Coming out of retirement

Gosh darn it, where does the time go? Browsing through earlier posts, I realise this was two years ago. Which means its been nearly three years since I ran low on juice and started avoiding giving talks. I've given several online. And I've been lecturing. But all this time i've squirmed out of all non-compulsory bits of public speaking and I've decided enough is enough.

I think I needed a break, honestly. I'd endured a lot and pushed through so much exhaustion and grief that I couldnt really hear what my body was saying any more, and I kinda respect it for just forcibly taking over and making me change course. I've done a lot of resetting and anti-adulting this last year and shaken off some of the trauma and emotional burnout with dancing and swearing and running and cold water swimming and emdr. If there is anyone out there feeling like things are too much, I fully endorse listening to your self and pressing pause if you possibly can, just abdicate responsibility for as much as you can and think about geese. There will always be dickheads in the world but it solves nothing to replay our pain in our heads all the time. Better to summon our inner Baubos and refuse to take anything seriously that doesn't involve joy, curiosity or hilarity. 

So I've accepted some invitations and I'm putting my big girl pants on and getting back out there. I'm still kinda terrified and I can't promise I won't shake, or stammer or cry. I do promise I won't actually channel Baubo though. They might not be the greatest shows of my life. But I don't have to be good, I don't have to walk on my knees through the desert. I just have to show up, and breathe, and share my joy and curiosity about the amazing world we inhabit.

Wish me luck. Give me a sympathetic nod if you witness me hyperventilating. I taught my kids we can do hard things and its time to prove it. 

Registration for the British Society for the Philosophy of Science is now open!

IMPORTANT: Early-bird registration closes on 1 MAY. You will NOT be able to book campus accommodation if you don’t register by this date, and will have to make your own arrangements. (Early-bird registration is also cheaper.)

VENUE: University of Leeds

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: Robin Hendry (Durham), Tarja Knuuttila (Vienna), Eleanor Knox (KCL)

DATES: Tuesday 21 July — Thursday 23 July

TO REGISTER/FURTHER INFORMATION: Go to https://www.thebsps.org/news/bsps-annual-conference-2026/, which contains a link to the online registration page.

If you have any queries, please contact the conference organisers: bsps26@leeds.ac.uk.

Hope to see you there!

APA book symposium tomorrow

The APA Pacific Division’s 99th Annual Meeting is happening now!

It’s all online and you can see the program here https://www.apaonline.org/mpage/2026pacific#_zsfCReh_zldvgv4 

I’m looking forward to hearing what they think ☺️

PhD projects

In chapter seven of my book I deliberately described some threads left open. I think some of these would make for interesting doctoral projects. 

And there are funding schemes available, such as  https://www.thebsps.org/funding/doctoral-scholarships/

Get in touch if you're looking for a project/supervisor and think one of these sounds like you!

• Looking at the connection between agency and individuality. Do agents have to be individuals? In what sense? Is it possible to have multilevel agents?
• Looking at work in developmental biology and evo devo and thinking about how it relates to my evolutionary individual concept.
• Plasmid individuality and the identification of parts versus parasites.
• Alternating generations in plants and how to make sense of them.
• Species concepts in plants, in particular how the nuances of plant individuality complicate plant species concepts.
• Biodiversity measures in conservation ecology, and how the nuances of individuality complicate them.
• Looking at artificial and extraterrestrial life: Is life necessarily composed of individuals, as I argue?
• Cooperation problems across substrates: looking for common rules and lessons between biological and social instances of individuation: what are the mechanisms, what are the constraints. Some game theory would help you with this one!
• HeLa cell lineages and how they challenge our ideas about biological ontology.

I'm also up for anything to do with environmental conservation metaphysics!

The BSPS is coming to Leeds!

The British Society for the Philosophy of Science will hold its 2026 annual meeting at the University of Leeds, and the program chair is yours truly. How i'm still so bad at saying 'no' to things i've no idea! But look out for an email begging you to sit on our program committee soon.

It's my very favourite conference though, so get yourself to Leeds 21st-23rd July 2026. We're even hoping to organise some karaoke!

Click on the link to find out more, or see the call for abstracts below Home - BSPS - British Society for the Philosophy of Science 

Call for Abstracts

The Call for is now open for papers at the British Society for Philosophy of Science 2026 Annual Conference in Leeds on 21^st-23^rd July 2026.

Papers may be on a wide selection of topics within the philosophy of science (see list below) and should be suitable for presentation in 20 minutes, which will allow 10 minutes discussion.

Abstracts should be received no later than 11^th February 2026 (symposium applicants will have heard back by 4^th February). Abstracts should be a maximum of 500 words (not including indicative bibliography). Abstracts will be anonymously refereed by the programme committee, and successful contributors notified by 18^th March 2026. Abstracts should include an outline of the central argument of the paper. To ensure full consideration, please also include a short bibliography of 2-5 representative references. We do not anticipate being able to share referees’ comments.

No one will be permitted to present more than once at BSPS 2026. As such, please do not submit more than one abstract on which you will be the presenting author. You may submit additional abstracts as a non-presenting co-author.

List of Topics:

1. General philosophy of science
2. Philosophy of the physical sciences
3. Philosophy of the life sciences
4. Philosophy of the cognitive sciences
5. Philosophy of the social sciences
6. Formal philosophy of science
7. Integrated history, philosophy, and social studies of science
8. Science and values
9. Philosophy of AI
10. Philosophy of medicine

Please submit your anonymised abstract via this link: https://app.oxfordabstracts.com/stages/80589/submitter

Questions about submissions should be directed in the first instance to the programme organiser, Ellen Clarke (e.clarke@leeds.ac.uk )

On the death of recycling

 I came across an insta post this week that really resonated with me. For anyone that doesn't have instagram, I_am_mum_bum made a short video articulating her guilt over the way she seems to have forgotten her values since becoming a mother. She explains she used to identify as really principled. She was an activist and campaigner for various environmental and animal rights causes, lived by really strict ecological and political principles, and generally defined herself as someone whose priority was to make a difference and be a force for good.

She explains that she just caught herself 'hoying an empty plastic mayonnaise bottle into the bin, instead of washing it out and recycling it'. She expresses shock and disappointment and guilt. But goes on to give a powerful and heartfelt explanation of how she just doesn't have time for anything any more, how depleted she feels, since her life began revolving around meeting the needs of her children.

I think there is something really important in this. It connected with a realisation that I had that maternal instincts are not necessarily or even ever an overall force for good. Though we tend to think of motherhood as soft and loving and selfless - and it is! -there is a dark truth too, which it creates a powerful and I think biological shift in our priorities that makes us insular, selfish, Karens who will sometimes protect our offspring to the exclusion of everything else.

There is evidence that oxytocin - the so-called love hormone - makes new mothers more racist as well as more devoted to their babies. And I suspect this goes a long way to explaining the well-known shift towards the political right that often occurs as people get older. We are all idealistic lefties in uni, but by middle age we often become a lot more Tory. Its often explained as being about home ownership and simple wealth accumulation. But I think the maternal thing probably makes a large contribution too. Socialists suddenly become elbows-out tiger mums. And struggle to see the irony.

Its also true, i think, and as explained by Mum Bum, that mothers are genuinely overwhelmed and under-resourced and this exacerbates the shrinking of their moral circle. They often don't have time or space to care for themselves, let alone anyone else who isn't their children. and i suspect there are political forces at work here too.

Keep the women exhausted and overstretched so they don't attend protests or power-broking council meetings. Keep them from being school governers and attending public hearings. Keep them from reading or thinking or meeting and they'll lose the ability to articulate their rage at all the men who have ripped them off and excluded them from the soft levers of power.

The drudgery that stems from their learned helplessness doesn't only ensure that we're doing work they don't want to do. It's also shutting us out and shutting down our resistance. It maintains our appearance in the eyes of young women as irrelevant and boring. It makes us really damn easy to ignore and manipulate. Directed to capitalism-friendly self-care until we truly believe we inhabit a dog eat dog world where the elbows must be out or the family ship will sink, be trampled in the societal rush towards smoother faces and larger cars.

I'm tired. 

Yes, I know that I should stop scrolling instagram if i'm so tired but also, if you're thinking that but you're not a woman single parenting young children while working a full time job than you can get fucked.

Waiting

Well, it is coming up six months since my book was released into the world. I am proud to report that at this point I have managed to wrestle the frequency with which I check the view count down to just once a week.  It took a lot of discipline to get there.

At this point I think i can safely report to any interested parties that the enduring experience of publishing a book is........needing to be patient. I knew the publication process itself would likely be drawn-out and frustrating. But I hadn't really thought about what to expect afterwards. If I had sat down and thought about it I could have worked out that it would likely take a long time for there to be any kind of reaction.  I know that a few people have agreed to review my book. But its pretty long, so reasonably they'd need a month or two to read it. Then more time to write the response. Then if there is any kind of editor involved there will be extra time added for emails to get read and actioned. And then there is whole publication time line all over again, but the journal version this time. And all that's ignoring the fact that book reviews are rarely top of anyone's to do list. And the fact that in some cases it took months just to persuade the publisher to send a copy of the book out. Judging by the timelines i see for other academic works, i can probably expect reviews to start being published around 12 months after the book's release - i.e. June 2026.

Of course I'm happy and relieved its getting reviewed at all. And I have had short and positive responses from friends and colleagues. But let's be honest, a year is a long time to be chewing my nails worrying whether its any good or not. Is it unhealthy that I'm weekly scanning reddit and google and even asking chat gpt if it likes it? What if it got reviewed already and i just haven't found it yet?

What if the radio silence continues even after June 2026?  How long is too long? If nothing at all is written about my book this time next year, would that still be too soon to declare it 'stillborn from the press'?  How does one even come to know if you've written such a turkey that nobody even wants to say so?

It is well known that people often experience post-phd blues, because they've been so wrapped up for so long in their project that once its complete people often don't really know what to do with themselves. It's a Herculean effort followed by a major anti-climax. But at least with a PhD you get a viva a determinate amount of time afterwards, where you get a clear verdict.  With a book you just shout it out into the void and hope someone answers, at some point. At least i'm too busy to waste time more than once a week checking for responses......well maybe once more couldn't hurt.

An anarcho-syndicalist future for Gen-AI?

 I was required to complete an online training module by my university last week. Several actually, but a new one was on the use of generative AI. I was expecting it to be full of warnings and maybe some advice about how to spot its use in essays. To my surprise, but not necessarily dismay, I was wrong. It was pretty positive about the idea of Leeds academics using generative AI in their work. In fact it was encouraging us to use it to plan meetings, improve our lecture slides, and even develop funding proposals. There were lots of caveats about only using it as a starting point and treating it as fallible. But it heartily advised us to play around with it, do some prompt engineering, and see how it might be able to help. 

Overall I was pleased (and surprised) to see Leeds deviating from its usual cautious, wait and see what others do, approach. I'm skeptical generally of the idea that LLM's are likely to cross a singularity point and turn evil and destroy us all. Scifi lover though I am, my reasoning is that being evil requires the possession of goals, and things can only acquire goals of their own if they evolve by natural selection. Without that, they can only have the goals that humans program into them. and we already knew that humans are evil so there is nothing new to see here.

Anyway, one of the interesting things about the training module was that it included much-repeated instructions to use only one particular, university-approved, brand of Gen-AI. Presumably this is because they've paid a hefty license fee and need to justify it. But they also explained that they've acquired a license wherein anything you feed into the LLM stays in the local university-zone of the LLM. The thought is that you can trust the system not to steal your work. I think there is also an option to keep it private so you don't share it across the university network either.

This gave me an idea. Wouldn't it be cool if different universities all developed their own firewalled LLMs, encouraged all their staff to feed all their work into it, and then each competed with other universities to solve hard problems and develop new theories?

My basic understanding is that each LLM would be slightly different, distinguished by its different inputs, and would constitute a sort of idiosyncratic super-brain for each university, melding the linguistic habits of all its different researchers. It would be fun to see how they then produced different approaches to, for example, the problem of reconciling quantum physics and general relativity. It would be like a scaled-up market place of ideas. A marketplace of superintelligences.

We'd need careful mechanisms to stop powerful/wealthy universities from just favouring their own solutions, of course. And it would be terrible for cooperation between universities. But maybe we could move universities away from being nationalistic/regional and more towards each being biased towards a different set of ideologies, like in Robert Nozick's utopia.  Academics could choose which university to offer their work to, based on their individual sympathies and goals. 

I wonder what would emerge?

What is the universe trying to tell me?

 Things that have happened this month:

• My office computer stopped connecting to the internet for no apparent reason
• The screen of my two year old laptop stopped working
• I lost my housekeys
• The battery of my camper van went flat
• The electrics in my kitchen stopped working

Obviously the common denominator in all this is me. But what about me? Am I emitting some sort of current? Why?!

Kind concepts as idealised models

 https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/centre-theoretical-philosophy/doc/kind-concepts-idealised-models