Introducing a rebrand!

Make way for 'The Four-Fold Philosopher'

Formerly The Arithmetic Buddha, this Substack is now called The Four-Fold Philosopher. I took a little breather from posting these past few weeks - partly because AI made it almost too easy to pump out ideas, and I don’t think that was doing much good for reader or writer. It was too frictionless and not very thoughtful.

The core interest still holds: I’m fascinated by the way different traditions arrive at similar four-fold structures - whether it’s the Buddha’s Noble Truths, Searle’s subjectivity grid, Wolfram’s causal classes, Aristotle’s causes, or Vervaeke’s ways of knowing. That thread’s not going anywhere but I’m narrowing the lens a bit.

I’ve got an MA in philosophy from a proper university, and I’d like to bring a bit more rigour to what I’m doing here - fewer thought-bubbles, less self-help, and a bit more good old-fashioned Anglo-American philosophy (though I won’t be forgetting the East entirely).

To make space for the other side of things - my personal reflections, meditation notes (especially in a Buddhist context), and advice to myself as a 42-year-old philosopher living with a schizophrenia-spectrum illness - I’ve started a second Substack: Dear Gilesie...

That one’s not about audience-building. No notifications, no growth strategy. Just a place to think out loud, a bit like Marcus Aurelius if he’d had an email account.

Thanks so much for sticking with me.