Stephen Everson @severson.bsky.social · 08/10/2026It’s probably the most useful journalism he’s produced. 010
Stephen Everson @severson.bsky.social · 08/10/2026If you think that there is a ‘hard problem’ of consciousness, why think that there’s only one? 000
Stephen Everson @severson.bsky.social · 07/10/2026Ah. The man for whose heart attack Jeremy Corbyn was largely to blame. 120
Reposted by Stephen EversonAdanedhel🌹 @danielwaweru.bsky.social · 07/10/2026A remarkable piece. Argument seems to be that Zionism is best understood by those who’ve lived it, but Palestinian opinions of Zionism are entirely ignored *except* when they clash with the Green Party’s recommendations. 3142
Reposted by Stephen EversonAnondeplume @anondeplume.bsky.social · 06/10/20261/2 You think that's bad. AI Fucked with Sarah Kendzior .. "There's an AI-generated "biography" of me that is just my book "The Last American Road Trip" plagiarized near verbatim and sold under the byline of a non-existent person." 0278
Reposted by Stephen Eversonᴄʏᴄʟᴏᴢ @cyclozparis.bsky.social · 06/10/2026The oldest Parisian barricades photographed on Rue St Maur in 1848. 📷 Support for high school students #paris 0196
Reposted by Stephen EversonIvor Middleton @iwasid.bsky.social · 06/10/2026Thread from Annie Gottfried Cohen on the Green Party Zionism is Racism motion. It's good. bsky.app/profile/anns... 001
Reposted by Stephen EversonAda Palmer @adapalmer.bsky.social · 04/10/2026So glad you enjoyed! You may also enjoy my further discussions of Machiavelli on my new podcast, Beforecast. 1101
Stephen Everson @severson.bsky.social · 03/10/2026but it’s not going to be profitable to try to say anything substantive about some property they all have in common. Trying to do that is just residual Cartesianism, but without the unifying notion of a Cartesian mental substance of which they would all be modes. 010
Stephen Everson @severson.bsky.social · 03/10/2026My suspicion is that ‘conscious’ and ‘consciousness’ are concepts that are at the wrong level of abstraction to allow any helpful analysis, let alone for there to be a theory of consciousness (as with ‘necessary connection’) We can say lots of interesting things about particular conscious states 100
Stephen Everson @severson.bsky.social · 02/10/2026‘Feeling’ is such a treacherous term (cf. Humean accounts of pretty well anything). 020
Reposted by Stephen Eversondavidglot.bsky.social @davidglot.bsky.social · 02/10/2026Westminster bridge early morning Friday 2 September 2026 021
Stephen Everson @severson.bsky.social · 27/09/2026Every informed public-health professional: we need to stop plastic from leeching toxic chemicals and microplastics into our food. Waitrose: 000
Stephen Everson @severson.bsky.social · 27/09/2026It seems Reform’s “patriotism” doesn’t extend to challenging the interests of rich foreigners in order to protect the country. 110
Stephen Everson @severson.bsky.social · 27/09/2026Named after Agamemnon, who slaughtered the innocent to protect ships and was killed when half-submerged. 022
Stephen Everson @severson.bsky.social · 27/09/2026So what are Reform’s policies to protect us from exploitation by foreign capital? As far as I can see it’s entirely happy for our assets to be bought by foreigners and profits extracted abroad. 110
Stephen Everson @severson.bsky.social · 27/09/2026Reform would ‘put business first’ by opening up even more NHS services to exploitation by their spiv cronies in private equity and then go onto say ‘Oh my God! We’re putting so much money into the NHS and it still doesn’t work.’ 110
Reposted by Stephen EversonCharles Keener @charleskeener.bsky.social · 18/09/2026www.currentaffairs.org/news/mohamme...currentaffairs.orgMohammed El-Kurd on the Politics of the “Perfect Victim”The author discusses the limits of liberal solidarity, and why human rights cannot depend on being likable. 065
Stephen Everson @severson.bsky.social · 26/09/2026Except it’s generally not computers that people are ascribing mental states to; rather it’s to abstract objects such as LLMs, which is much weirder. 000
Stephen Everson @severson.bsky.social · 26/09/2026What are we going to do if it turns out that really sophisticated computers are conscious and what it’s like to be such a machine is just to be aware of a constant, but ultimately unbearable, electronic hum? 000
Stephen Everson @severson.bsky.social · 26/09/2026That’s how I discovered her — from this, which was released today. She was the niece of RVW’s first wife. The booklet rather helpfully points out that the Shoves pronounced the name to rhyme with ‘Hove’, which is slightly disappointing. 130
Reposted by Stephen EversonDomingos Faria @dfaria.eu · 25/09/2026📖academic.oup.comPartitives, groups, and wholesAbstract. There’s an attractive view in social ontology on which a group is identical to its members. It has its defenders, but seems felled by a simple ob 002
Stephen Everson @severson.bsky.social · 25/09/2026It turns out there’s an English poet called Fredegond Shove. Maybe everyone knew that already. 261
Stephen Everson @severson.bsky.social · 25/09/2026Nor, of course, could an LLM understand the natural-language sentences we input. It would treat them as sentences of a different language. 010
Stephen Everson @severson.bsky.social · 25/09/2026Well if the semantic values of their terms aren’t the items that are those of the parallel terms of natural language, and if we don’t have access to those items, we couldn’t understand the theory, I think. 110
Stephen Everson @severson.bsky.social · 25/09/2026So a truth-theory for the language they output would seem to be one whose semantic axioms we couldn’t understand. 100
Stephen Everson @severson.bsky.social · 25/09/2026Those who are so ready to attribute understanding to LLMs would do well to go off and spend some time paying serious attention to Davidson and Dummett and McDowell and Evans on thought and language. 120
Stephen Everson @severson.bsky.social · 25/09/2026first-person (or second-person) indexicals, or aesthetic predicates, etc. etc.—which are readily outputted by LLMs but whose sense it’s dubious that an AI entity could grasp. 130
Stephen Everson @severson.bsky.social · 25/09/2026Especially when even if one puts aside the worry that there are no suitable AI-entities to which it matures sense to attribute thoughts, there are various types of sentences—those using the past tense, those using the future tense, those containing demonstratives or 130
Stephen Everson @severson.bsky.social · 25/09/2026I can make perfectly good sense of anthropomorphising a computer. I still don’t know quite what it is that is supposed to be being anthropomorphised when it’s done with LLMs. 010
Stephen Everson @severson.bsky.social · 24/09/2026Indeed. A dog’s pain or joy can be manifest in its behaviour, just as a person’s thoughts are manifest in their speech acts. It’s notable how supposedly scientifically-minded theorists are still in thrall to a Cartesian understanding of mind as an inner realm. 122
Stephen Everson @severson.bsky.social · 22/09/2026For Aristotle, every living thing, including plants, is ensouled. 000
Stephen Everson @severson.bsky.social · 21/09/2026Every member of the New Viennese School was a Lehar-hummer. 130
Reposted by Stephen EversonJames Goodwin @jamesgoodwin.bsky.social · 21/09/2026Note how easy it is for a president to revoke a guidance document. Zero process required. So, listening to Republicans complain about how our do-nothing Congress is entitled to rescinding these things through the Congressional Review Act is a little obnoxious. www.thenewlede.org/2026/09/epa-...thenewlede.orgEPA withdraws guidance preventing PFAS from entering drinking waterIn the latest regulatory rollback on toxic chemicals, the EPA has identified several documents it deems “appropriate for rescission,” including a 2022 memo that encouraged states to use existing Clean... 1105
Stephen Everson @severson.bsky.social · 21/09/2026No; it isn’t. But it looks like we’re not going to get anywhere. The issues are too metaphysically fundamental. 100
Stephen Everson @severson.bsky.social · 21/09/2026‘Where is Excel now?’ is not a question that makes sense, I fear. 100
Stephen Everson @severson.bsky.social · 21/09/2026Abstracta are real things; they’re not off course concrete things. 100
