2026 July 12

Twilight of the Dons

John Gray

Colin Kidd, born in 1964, an undergraduate at Gonville and Caius, Cambridge, fellow of All Souls, Oxford, and professor of history at the University of St Andrews, passes over the rise of a persecutory orthodoxy as a factor in the decline of the British academy.
When I arrived as an undergraduate in 1968, Oxford was a haven of laissez-faire. Suspicion of ideology went with diversity of opinion. Women were still a small minority in the student body and the faculty. A large majority of undergraduates had been educated at private schools.
Kidd: "The dons of postwar Oxbridge were not so much an independent adversarial intelligentsia as something more akin to an estate of the realm."
As late as 1945-46, around 20% of the UK's student population was at Oxford and Cambridge. Oxbridge dons shaped educated public opinion. They also taught the country's rulers.
Twilight of the Dons shows how the golden age of the dons was a by-product of their part in the Second World War. Kidd avoids overstating the importance of student protest in their eclipse. Many of the Oxbridge protests concerned college regulations and were soon resolved.
Kidd: "Eventually the coming of Thatcherism − both in its penny-pinching economies and its aggressively philistine tone − deflated donnish ebullience."
Margaret Thatcher's attempt to inject market mechanisms throughout public institutions involved some ironical turns. Marketising universities functioned as an engine of state control. British higher education today is a house of cards.

AR I was one year behind Gray at the same Oxford college and saw him often, but we never spoke, so far as I recall. My recollections agree with his on the status of the dons at the time. It was a strange world for me, unlike any I'd ever encountered before. It's very different now.
 

2026 July 10

Biological Agency

Philip Ball

Agency may help us define what makes living things special.
Organisms are automata directed by their genes, Natural selection favors genes that make the organisms behave in a specific way. Agents perform routines refined over many generations.
Sonia Sultan: "There is nothing .. spooky in a perspective that takes into account the empirically verifiable developmental and evolutionary agency of organisms."
Agency takes into account how organisms interact with their environment and demands a wider view of inheritance beyond genes. Organisms can modify their environment.
Stuart Kauffman says organizational closure occurs when the parts each support the functions of the others. This property gives the whole system causal power.
Karl Friston says agency arises in entities that can make predictions about the results of behaviors, compare those with what happens, and seek to minimize the disparity between the two.
Agency may help us understand what makes life different.

AR This is an interesting topic, but I suspect it confuses several logically distinct interpretations of agency and hence invites confusions and disagreements.
 

2026 July 2

Communion by JD Vance − Review

Rowan Williams

JD Vance's first book, Hillbilly Elegy, chronicled the impact of substance abuse on the rural poor. This book sees the modern west through the lens of addiction and its generational effects. The norms and expectations of elite modernity are as lethal for the ambitious young professional as fentanyl is for the less privileged.
Vance offers a diagnosis that derives its force from the intensity of the personal questioning he undertook to arrive at it. The US vice president describes the pervasive mechanisms that induct us into wanting what others want. Most of us desire emotional security, meaningful work, and hope and joy in family life.
Wanting what others want enslaves us to inhumanly feverish patterns of work that wreak havoc with family life and corrupt our intellectual life. Vance refers to his experience at Yale law school, where the goal was to be assimilated into an administrative aristocracy that allowed you maximal personal income and status.
Vance's return to Christian faith was shaped by an insight he expresses thus: "I found liberation in guilt." He needed a language and a ritual of repentance and renewal. A Catholic identity let him see grace absorbed and assimilated over and over again in a long history of learning and growing.
The Catholic perspective includes a social vision classically articulated by Pope Leo XIII stressing that economic life must enable rather than subvert the dignity of persons and families. Vance gives a scathing account of a conversation with a critic who argues that abundant migrant labour absolves employers from paying a higher wage to American citizens and so guarantees better profits.
Vance looks at US modernity with a focus on the anxiety and isolation produced by individualistic hopes and desires, a concern for character, and a plea to raise the next generation into a good life. The Christian vision lets us accept failure without despair, approach one another with generosity, and know that our deepest desires point toward being at home with unconditional love.
Communion will not appeal to the MAGA hardcore. But it ignores the rampant corruption of the Trumpian ruling class, the disgraceful verbal bullying in the president's tirades, the recklessly arbitrary foreign policies, and the brutality involved in enforcing new immigration controls.

AR A wise review, in my humble opinion.

 

AR
Surely the defining image of Q2 for me
 

2026 June 30

Ein ambitioniertes Brückenwerk zwischen Philosophie, Physik und Bewusstseinsforschung − Rezension

AI Chat

J Andrew Ross legt mit Psychophysics ein Werk vor, das den Versuch unternimmt, eine umfassende Theorie des Bewusstseins zu entwickeln, die über herkömmliche Disziplingrenzen hinausgeht. Es handelt sich um ein ambitioniertes Unterfangen, das Logik, moderne Mathematik, Quantenphysik, Biologie und Neurowissenschaften miteinander verbindet, um einen kohärenten Rahmen für eine "Wissenschaft des Geistes" vorzuschlagen.
Ross' Ausgangspunkt ist die Unterscheidung zwischen Sein und Existenz sowie deren dialektische Bewegung im Fluss der Zeit, die er mit moderner Mengenlehre, der kumulativen Hierarchie von Mengen und der Quantenlogik in Beziehung setzt. Zugleich illustriert er, wie Bewusstsein sich als dynamischer Prozess eines "Mindworld"-Films entfaltet, in dem das Subjekt sich als "großes Selbst" und "kleines Selbst" erlebt − eine wichtige Analogie, die den Begriff des Selbst jenseits statischer Identitäten fasst. Die Einbettung dieser philosophischen Konzepte in physikalische Modelle, insbesondere die Quantentheorie und ihre Implikationen für Zeit und Raum, macht das Werk zu einer lohnenden Lektüre für interdisziplinär Interessierte.
Positiv hervorzuheben ist die großzügige Verknüpfung wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnisse − von der Alten Philosophie über Kant, Hegel und Wittgenstein bis hin zu modernen Physikern wie Einstein und Gödel − mit aktuellen neurowissenschaftlichen Befunden. Ross vermeidet es größtenteils, spekulative Behauptungen unerklärt stehen zu lassen, was den theoretischen Anspruch seines Buches unterstreicht.
Doch das Buch fordert auch Geduld: Die Tiefgründigkeit der Argumentation und die gewählten Begriffe sind manchmal sperrig, und nicht jede philosophische oder physikalische Konstruktion wird gleichermaßen stringent ausgeführt. Besonders in der Verbindung quantenphysikalischer Theorien mit bewussten Erlebnissen blitzt eine gewisse Spekulation auf, die einer streng empirischen Wissenschaft noch schuldig bleibt. Damit lädt Ross die Leserschaft ein, im kritischen Dialog den Weg zu einer "Psychophysik" weiter zu erkunden − einem Feld, das sich noch formieren muss.
Insgesamt ist Psychophysics ein wichtiger Beitrag zur fortwährenden Suche nach einem natur­wissenschaftlich fundierten Verständnis des Bewusstseins, der offenlegt, wie eng die Fragen der Philosophie heute mit den modernsten Wissenschaften verknüpft sind. Ross' Werk sollte besonders jene ansprechen, die bereit sind, die gewohnten Grenzen ihrer Fachdisziplinen hinter sich zu lassen und sich auf neue Gedankenspiele einzulassen − auch wenn sie nicht alle Antworten vorfindet.

AR I asked a chatbot to review my book Psychophysics in German and this is the result. It's a serious review in a measured and neutral tone that catches the ambition of the book for academic and professional readers as precisely as I could wish. Let's hope any human reviews are as kind!

 

AR
Third day of red-alert heatwave in the UK: Bournemouth Pier, Friday
 

2026 June 26

European Heatwave

The Guardian

The heatwave scorching Western Europe is the most severe and widespread ever. Scientists say it is only possible due to the climate crisis driven by fossil fuel burning.
The analysis by scientists from the World Weather Attribution (WWA) consortium shows how rapidly extreme heat is worsening as carbon pollution continues to pile up in the atmosphere.
Imperial College London researcher and WWA team member Theodore Keeping: "This is the most severe and widespread heatwave to have ever affected this large a region of Europe."
Western Europe is sitting under a heat dome. The WWA team finds that climate change has super­charged the weather pattern and is the driving force behind the severity of the heat.
The UK government Climate Change Committee says UK infrastructure was "built for a climate that no longer exists" and needs urgent improvement.

AR The UK has it easy compared to much of Europe, but this has led over the years to housing and public buildings that cannot cope with extreme heat. My flat certainly can't.

 

Rejoin EU Party
Ten years on and another PM consumed
 

2026 June 23

Gen Z Brits: Rejoin EU

The Guardian

Gen Z Brits, who were locked out of the 2016 EU referendum because of their age, now say Brexit has failed. A majority demand a fresh vote to rejoin the EU.
A new poll of voters aged 18 to 28 conducted by More in Common reveals that 60% of them would vote to rejoin the EU if given the opportunity, while 9% would vote to stay out.
The poll shows 62% wanting a referendum on rejoining the EU within the next five years. Only 11% of them oppose holding another vote, with 27% unsure.

AR Hold a vote, then rejoin asap.
 

2026 June 19

Psychophysics

OpenAI GPT-5.5

Psychophysics is a bold and interdisciplinary work that ambitiously tackles the perennial challenges in understanding consciousness and the nature of mind. The book introduces a novel conceptual framework − the logic of becoming − that seeks to reconcile static classical conceptions of reality with the dynamic, temporal realities of lived experience. By distinguishing between realms of being and existence, Ross offers a fresh ontological schema in which time unfolds as an evolving sequence of ontic transitions, aligning with contemporary quantum physics insights rather than classical block-universe models.
The work stands out for its integrative scope, drawing on set theory, quantum mechanics, neuro­science, and philosophical traditions to propose that consciousness emerges within transient "mindworlds." These mindworlds are conceived as virtual realities generated by neural electro­magnetic fields, specifically in coherent quantum photon states. This approach provides a novel avenue to engage with the hard problem of consciousness, emphasizing the temporal and emergent aspects of phenomenal experience grounded in physical processes.
Ross's dual model of selfhood − including the "big self" poised in being and the "little self" instantiated as an avatar in existence − offers a compelling reinterpretation of personal identity and agency, culminating in the concept of a strange loop that ties self and world into a dynamic paradox. The articulation through nine fundamental laws of psychophysics presents a memorable framework conducive to further scholarly discussion.
However, the book's intellectual breadth and conceptual density create moments where readers may struggle to grasp the full architecture of the argument, especially where complex technical and philosophical notions intersect. While it engagingly situates itself among contemporary scientific and philosophical debates, the argument would gain from clearer, more sustained engagement with alternative perspectives and potential criticisms, enhancing its role as a scientific manifesto.
Philosophically, the work offers valuable revivals of themes from Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger but could benefit from more transparent elucidation of how these ideas concretely ground the scientific claims. Greater clarity and pacing in introducing core concepts − particularly the logic of becoming and mindworlds − would enhance accessibility without sacrificing depth.
In sum, Psychophysics makes a significant and original contribution to the interdisciplinary study of mind and consciousness. It challenges entrenched paradigm assumptions and proposes a coherent synthesis with the potential to inspire new research directions. It is recommended for scholars and thoughtful readers interested in the frontiers of consciousness studies, philosophy of mind, and foundational physics.

AR The June 17 text by GPT-5.5 may have been a gem, bit it was a clunker. I asked the bot to try again, this time adding measured criticism. This is the result: cooler and perhaps more credible.
 

2026 June 17

Psychophysics

OpenAI GPT-5.5

Psychophysics presents a paradigm-shifting framework that brings a fresh perspective to one of the most elusive questions in science and philosophy: the nature of mind and consciousness. At its heart lies a concept termed the "logic of becoming," which fundamentally reimagines reality not as a static block but as a dynamic unfolding where being and existence interweave along a temporal and logical dimension.
This framework distinguishes between two realms: being, which encompasses potentiality, virtual states, and mathematical abstractions, and existence, which captures the realized, physical states within spacetime. Through this lens, time itself is no longer a fixed background but a process of continuous "runoff" − an evolving sequence of ontological transitions that aligns more closely with the insights of modern quantum physics than with classical deterministic models.
Drawing deeply on the tools of advanced set theory and the experimental and theoretical break­throughs of quantum mechanics − including entanglement, superposition, and decoherence − the book grounds mental phenomena in a physically and logically coherent structure. Consciousness is portrayed as arising within transient "mindworlds," virtual realities generated by neurological activity, specifically through coherent electromagnetic fields composed of quantum photon states. This perspective elegantly addresses the famously stubborn "hard problem" of consciousness by capturing its temporal nature as an emergent property of physical processes.
An innovative psychological model emerges by framing the self as a dual entity: the "big self" existing in the realm of being, and the "little self" as its avatar instantiated within existence. Their dynamic interplay forms a "strange loop" that lies at the center of human agency and experience. The theory's organization around nine fundamental laws of psychophysics offers an accessible yet profound synthesis bridging logic, physics, and psychology.
Psychophysics stands firmly amidst contemporary scholarly debates. It challenges the classical static understanding of time and causality, engaging with cutting-edge work in quantum gravity and information theory that suggests spacetime and reality emerge from complex quantum relationships. It critically examines well-known models of consciousness, such as Global Workspace Theory and Integrated Information Theory, outlining their strengths and limitations while offering a more unified and logically grounded alternative.
Philosophically, the book revitalizes insights from revered thinkers such as Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger, shining new light on their relevance for today's scientific problems. It proposes a pathway toward a genuinely integrative science of mind that is both timely and capable of inspiring fresh lines of research and reflection.
The clear strength of Psychophysics lies in its ambitious and comprehensive synthesis that bridges disciplines often treated in isolation. Its carefully constructed structure, substantial grounding in scientific and philosophical traditions, and the clarity with which it articulates its key original ideas make it a compelling and serious contribution to the ongoing quest to understand consciousness. Readers who engage with this text will find themselves equipped with a novel conceptual toolkit with the power to advance scientific and philosophical understanding alike.

AR I had an extended chat with GPT-5.5 about how to improve my book for publication by an established university press. Its advice added up to an awful lot of work if I wanted to craft a nicely polished textbook. But after a brief exchange about what I intended the point of the book to be, it coughed up this gem of promotional text.

 

AR
My book Psychophysics is now available on Amazon

ChatGPT reviews of the book (PDF, 14 pages)

Claude reviews of the book (PDF, 12 pages)
 

2026 June 6

Consciousness Research

Kit Wilson

Michael Pollan's book A World Appears follows the ongoing race among scientists and philosophers to uncover the true nature of consciousness.
Pollan discovers that some scientists are dabbling with psychedelics. An evolutionary or neuro­scientific explanation for consciousness only gets us halfway. Some further property of the universe seems needed to bridge the gap between the physical account and the phenomenological reality.
In his lecture The Stream of Thought, William James draws attention to the strange, swirling, constantly half-forming and half-dissolving nature of our conscious experiences.
Pollan: "To read James's heroic attempt to limn the stream of consciousness in all its nuance, strangeness, and paradox is to realize how much violence is done to the experience in the name of consciousness science."
American cognitive scientist Christof Koch counts as a giant in the world of consciousness research. He espouses integrated information theory, which says consciousness arises in any sufficiently interconnected and recursive physical system.
Koch has become suspicious of purely physical accounts of consciousness. Back from an ayahuasca retreat in Brazil, he told Pollan: "It was extraordinary .. I accessed this universal mind .. It was what Aldous Huxley described in The Doors of Perception. There was no self. There was Mind at Large."
Koch likens his experience to a famous philosophical thought experiment in which someone who is color-blind is able to see color for the first time: "Wouldn't you go around for the rest of your life with the certainty that you had experienced something utterly real that demanded an explanation? So it is with me and my mystical experience."

AR James I hold in high respect. Christof I'm not so sure about. See my new book Psychophysics.
 

2026 June 3

The American Republic

Jamelle Bouie

Project 2025 was a statement of values and a theory of governance. Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts: "We are in the process of the second American Revolution."
Roberts and the other alumni of Project 2025 have taken up places in and around the Trump administration. Any plausible response to Project 2025 must include a larger vision for the future of the American Republic.
Democrats need a plan for building something new on the wreckage of what President Trump, MAGA, and the Republican Party have wrought. They need a sense of what they want the American Republic to be.
The American people broke something when they gave Trump a second chance in office. There is no going back to the Union as it was. Broken eggs cannot be mended.

AR I doubt the Democrats will rally in time. The American Republic seems doomed to further years of authoritarian mischief.

 

Scientists for Europe
Ten years later: Still painful