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Reposted by Mark Schroeder

Leon’s Existential Cafe @leonscafe.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

On ep 266, we welcome @philosophymark.bsky.social to discuss why we misunderstand each other so much when arguing, the difference between signal and noise, the fundamental attribution error and what philosophers mean by attribution, and what addiction is. Full ep: youtu.be/J1gtEYNZ_XE

youtu.be

Mark Schroeder - Why Small Arguments Become Personal | STM Podcast #266

YouTube video by Seize the Moment Podcast

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Mark Schroeder @philosophymark.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

We can do so by identifying which answer to that question best makes sense of the kinds of mistakes we make, in identifying what reflects on us. (photo is top slide from tomorrow's colloquium talk at ASU)

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Mark Schroeder @philosophymark.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

And I use the case of silencing to illustrate the main argumentative thread in the book - that we can borrow a trick from the way that illusions are used in the science of perception to learn something about what kind of thing *we are*.

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Mark Schroeder @philosophymark.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Chapter four explores the consequences for listening, when we mistake signal for noise. It shows that mistaking speech that reflects on us as just the alcohol speaking - or just hanger, hysteria, or hormones - will keep us from listening to the one who is speaking.

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Mark Schroeder @philosophymark.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

The countdown is at 40 days until publication of When Things Get Personal, and it is starting to feel real, as my calendar is filling up with scheduled podcast interviews. In commemoration of 40 days, a few words about chapter 4.

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Mark Schroeder @philosophymark.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

This seems to be one of the most-liked posts so far: substack.com/@philosophym...

substack.com

Philosophy is Hard

...and what’s hard is philosophy?

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Mark Schroeder @philosophymark.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

So... I started a Substack? I'll be posting regularly this fall about how and why philosophy matters, how and why to use philosophy to shed light on interpersonal conflict, and from time to time some tangential musings. philosophymark.substack.com

philosophymark.substack.com

Mark Schroeder | Substack

I'm a philosopher and author interested in how philosophy can help us to understand and navigate conflict in interpersonal relationships. I teach at USC and am the author of When Things Get Personal. ...

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Mark Schroeder @philosophymark.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

I argue that making intelligible where someone is coming from does not prevent us from criticizing them, and explore how what I call the "bad guy fallacy" can keep us satisfied in criticizing others only at the cost of making it harder to see when we are the ones in error.

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Mark Schroeder @philosophymark.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

(Later in the book I explain why parents are especially liable to make this kind of mistake about their children - especially when they have very different values.)

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Mark Schroeder @philosophymark.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

I reject the seductive idea that we each get the final word on how to understand ourselves. This idea offers very satisfying things to say in criticism of those who don't accept us for who we tell them we are, but it does a poor job of making sense of their mistake.

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Mark Schroeder @philosophymark.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

50 days to until publication of When Things Get Personal! Chapter 5 begins with bad coming out stories, and explores why people who love us - including parents - sometimes fail to accept us for who we are. press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

press.princeton.edu

When Things Get Personal

How to avoid the trap of taking conflicts so personally

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Mark Schroeder @philosophymark.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

In some ways it's my favorite chapter, as it weaves some lessons about free will and the boundaries of the self together with a story about Elizabeth Warren, Barack Obama, Rand Paul, Ayn Rand, and the closing scene of My Cousin Vinny.

Image from closing scene of the film "My Cousin Vinny". Marisa Tomei's character is saying, "Oh, my God, what a fuckin' nightmare!".

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Mark Schroeder @philosophymark.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

I nearly missed it, but today is 70 days to publication of When Things Get Personal. Chapter seven explores issues about to whom and how we give credit - what we admire or are proud of people for. press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

press.princeton.edu

When Things Get Personal

How to avoid the trap of taking conflicts so personally

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Mark Schroeder @philosophymark.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Both books explore the roles of mistaken and mismatched perception in interpersonal relationships, attribution, signal and noise, and even Snickers bars - hers from the perspective of a psychologist and practicing therapist, and mine from the perspective of a philosopher. What a cool connection.

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Mark Schroeder @philosophymark.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

I just had the coolest conversation with Yael Schonbrun substack.com/@yaelschonbrun, whose fantastic book Why Don't You Understand Me? The Surprising Science behind Connecting in a World of Missed Signals, publishes on the very same day as When Things Get Personal and hits many of the same beats.

substack.com

Yael Schonbrun | Substack

Clinical psychologist, faculty at Brown University, author of Work, Parent, Thrive & nap enthusiast. I write about the artful science of growing a happier, healthier relational life. Bylines at Washin...

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Mark Schroeder @philosophymark.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

In chapter five of my new book (currently at the printer), I speculate about what happens "in the Hollywood version" of when Odysseus sails past the sirens. In retrospect this now feels irresponsibly premature.

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Mark Schroeder @philosophymark.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Why do these conflicts last? Shouldn't well-meaning people be able to talk their way out of them? Why do we get upset about them out of proportion to what is at stake? Seeing how charity informs the way we interpret what is signal and what is noise helps to explain how easily this can happen.

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Mark Schroeder @philosophymark.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Chapter 8 of When Things Get Personal explores the kinds of "nits and spats" that can persist even in healthy loving relationships - things like where the toothbrushes go, how often the trash gets taken out, or (in my house) where my keys go. (80 days until publication)

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Mark Schroeder @philosophymark.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Have we hit peak book club scam yet? I’m now getting scam emails for different books less than half an hour apart.

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Mark Schroeder @philosophymark.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

Yes I'm thinking it has to be something like this. I was thinking the right version of the view is the one that says the central moral mandate is to "make a difference". Then so long as your options are sufficiently spread out, no matter what you do you will succeed.

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Mark Schroeder @philosophymark.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Could you go subjectivistly wrong if there were fewer options?

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Reposted by Mark Schroeder

Doctor Wind Turkey @dog-envier.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

If "so many" can take on the value of one, then consequentialism, since if there is only one choice you are always maximizing and can't go wrong.

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Mark Schroeder @philosophymark.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

How does the number of choices matter for whether you can go wrong! Maybe a conditional error theory - about 31+ choice cases.

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Mark Schroeder @philosophymark.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Surely you can still go wrong even if there are many ways not to!

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Mark Schroeder @philosophymark.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

The local Domino’s Pizza has a sign reading “So many choices, you can’t go wrong.” What sorts of moral theories are compatible with this claim?

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Mark Schroeder @philosophymark.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Everybody is posting about Colbert arriving at the Obama opening in a tan suit, but no one is mentioning what he went home in.

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Mark Schroeder @philosophymark.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

The good news is that my kids don’t think Mom is old. The bad news…

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Mark Schroeder @philosophymark.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

hey this guy has a lot of books in his office. maybe his book will be worth checking out, too.

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Mark Schroeder @philosophymark.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

We have a final jacket design. It’s starting to feel real! press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

Jacket image for book titled “When Things Get Personal: A Philosophical Guide to Conflict”, by Mark Schroeder

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Mark Schroeder @philosophymark.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

It’s narrative building, Chris. It takes a lot of foreshadowing work to lay the groundwork for the tragic flaw of an entire generation.

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Mark Schroeder @philosophymark.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

Very undignified of you to see this, Will.

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Reposted by Mark Schroeder

Dmitri Gallow @dmitrigallow.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

This semester, I taught an undergraduate course on Probability and Rational Choice for the first time. My lecture notes are here: jdmitrigallow.com/teaching/par...

jdmitrigallow.com

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Mark Schroeder @philosophymark.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

Overheard (at my dinner table): Dad, what's a "dissertation prospectus"? Is that like a tesseract?

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Mark Schroeder @philosophymark.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

The book will be out in fall 2027!

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Mark Schroeder @philosophymark.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

Natural objects are things whose parts are more stuck together than they are to other stuff. This covers things like rocks, planets, solar systems, galaxies, nuclei, molecules, and salt crystals, but not things like roads, pairs of shoes, or constitutions.

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Mark Schroeder @philosophymark.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

Trees are biological objects! Like herds, cells, and kidneys.

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Mark Schroeder @philosophymark.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

Taking questions apart is one of the greatest tools of philosophy. But we can't forget that they are each more tractable slices of larger questions. We have to ultimately try to put them back together. This book is my contribution toward this effort.

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Mark Schroeder @philosophymark.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

This book has been immensely fun to write. (And still is! I have a few more months to revise.) I have learned so much about so many different areas of philosophy by trying to put back together what analytic philosophers have separated in order to make difficult problems easier to think about.

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Mark Schroeder @philosophymark.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

I show how the theory of interpretive objects allows us to reclaim important parts of the ancient worldview that meaning is there in the world rather than imposed by us or by God, without giving up the Democritean world view that all there is, is atoms and the void.

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Mark Schroeder @philosophymark.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

And finally, chapter nine argues that meaning of language as well as life must be interpretive in nature, and reveals what meaning of life and language have in common.

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Mark Schroeder @philosophymark.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

Chapter eight considers and defends the hypothesis that laws are in fact interpretive words in progress, and argues that this helps us to solve deep puzzles about the force of same-level precedent. It argues that the origin and meaning of our constitution depend on what we do going forward.

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Mark Schroeder @philosophymark.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

The hypothesis that laws are interpretive objects allows us to make sense of what judicial interpretation involves, why the various canons of statutory interpretation apply, and to carve out the limits on the proper role for judges.

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Mark Schroeder @philosophymark.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

Chapter seven explores a range of ways that the theory of interpretive objects can shed light on the law - including because words or concepts are interpretive objects - but argues that things go further, because laws themselves are interpretive objects.

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