On Exercising Epistemic Agency
Mona Simion,
2026/07/30
Are we 'epistemic agents'? That is: can we decide what to believe and whether or not to believe something? A lot of people argue that we are not: "I believe what I believe, and that's it." But if there is the possibility that we can be swayed by, say, evidence or reasoning, and make the decision whether or not to change our beliefs as a consequence, then we are epistemic agents. That's the stance the author takes. But then, if we are epistemic agents, first, we can be held responsible for our beliefs, but more importantly, second, our ability to decide what and whether to belief can be undermined by false information, coercion, or other factors; these are cases of 'epistemic injustice', and we should not be held responsible for our beliefs in such circumstances. Where is the line? Mona Simion argues for 'epistemic minimalism', specifically, cases where a person is governed by epistemic norms (in other words, they can comprehend reasons and evidence), and where they can freely act on those norms. We see here a lot of overlap with the concept of 'informed consent', another way to approach the idea of epistemic agency. Why is any of this relevant? Because it is, arguably, minimally the responsibility of education to foster epistemic agency in a person; educational systems that do not do this are arguably unjust.
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On Quality: What It Is and Why Products Get Worse
Keyana Sapp,
Worse on Purpose,
2026/07/30
If I had to summarize this item with a slogan, it would be: 'quality' is something that is recognized, not measured. Now at the limits, this of course is not true: precision engineering depends a lot on measurement, for example. But in the main, the slogan holds. As Robert Pirsig, quoted in the article, writes, "Quality is a characteristic of thought and statement that is recognized by a nonthinking process. Because definitions are a product of rigid, formal thinking, quality cannot be defined. Even though Quality cannot be defined, you know what Quality is." Via Dan Gillmor.
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AI won’t make education more inclusive unless we design it that way
Beven Byrnes,
TechFinitive,
2026/07/30
As the title suggests, "if we want to integrate AI into the classroom in a way that reduces exclusion instead of scaling it, the first thing to do is bring the people at the edges into the design from the start. Users with non-standard needs can surface failure modes that would otherwise go unnoticed if a team ran tests based on the average user's needs." As Beven Byrnes writes, "designing for the people at the margins is not charity or a compliance box to tick, but the way you build something that works well for everyone." Designing for diversity works not only for the people who are, um, diverse, but for everybody.
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I’ve spent years researching what it means to be alive. This is what I’ve learned | Melanie Challenger
Melanie Challenger,
The Guardian,
2026/07/30
This is a decent article that is to my mind fundamentally wrong. It reflects the relatively recent trend in philosophy embracing the embodiment of cognition. As Melanie Challenger writes, "The intelligent actions of organisms, then, arise from the imperatives of whole bodies that must preserve their own conditions for existence." In other words, "little of intelligence can meaningfully be said to be controlled by a separable thinking part that you might identify as who you are... we are not brains in vats. We are embodied creatures fully immersed in the world." The article moves back and forth between what 'causes' our thoughts and what constitutes the basis of our identity. Neither directly addresses cognition and consciousness; we may as well say we identify as someone being chased by a rhinoceros. The core question is, could the neural signals being sent from the body or through the senses be emulated and sent to a free-standing brain, to be experienced as 'wanting a coffee', 'pain', or 'being chased'? Obviously (to my mind) they could.
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InstructureCon Conference Notes 2026
Phil Hill,
On EdTech Newsletter,
2026/07/30
Phil Hill offers his thoughts on the Instructure conference. The big issue here is of course the breach the company suffered earlier this year, and according to Hill, the company has done what it needs to do to respond, reassure customers, and be clear in communications. He is less sanguine about the rest of it. "Strategy documents are cheap, and this one is better than most," writes Hill. "The test of a vision at a users conference is whether customers can watch it run, and this year they were asked to take it on faith too often." He argues that while the company has a vision, there's little that has been delivered to sustain it, and that there's a governance issue around Instructure Foundry, "a standalone organization with its own funding, chartered to build in markets adjacent to the core."
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The tragic decline in reading - and empathy?
Doug Johnson,
Blue Skunk Blog,
2026/07/30
This article references an article in the Atlantic (which, of course, is paywalled) attributing the decline of not only intelligence but also empathy. The focus is on Americans, which (not surprisingly) suggestions that the trend is global. "16% of Americans are reading daily for pleasure, a 40% decline over 20 years... In 1975, about half of 20-somethings said they read the newspaper every day. Today less than 10 percent do." What strikes me as odd about the article is the complete lack of any reference to television. In my view, if anything dulled the American mind, it is that. Television, the drug of the nation. A medium designed not for deep thought but as a vehicle for advertising. Meanwhile, we could probably talk more about the reasons for a decline in empathy - but maybe we could begin by dropping the paywalls.
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Building Blackboard Together Conference Notes 2026
Phil Hill,
On EdTech Newsletter,
2026/07/30
"The message this conference had to land was we're back," writes Phil Hill. "The message it could easily have landed instead was we're alive—a company going through the motions because not having a conference would have looked worse." The company is staffing its new leadership team and preparing a new strategy (one that hopefully for them does not involve taking on mountains of debt). Hill deftly summarizes the set of new features and offerings the company has planned, including Ally, which leads on accessibility work, and Cursive, which "captures a continuous record of the writing process—keystrokes, pace, revisions, time on task—from first draft to submission, producing something an instructor can review rather than a probability score."
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