task that nature has set itself in the case of man? Is it not the real problem regarding man? -- Nietzsche, "On the Genealogy of Morality", Second Essay
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
“O Nature, and O soul of man! how far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies! not the smallest atom stirs or lives in matter, but has its cunning duplicate in mind.” -- Captain Ahab, in _Moby-Dick, or The Whale_ So, Ahab is an epiphenomenalist? Or is this more pre-established harmony? ;)
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
"Drink loosens the tongue. But it also opens the heart wide, and it is a vehicle instrumental to a moral quality, that is, openheartedness." -- Immanuel Kant, "Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View"
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
If your supposedly world-changing"intelligence" tool has to come with a warning that says "Information may not be accurate", then perhaps it is not as impressive as you think, and will be world-changing only for the worse.
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
Post-humanism is anti-humanism. Come at me! (Actually, please don't. But I do believe that.)
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
Having seen several arguments on "inferentialist" grounds that LLMs instantiate meaningful content/are genuinely in the space of reasons...it seems to me they've not fully appreciated that inferential semantics results from normative pragmatics. And that's what's lacking in LLMs.
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
AI makes enough mistakes, often enough, that it boggles me how many have just accepted it anyway; esp people who supposedly value crit thinking/epistemic responsibility. AI hallucination is both common & endemic to the nature of LLMs; it can only be irresponsible to give it any epistemic authority
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
Today an edited collection I'm proud to be part of comes out: Interpreting Sellars: Critical Essays, ed. Carl B. Sachs. It's a fantastic collection featuring both established & up-and-coming philosophers who work on, and with, the philosophy of Wilfrid Sellars. www.cambridge.org/ca/universit...
cambridge.org
Interpreting Sellars | Cambridge University Press & Assessment
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
"What is your aim in philosophy?" To distinguish ideas that are only contingently (historically or socially) associated with one another from those which are genuinely rationally connected to one another; and to make clear the latter concepts in the service of human truth, meaning, and value.
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
I realize these days reality does not seem conducive to it, but I intensely feel the absence of a social and political vision of optimism, excitement, a can-do attitude, an inspiring view. But times like these, when reality seems lacking, is EXACTLY when we need that kind of vision.
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
Teaching Nietzsche is the surest way, I've found, to see how misunderstood he often is (typically by those who've not actually read him/have only cursory acquiantance). He's no ray of sunshine, he's no egalitarian, he's no liberal, but damn if he didn't get hold of *something* worth exploring.
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 24/04/2026
aeon.co/essays/on-li...
aeon.co
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 11/04/2026
I realized today that perhaps the reason I have less interest than I might otherwise in Dewey's thoughts about democracy is because I am not really committed to the specifically 'American democratic project' he's working within. I am a fervent believer in liberal democracy, but as a...
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Reposted by Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦
Huw Price @huwprice.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
I'm delighted to have a piece, along with many friends, in this lovely open access collection. The volume is superbly edited by Yvonne Huetter-Almerigi and Robert Sinclair, as a birthday treat for Bjørn Ramberg. Happy Birthday, Bjørn! #philsky #nordic #pragmatism nordprag.org/nordic-studi...
nordprag.org
Pragmatism, Metaphysics and Method - Nordic Pragmatism Network
Essays for Bjørn T. Ramberg Edited by Yvonne Huetter-Almerigi & Robert Sinclair Nordic Studies in Pragmatism 5 March, 2026 ISBN 978-952-67497-4-7 422 + viii pp. Description This collection honours Bjø...
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
Who does this sound like to you? If you said John Dewey, that's a very good guess.
An image of text from a book.
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
With re-appearing day as now so happy and serene The rosy and elastic dawn, the flashing sun The limpid spread of air cerulean -- Walt Whitman, "To the Man-of-War Bird"
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
Too many people confuse their commitment to certain political views, or elements of social critique, with a personality. When that's the case, you're not a person freely holding a view: you are letting a viewpoint dictate to you who you are.
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
"The things that make us human will become much more important instead of much less important." Amen. Nice to hear this; that said, remains to be seen if actions will match words. Regardless, the more people say this, the better. fortune.com/2026/02/07/a...
fortune.com
Anthropic cofounder says studying the humanities will be 'more important than ever' and reveals what the AI company looks for when hiring | Fortune
"The things that make us human will become much more important instead of much less important."
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
Some freeform Marcus Aurelius: No escape from the rhythm of events But also: Calm detachment from external events. You don't have to turn this into something; it doesn't have to upset you. Why be angry with the world? As if it would notice! I hope these help you. If not, that's okay too.
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
I typed a Hegel quote from the Phenomenology into Word as part of some work I'm doing. The spelling/grammar/style checker highlighted part of it. Its advice? "More concise language would be clearer for your reader." Yeah, we know! Where were you in 1807?
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 15/03/2026
Thoughtfulness and care in expression, avoiding extremes without overwhelming evidence, not attributing to people views they clearly do not hold or it would be uncharitable to ascribe to them--these principles I firmly believe; they are at the heart of responsible reasonable discourse.
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 13/03/2026
I've indulged myself in one of the few good uses of so-called "AI", and got it to generate a portrait of me as I might appear if I were an academic philosopher in the 1920s. I rather enjoy the results, and it is now my profile picture.
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
Very sad to hear of the passing of Susan Haack. I met her once, and remember her as delighfully mordant. I long admired her work. I think she was at her best when she deployed her razor sharp mind & clarity of thought in service of, in John McDowell's nice phrase, "piece[s] of mere sanity".
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Reposted by Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦
Charles S. Peirce @charlespeirce.bsky.social · 10/03/2026
Examining the phenomena more closely we shall find that not a single element of moral conduct is unrepresented in reasoning. At the same time, the special case naturally has its peculiarities.
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
I have discovered this semester that I *love* teaching Hegel's _Phenomenology of Spirit_. Not only do I love the book itself, and the ideas therein, but there is something very satisfying about taking students from bewilderment to incipient understanding and on to, ideally, actual understanding.
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
"Democracy" and "Education", while very important to Dewey & his overall philosophy, have overshadowed the rest of his philosophical work to an outrageous degree. One of my philosophical missions in life is to rectify this; not to downplay those things, but to re-balance our view of Dewey's work.
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 25/02/2026
Pleased to have contributed to this very fine collection of essays celebrating the centennial of Dewey's Experience & Nature in the journal Dewey Studies. My contribution is called "Culture as the Space of Conceptual Meanings: Re-Introducing Experience and Nature" opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/dewey-studies/
opensiuc.lib.siu.edu
Dewey Studies | Southern Illinois University Carbondale
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Reposted by Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦
Oscar @oscarw.bsky.social · 15/12/2025
Now out in Studies in HPS! 'Artefactualism and the twofold experience of modelling': authors.elsevier.com/a/1mH3%7E8yu... Short article building on the phenomenology of modelling experience as discussed in @msuarez.bsky.social's excellent book, Inference and Representation.
authors.elsevier.com
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 03/02/2026
Sometimes it seems like a lot of (NOT ALL of) contemporary Marxism is really just a conspiracy theory for academics. I suppose that's part of what Popper was getting at in calling it a pseudoscience.
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
"You know that was Peirce's fundamental point—there was no private knowing, and even to identify consciousness with private knowing was just nonsense. He said a lot of other things I never could get, but that is fundamental." -- John Dewey, 1946 (see Collected Works, Supplementary Vol. 1, p. 242)
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 09/01/2026
It seems to me that people use Bayesianism to make the following bad inference: 1. Present available evidence suggests the credence we should give to the belief 'That X exists' is ~1%. 2. Therefore, there is only ~1% chance X exists. Am I missing something? Bc that seems to be a bad inference.
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 24/12/2025
Dear god, can someone PLEASE tell my students that "novel" is not a synonym for "book"! Where on earth did they learn this?
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 17/12/2025
New post on my blog, 'Human Meanings': open.substack.com/pub/beasley/...
open.substack.com
Tom Stoppard: An Appreciation
“Words, words. They’re all we have to go on.”
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 05/12/2025
Tom Stoppard has died, evidently. One of my favourite playwrights, by far. “Words, words. They're all we have to go on.” ― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 01/12/2025
It is Dewey's view of values & the meaning present in "consummatory" ends that makes his emphasis on consequences (as opposed to antecedents) avoid a facile emphasis on mere 'practical' success. In particular because inquiry is to be used to shape values & meanings to make for *intelligent* ends.
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 30/11/2025
I miss the space shuttle.
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 28/11/2025
Post-1982 Rorty = Nietzsche + James
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 23/11/2025
Saw this comment on a YouTube video of synthwave music, and it has really stuck with me. I don't care to unpack all the different layers, I just sort of want to sit with it, as it has a certain resonance of "truth" for me. "The 80s and 90s were the closest to the future we ever got."
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 13/11/2025
Not many know Dewey contributed a book to The International Encyclopedia of Unified Science (Theory of Valuation, 1939) & was on the Advisory Committee. Actually, the Committee is a remarkable list of people. These names together may surprise some committed to certain historiographic narratives.
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 08/11/2025
This list is remarkable: Most cited philosophers of mind and cogsci (with Google Scholar pages): Andy Clark (Sussex): 68,900 David Chalmers (NYU): 68,300 Evan Thompson (British Columbia): 54,700 Shaun Gallagher (Memphis): 52,700 Dan Zahavi (Copenhagen): 36,200 leiterreports.com/2025/11/06/m...
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 07/11/2025
My latest occasional piece of writing: open.substack.com/pub/beasley/...
open.substack.com
A Problem of Evil for Atheists?
Suffering, Redemption, and Hope in a Godless Universe
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Reposted by Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦
Cheryl Misak @cherylmisak.bsky.social · 26/08/2025
Hot off the press: Michael Kremer’s and my resurrection of Margaret Macdonald.
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 06/11/2025
It occured to me a while back, reading Margaret Cavendish to teach her as a critic of Descartes, that, because her vitalism is closely linked to her ideas about mind (and given some of the specific claims she makes), one might see her view as a proto-embodied cognition theory.
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 06/11/2025
(Kant & Hegel) + (19th century advancements in biology) + (19th century physiological psychology) + (statistics) = Pragmatism
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 01/11/2025
"We know now that in the early years of the 20th century, this world was being watched closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own. We know now that as human beings busied themselves about their various concerns, they were scrutinized and studied...
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 30/10/2025
"Spirit is...the movement that is...the transformation of...substance into subject, of the object of consciousness into the object of self-consciousness... This transformation is the circle returning back into itself, which presupposes its beginning and reaches its beginning only at the end."
A depiction of an Ouroboros (a snake eating its own tail) from a Greek alchemical manuscript.
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Dr. Brandon Beasley 🇨🇦 @drbeasley.bsky.social · 27/10/2025
I oppose "GenAI" for many reasons, but one of the worst things for me personally is ruin my favourite punctuation mark: the em dash. Its overuse of them is often a signal that a piece of writing was produced by "AI", so I now often hesitate to use them. I want my punctuation back! *shakes fist*
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