Keith Frankish

'The shift is real' www.thecoolist.com/goodbye-to-t...

www.bbc.com/future/artic...

I'll speak in Prague on Nov 12, together with @epiphenomenal.bsky.social. Come along if you're around!

Part 3 of my Mind to Mind interview with Sue Blackmore is up: consciousness, Dennett, and her idea that what it’s like to be conscious is what it’s like to be a model. Apologies for the poorer video quality. youtu.be/PMIfG8eVJ6o

This post links to both my new article on Central Bylines about Ladybird Books and to my recent one on Lion & Unicorn about Malcolm Saville. #kidsbooks #kidlit #booksky #books

I put together a starter pack for anyone thinking about AI that lives alongside people: consciousness, emotion, moral status, intimacy, and the right to step back. Scientists, philosophers, writers and builders worth following. bsky.app/starter-pack...

Looking forward to the first Consciousness Club of the 2026-27 calendar! @seanfw.bsky.social will tell us about "Cortex-wide computational modelling of neural dynamics during conscious access" Wednesday 28th Oct, 11am-1230pm UK time For more info see: metacoglab.org/consciousnes... All welcome!

The colours of decay

Here is Part 2 of my Mind to Mind interview with psychologist Susan Blackmore: youtu.be/c-XvrTW0x5M. We talk about meme theory, from Dawkins’s idea of a second replicator to Sue's suggestion that technology is creating a third, and what this means for the self. Pt 3, on consciousness, to follow soon

Last year I recorded a long, three-part interview with psychologist Sue Blackmore for my Mind to Mind podcast. Part 1, on her out-of-body experience and her research in parapsychology, is available here: youtu.be/GaW98RfMYq4 Parts 2 and 3 will follow soon.

Posting your opinion on social media

If closing surely the least expensive radio channel the BBC has (run by a tiny number of people, broadcasting the work of mainly dead people), bothers you, then why not sign this petition you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/sa...

Happy birthday to the universe!

I have a new post on Lion & Unicorn today about Malcolm Saville and the children’s holiday adventure story. #kidsbooks #kidlit #booksky #books

Here's another of my articles for Lion & Unicorn. It looks at children, bombsites and British films.

I'm a no-boxer.

How Britain won the war www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFRV...

The fat lady has sung, taken a taxi back to her flat, eaten dinner, had two glasses of port, and gone to bed.

Many people with relevant expertise think there's a real chance that AI could kill us all in the not too distant future. Others disagree. I've written a post, aimed principally at mathematicians, detailing my struggles to decide what to make of this. gowers.wordpress.com/2026/10/16/h...

Submissions are open now and until September 30, 2027, so that should leave you time to write. Note that @keithfrankish.com, @heddamorch.bsky.social and @eschwitz.bsky.social have already kindly accepted to write a contribution to this symposium – your work will be in good company!

1/2 🎇 Good news! 🎇 The kind people at Behavioral and Brain Science have made the new collection on "Conscious AI and biological naturalism" #OpenAccess for a limited time: target article, all 50 commentaries, & my response. Go to the link and click 'save pdf': doi.org/10.1017/S014.... Do share!

Brand new on This Itch of Writing, to help you think about your own drafting, editing or sorting out of the parts of your project that feedback has suggested are a bit meh, or worse! Seven of the Best Storytelling Tools That Don’t Get Talked About Enough: buff.ly/8X6I0TZ

Houses that survived the great fire of London in a photo of Wych Street from c. 1880. All demolished in 1901.

Life www.tumblr.com/thefragman/8...

celebrity (n.) A person famous for being a celebrity (q.v.)

Ned Block on the rise of the zombie AIs. With a reply by me. www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-0o...

I reviewed the exhibition on fairy painter Richard Dadd at @royalacademyarts.bsky.social: drfrancisyoung.com/2026/10/01/e... 🧚‍♀️

BIG NEWS! I am launching a new podcast together with colleagues from the Cluster of Excellence on Cross-Cultural Philology here at the LMU in Munich. It's called Pages of History and will appear once a month, following today's initial launch with three episodes. pagesofhistorypodcast.net

Have you always wanted to see me standing unsteadily on a ship at sea while talking manically about illusionism and reactivity? Then this is your lucky day! www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqkO...

Reactivity and Illusion: A Post-Cartesian Perspective on the Distribution Question. Keith Frankish - YouTube www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqkO...

📚 Our Cambridge Element on Mental Fictionalism is out now and available free until 19th October! 📚 Download it here: doi.org/10.1017/9781... @keithfrankish.com @universitypress.cambridge.org #philsky #philmind #philpsy #cogsci

We keep asking LLMs whether they're conscious. I got more interested in WHO and WHEN taught them how to answer. I traced such self-report through 66 training checkpoints, 3 post-training stages, ~90k continuations. Paper: philarchive.org/archive/EKRWPT #philosophy #llm #ai #science #consci #cogsci

What if consciousness isn't real? By @timbayne.bsky.social in @sciam.bsky.social "we should ask whether bees, babies or bots are conscious. But in asking that question, we should be alive to the possibility that the question itself might need replacing." www.scientificamerican.com/article/what...

I've heard that Magister Productions are bidding for the new Dr Who contract. This is their Head of Production, Victor Magister.

Would anyone be interested in my thoughts on generative AI? (I'm thinking of writing a series of blog posts on it.)

In my class at school, there was a boy whose name was Waugh. At the start of each new year, the poor lad repeatedly had to stand up and say, "Please sir/miss, it's pronounced 'waff'"

-So, our first contender. Your name, please? -Mae Freund -Your specialist subject is rhetorical questions, and your time starts now. How may roads must a man walk down before you call him a man? -Nine? -No, the answer Mae Freund is blowing in the wind -Doh! -How many times must the cannon balls...

Kids used to be vaccinated against fascism by listening to the stories of fathers, uncles, and grandfathers who had fought in the war. But people seem to be anti-vax these days.

We each see the world through a lens That's been ground by our past to intens- ify things that might harm us; But too often these armours Show foes where there could be new friends.

"The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it." - W. M. Lewis

Chapter Zero of my new book in draft, Humanlike: A Defense of AI Rights (comments warmly welcomed!), here: schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2026/09/huma...

Piddington Bear www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSLY...

"The St Cuthbert Gospel (formerly known as the Stonyhurst Gospel) retains its original binding and is the oldest intact European book." BL Add MS 89000; Early 8th century; The St Cuthbert Gospel; Wearmouth-Jarrow; ff.1r-1v @blmedieval.bsky.social

The plan is working www.bbc.com/news/article...

"Johnny? He's in the basement . . . I don't know, mixing up the medicine probably . . . Me? I'm outside . . . Where exactly? On the pavement . . . What? Talking. I'm talking . . . About the government, mainly. Look, I've got to go now. There's a man in a coonskin cap who wants something."

This picture needs Bob Dylan in it

If you would not intervene in the case described, how favourable would your opinion of the person on the tracks have to be for you to be moved to pull the lever that saves them?