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Keith Frankish

@keithfrankish.com

7.3K followers 1.3K following 4.4K posts

Philosopher, writer, Ελληνοβρετανός. Hon Professor, Sheffield. Mind, consciousness, illusionism, cog-sci, Ελλάδα. Friend of @philosynthesis.com Website: keithfrankish.com Manages Philosophy Twitter: tinyurl.com/5aps8sbv

Posts Replies Media

Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 29/09/2026

Have you always wanted to see me standing unsteadily on a ship at sea while talking manically about illusionism and reactivity? Then this is your lucky day! www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqkO...

Reactivity and Illusion: A Post-Cartesian Perspective on the Distribution Question. Keith Frankish

YouTube video by International Center for Consciousness Studies

Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 28/09/2026

Reactivity and Illusion: A Post-Cartesian Perspective on the Distribution Question. Keith Frankish - YouTube www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqkO...

Reactivity and Illusion: A Post-Cartesian Perspective on the Distribution Question. Keith Frankish

YouTube video by International Center for Consciousness Studies

Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 24/09/2026

Easier than we thought!

Reposted by Keith Frankish

Adam Toon @adamtoonphilos.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

📚 Our Cambridge Element on Mental Fictionalism is out now and available free until 19th October! 📚 Download it here: doi.org/10.1017/9781... @keithfrankish.com @universitypress.cambridge.org #philsky #philmind #philpsy #cogsci

Cover of Mental Fictionalism, by Ted Parent, Adam Toon and Tamas Demeter (Cambridge Elements in Philosophy of Mind).

Reposted by Keith Frankish

Kristina Šekrst @epiphenomenal.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

We keep asking LLMs whether they're conscious. I got more interested in WHO and WHEN taught them how to answer. I traced such self-report through 66 training checkpoints, 3 post-training stages, ~90k continuations. Paper: philarchive.org/archive/EKRWPT #philosophy #llm #ai #science #consci #cogsci

Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 19/09/2026

Reposted by Keith Frankish

Steve Fleming @smfleming.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

What if consciousness isn't real? By @timbayne.bsky.social in @sciam.bsky.social "we should ask whether bees, babies or bots are conscious. But in asking that question, we should be alive to the possibility that the question itself might need replacing." www.scientificamerican.com/article/what...

scientificamerican.com

What if ‘consciousness’ isn’t real?

Our understanding of consciousness could be fundamentally wrong

Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 18/09/2026

Magister has great plans for the franchise. Filming will take place at the company's secret studios in Wiltshire, and I'm told the monsters will be *extremely* realistic.

Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 18/09/2026

I've heard that Magister Productions are bidding for the new Dr Who contract. This is their Head of Production, Victor Magister.

Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 18/09/2026

Would anyone be interested in my thoughts on generative AI? (I'm thinking of writing a series of blog posts on it.)

Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 18/09/2026

*nauseam

Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 18/09/2026

Definitely!

Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 18/09/2026

Well, I realize that now

Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 18/09/2026

I'm telling you, Who posted first [continue ad nauesam]

Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 18/09/2026

Who posted first?

Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 18/09/2026

I thought you were referring to David Foster Wallace, the author. No, I don't know why I thought that. Look, I'll go out and come in again.

Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 18/09/2026

Sorry, I only jumped in when I saw your comment mentioning Dennett

Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 18/09/2026

Sounds dangerously Searlean to me :)

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Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 18/09/2026

Isn't he dead? Where did he say this about AI?

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Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 18/09/2026

I was thinking an agent as a system whose behaviour is explicable in intentional terms, but if you're using the term in a more theoretically loaded sense, then I might agree with you -- though I don't see what Dennett has to do with it, since he used the deflationary concept

Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 18/09/2026

Dennett being right (which I think he is) does not entail strong claims about the agentic nature of AIs. Plants and bacteria are agents in Dennett's weak but useful sense. The interesting question is what kind of agents AIs are. (Answer: Nothing like human or animal ones.)

Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 18/09/2026

Some teachers learn just enough to prevent their students learning more!

Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 18/09/2026

What an asshole. I wonder if he liked powtry

Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 18/09/2026

In my class at school, there was a boy whose name was Waugh. At the start of each new year, the poor lad repeatedly had to stand up and say, "Please sir/miss, it's pronounced 'waff'"

Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 17/09/2026

-So, our first contender. Your name, please? -Mae Freund -Your specialist subject is rhetorical questions, and your time starts now. How may roads must a man walk down before you call him a man? -Nine? -No, the answer Mae Freund is blowing in the wind -Doh! -How many times must the cannon balls...

Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 17/09/2026

Good point

Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 17/09/2026

Kids used to be vaccinated against fascism by listening to the stories of fathers, uncles, and grandfathers who had fought in the war. But people seem to be anti-vax these days.

Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 17/09/2026

We each see the world through a lens That's been ground by our past to intens- ify things that might harm us; But too often these armours Show foes where there could be new friends.

Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 17/09/2026

"The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it." - W. M. Lewis

Reposted by Keith Frankish

Eric Schwitzgebel @eschwitz.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Chapter Zero of my new book in draft, Humanlike: A Defense of AI Rights (comments warmly welcomed!), here: schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/09/huma...

schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com

Humanlike: A Defense of AI Rights -- Chapter Zero

Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 17/09/2026

Piddington Bear www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSLY...

London's Most Immersive Experience | SNL UK

YouTube video by Saturday Night Live UK

Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 17/09/2026

I take a very different view. 'The Stanford researchers said that, for some complex conditions, including epilepsy, autism and cerebral palsy, it has the potential to be "transformative".'

Reposted by Keith Frankish

Ennius @enniusredloeb.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

"The St Cuthbert Gospel (formerly known as the Stonyhurst Gospel) retains its original binding and is the oldest intact European book." BL Add MS 89000; Early 8th century; The St Cuthbert Gospel; Wearmouth-Jarrow; ff.1r-1v @blmedieval.bsky.social

Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 16/09/2026

The plan is working www.bbc.com/news/article...

Part-human part-mouse brain developed in science breakthrough

Researchers at Stanford University genetically altered mice to be able to receive and function with human brain cells.

Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 16/09/2026

Of course, this was before Agatha Christie went electric.

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Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 16/09/2026

You see -- it's much better now!

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Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 15/09/2026

Perfect!

Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 15/09/2026

"Johnny? He's in the basement . . . I don't know, mixing up the medicine probably . . . Me? I'm outside . . . Where exactly? On the pavement . . . What? Talking. I'm talking . . . About the government, mainly. Look, I've got to go now. There's a man in a coonskin cap who wants something."

Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 15/09/2026

This picture needs Bob Dylan in it

Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 14/09/2026

If you would not intervene in the case described, how favourable would your opinion of the person on the tracks have to be for you to be moved to pull the lever that saves them?

Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 14/09/2026

New trolley problem. A politician you hate is tied to the tracks, and a runaway trolley is heading straight for them. You can divert the trolley onto another track where it will hard no one. What do you do?

Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 13/09/2026

I can't recommend this highly enough. A 1969 BBC documentary about Craghead Colliery and the community it supported. It's atmospherically shot in colour and told largely through the thoughtful, articulate voices of the miners themselves and their families. www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQyx...

1969: Craghead Colliery | A Year in the Life | BBC Archive

YouTube video by BBC Archive

Reposted by Keith Frankish

Hassinator @hassinator.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

a great letter in the times today. perhaps worth sharing in these troubled times. #RNLI #heroes

Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 12/09/2026

Oh, whatever makes her happy On a Saturday night Oh, whatever makes her happy Whatever makes it alright flashbak.com/london-under...

Riding the Last Tube Home in 1990s London - A Brilliant Photo Album - Flashbak

We present more faces from Mark McEvoy's brilliant album of late-night life on the city's Underground trains.

Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 12/09/2026

Reposted by Keith Frankish

Experimental Philosophy @xphilosopher.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Many of you will know the famous finding from @existwell.bsky.social and Derek Anderson: Philosophers' views on philosophical questions are not predicted by their personality traits But why not? I asked Anderson about this, and he had a very intriguing suggestion philarchive.org/rec/YADTPO-2

Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 12/09/2026

Vicky knows how to play this game!

Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 11/09/2026

Alfred Wainwright - The Robert Crumb of the Lake District www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSAO...

Wainwright - The Man Who Loved the Lakes (BBC)

YouTube video by Culture Vulture Rises

Keith Frankish @keithfrankish.com · 11/09/2026

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing -- either good or bad -- was ever made