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Dr. Walter Veit

@walterveit.bsky.social
664 followers 722 following 189 posts

Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Reading | I write a newsletter that you should subscribe to walterveit.substack.com

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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 18h
Critics of Effective Altruism when they realize what happens when they convince people not to donate to The Life You Can Safe.
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 18h
Philosophy friends! Should we abolish morality? Here's part 2. walterveit.substack.com/p/should-we-...
walterveit.substack.com
To Hell With Morality (Reading Group Part 2)
Introduction, more nihilism, and more Ian Hinckfuss
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Here's an interview I gave on atheism, amoralism, and animal welfare: walterveit.substack.com/p/maybe-mora...
walterveit.substack.com
“Maybe moral systems are harmful! Like religion they're used to divide”
Atheism and Amoralism
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Would we all be better off by abolishing morality? Let's find out. Join my Moral Nihilism reading group! walterveit.substack.com/p/join-the-m...
walterveit.substack.com
Join The Moral Nihilism Reading Group!
Moral realists welcome! No polemics. Just arguments and good vibes.
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Reposted by Dr. Walter Veit
Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Cool stuff! I've defended this kind of modelling work myself against philosophers who think its "not philosophy" but I think it's really supportive of moral nihilism: Veit, W. (2019). Modeling Morality. In Model-Based Reasoning in Science and Technology, Springer, 83-102. doi.org/10.1007/978-...
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Cool stuff! I've defended this kind of modelling work myself against philosophers who think its "not philosophy" but I think it's really supportive of moral nihilism: Veit, W. (2019). Modeling Morality. In Model-Based Reasoning in Science and Technology, Springer, 83-102. doi.org/10.1007/978-...
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
New blog post with an excerpt from my book. I'm looking for useful feedback. The reward will be a free copy of the book when it comes out and lots of gratitude. :) walterveit.substack.com/p/when-shrim...
walterveit.substack.com
When Shrimps Ruled the World
A draft excerpt from my book on shrimps
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Philosophy friends. Should we abolish moral philosophy? I wrote a blog post defending the view. Please share your thoughts. walterveit.substack.com/p/to-hell-wi...
walterveit.substack.com
To Hell With Morality
And moral philosophy with it
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Is it still unethical for academics to monetize substack? I wrote a follow-up essay. Please share your views. walterveit.substack.com/p/is-it-unet...
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
As promised all newsletter income has been donated. walterveit.substack.com/p/300-dollar...
walterveit.substack.com
$300 Dollars For Charities
Thanks! :)
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Friends of nature! I've written a new essay on the recent (alleged) discovery of a new penguin species. Please share! 🐧 walterveit.substack.com/p/scientists...
walterveit.substack.com
Scientists Discover New Penguin Species - Or Did They?
Hype and truth in science communication
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I wrote a new blog post challenging Bryan Caplan's recent criticism of effective altruism. walterveit.substack.com/p/bryan-capl...
walterveit.substack.com
Bryan Caplan vs Effective Altruism
Pseudo-Philosophy vs Arguments, Reasons, and Evidence (And an Invitation to Debate)
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Philosophy friends! Is prayer self-defeating? I wrote a new essay defending the view. Please share your views. walterveit.substack.com/p/prayer-is-...
walterveit.substack.com
Prayer Is Self-Defeating
Unless you’re dogmatic
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
www.psychologytoday.com/nz/blog/scie...
psychologytoday.com
Why Is the Department of War Against Effective Altruism?
The global race for AI is driven by zero-sum thinking, probability neglect, and other cognitive biases.
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
with a reply to @lastpositivist.bsky.social :) Hopefully this makes the views of radical naturalists clearer.
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Philosophy friends! Must all philosophers be radical naturalists? I wrote a new essay defending the view. Please share your views. walterveit.substack.com/p/why-all-ph...
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Glad you liked it!
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Reposted by Dr. Walter Veit
Hugo Viciana @hugoviciana.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
"Disagreement is necessary for healthy epistemic communities. And effective altruists disagree all the time. And that’s good! They literally come from all spheres of the political compass, which is why they are also perhaps targetted from all sides"
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
New essay in response to last week's events walterveit.substack.com/p/why-is-the...
walterveit.substack.com
Why is the Department of War Against Effective Altruism?
Zero-sum thinking, probability neglect, and other failures of reasoning
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Friends! I'm looking for critical reader feedback for two book drafts. If you're interested comment below or on substack. walterveit.substack.com/p/two-new-bo...
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
It seems you're looking for a sharp cutoff here. I think any strong demarcation criterion between pseudophilosophy and philosophy is probably going to be unsuccessful, given the past track record of similar attempts. Things come in degrees. Things can be more or less "pseudophilosophical."
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
In my radical naturalism, intuitions should play little to no role. It seems intuitive to me, unintuitive to you, but that doesn't settle anything really.
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
I fear that distinction makes things far too weak for philosophy. By that logic it seems like even lifestyle philosophy should count. For they, too, make substantive arguments and theoretical claims (even if not in the style of analytic philosophy). So no longer a useful distinction?
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
What is your view of how we should define pseudophilosophy (and pseudoscience)? I'm happy to change my mind.
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
If Plato came alive today, and didn't update his methods & concepts in lights of modern science? Yes, then it would become pseudophilosophy (from a radically naturalist point of view). But you can't fault philosophers prior to the development of science.
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
It's not just that pseudo-philosophy doesn't deliver. We can explain why. It's not a mystery to the radical naturalist. But I'd be skeptical of those naturalistic arguments if it so happened that aprioristic approaches had a track record of solving philosophical problems.
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
I don't think that's a problem for my view since my claim is sensitive to history. Alchemy was once a legitimate form of investigation. Much like speculative philosophy. No longer. Plato did practise philosophy. But if he did the same today, without drawing on the sciences, that's a different story.
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Except, I use it a straightforward way. Pseudophilosophy no longer qualifies as philosophy. When I say that it's a waste of time and space, I don't mean it's just less productive. That would still be progress. I explicitly stated that it's harmful to "our collective pursuit of objective truths."
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
There is no fact over how pseudo-philosophy ought to be defined. There is no consensus on what pseudo-philosophy is. So it's odd to insist I use the term wrong, when I define it it differently from how you would.
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
I'm not that interested in conceptual analysis. If your philosophical methods don't lead to progress and you refuse to switch to those that do, that's not just unproductive, that's bad.
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
I think there is a stark difference. The criticisms against radically naturalist philosophy or experimental philosophy are largely conceptual, no longer qualifying as "real philosophy." That charge is uninteresting. The scientific philosopher's criticism of unscientific philosophy is methodological.
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Tbf the LSE philosophy department has a great motto that pretty much matches what I call for: "The Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method was founded by Karl Popper in 1946 and is renowned for a type of philosophy that is both continuous with the sciences and socially relevant."
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Not too long ago, there was widespread skepticism about the introduction of modelling tools into philosophy. There still is, much as it is more silent now. But there's a large toolkit available within the sciences that philosophers could and should draw on.
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Tbf the LSE philosophy department has a great motto that pretty much matches what I call for: "The Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method was founded by Karl Popper in 1946 and is renowned for a type of philosophy that is both continuous with the sciences and socially relevant."
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
It has been tried
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Reichenbach thought we should leave unscientific philosophy behind us. His whole book criticizes it.
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
What part about it is "MAGA level trolling" Should we not do any metaphilosophy, resulting in some methods to become considered inherently faulty, and thus call for their abolishment? By that logic quite a few philosophers would be "MAGA level trolls." See Reichenbach:
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
What about the post is trolling?
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
I'm not setting a higher bar for pseudo-philosophy than wasting time and space in the pursuit of philosophical objectives. Which seems like a low bar to me.
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Philosophy friends! Is a priori philosophy a waste of time and space? Here's a new essay. Please share your views. walterveit.substack.com/p/most-a-pri...
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Philosophy friends! I wrote a new essay, no doubt controversial, on whether philosophy is dead. Comments welcome. walterveit.substack.com/p/is-philoso...
walterveit.substack.com
Is Philosophy Dead?
Scientific Philosophy and Unscientific Philosophy
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Do you have evidence for that role of intuitions in science?
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
You granted that intuitions play a role in analytic philosophy before. That intuitions are unrealiable isn't based on intuitions, but on the track record of science, where intuitions are well established to be unreliable, and the poor track record of intuitions in philosophy to resolve any disputes
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
I don't agree with that. Philosophers and scientists may disagree on which theoretical virtues are more condusive to progress, but the value of those virtues is ultimately settled by science, no matter how unintuitive.
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
My concern in that blog post was to highlight an interesting overlap between Brennan's and Schuringa's criticism of political philosophy and that of radical naturalists who are against all uses of intuitions in philosophy. That's why I gave the context behind my other blog posts.
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Whether you define analytic philosophy broadly or narrowly doesn't matter for my (radically) naturalist stance. Intuitions play a role in analytic philosophy broadly conceived and I think they should play no role at all, except as a psychological phenomenon in need of explanation.
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
For that purpose, 'analytic philosophy' nor 'continental philosophy' are very useful categories in meta-philosophy.
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
You may want to use the term analytic philosophy in this very broad way describing sociological trends, but then it's not very informative anymore today, when we want to ask questions about philosophical methods.
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
It's counterintuitive, but I prefer Reichenbach's own term for a jornal he wanted to create with Quine and Carnap: Scientific Philosophy "Analytic philosophy" is otherwise such a broad church of methods and views that its barely connected to the scientific ambitions of the logical empiricists.
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Dr. Walter Veit @walterveit.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Some examples: - the work of Edouard Machery (and experimental philosophy more broadly) iai.tv/articles/int... - see the reactions to Ladyman and Ross' Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized defending the use of intuitions - plenty of work in meta-philosophy
iai.tv
Common sense is not a good guide to reality
<p><em>Should we forcibly harvest a man’s organs to save five people? Should we plug the whole of the humanity into a machine that could ensure the maximal amount of aggregate pleasure if we could? Ar...
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