B. Scot Rousse
Philosophy is an opening to wonder, inspiration, and participation in the adventure of being human
What is philosophy to you?
Philosophy is living in a tension between provocation and wonder.
Philosophy traffics in what is anomalous, marginal, and out of joint with the dominant commonsense of the times. Philosophy is a tradition of systematic questioning, not answering. It helps us see what we take for granted. This is philosophy as the site of aporia and perplexity.
But philosophy is also an opening to wonder, inspiration, and participation in the stunning, multifarious, and wayward adventure of being human. It can offer fleeting and moving glimpses into “how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term” (Sellars).
Philosophy is often expressed in the written word, but it also happens in conversations, and in movies and other arts, including now internet videos and sometimes even memes.
How were you first introduced to philosophy?
My parents were Hare Krishna devotees. My name “B” comes from my given name, Vamana Bhava. Life as a Krishna child attuned me to how much our sense of reality and normalcy comes from the contingencies of our upbringing.
Being raised vegetarian deeply shaped not only my moral common sense (needlessly killing animals to eat them is wrong) but also my sense of smell. The smell of bacon nauseates me, yet to my friends it was the most mouthwatering aroma.
This was my inaugural philosophical experience: the awareness that our basic sense of reality is deeply contingent, and occasionally repugnant.
I was formally introduced to philosophy in my first semester of college in a course called “The Acquisition of Knowledge.” I had started college, superficially intending to become an engineer or a doctor. But I didn’t go home at night obsessing over the carbon structure of benzene the way I obsessed over the nature of knowledge itself. I was enthralled by the way philosophy revealed unimagined questions.
How do you practice philosophy today?
These days, I’ve dedicated myself to being a voice in the conversation about how to live well in the age of AI.
Concretely, this means writing about these issues for my Substack page, Without Why, and also attending, presenting at, and convening gatherings of thinkers and practitioners grappling with the rise of AI.
I am currently “Philosopher in Residence” at Topos Institute, a mathematics and computer science research non-profit in Berkeley, where I’m planning to convene a conference on “AI and Care” in late 2026.
Having worked for 10 years as something like an “applied philosopher” with Fernando Flores (in his educational company, Pluralistic Networks), I learned to see philosophy’s relevance beyond the seminar room.
Fernando showed that philosophy can make a difference in the lives of people not just by providing conceptual clarity, but through guiding the cultivation of the habits and skills that enable us to care, and to effectively take care of what matters to us.
For example, Heidegger argued that people express and connect with what we care about in our (1) moods, (2) talking, and (3) the cooperative projects through which our commitments are made real. Roughly speaking, these are the three dimensions that Heidegger identified as constituting our basic openness to the world.
Fernando takes them not just as a phenomenological description of our experience, but as indicating domains of skill we can cultivate in order to better build and inhabit our worlds. This perspective has shaped my approach and dedication to bringing care to the center of today’s conversation around AI.
Inspired by this way of putting philosophy into action, I’ve co-founded a nonprofit called “Curiosity Craft.” We help families and kids cultivate skills for using AI as a tool for shared exploration and connection rather than distraction or optimization.
What is a philosophical issue that is important to you?
I’m especially concerned with how AI is reshaping our own self-understanding and ways of engaging with the world. Despite how much the field of AI has changed since its early days, its dominant ways of thinking still tempt us to see intelligence essentially as disembodied information processing. And much of the philosophical framing of AI collapses human agency into an exceedingly reductive picture focused on utility, reward, “values,” and optimization.
My work aims at sustaining a different lineage of thought, one running from Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty to the Dreyfus brothers (Hubert and Stuart), John Haugeland, Patricia Benner, Terry Winograd, and Fernando Flores. This tradition treats human intelligence and language as inseparable from embodied skills, moods, shared commitments, and care. These are the capacities that make a world hang together for us, and tending to them is essential if we are to avoid narrowing ourselves into machine-like forms of life.
This tradition also acknowledges that in designing new tools we sometimes design new ways of being human. The skills and practices we create for using these new AI tools will make a difference to the kind of human beings we will become in the future. Philosophy has a role to play in reminding us of this fact and its tremendous existential stakes.
What books, podcasts, or other media have stood out to you as a philosopher?
It is a golden age for learning through conversations available online.
I listen to a lot of podcasts emanating from the AI and tech worlds so that I can stay in touch with the dizzying pace of developments.
“The Dwarkesh Podcast” is one of the most important podcasts in this genre, even though I would caution listeners that the host, while amazing as an interviewer, often buys too much into the AI-hype of the day.
The podcast from the Center for Humane Technology, “Your Undivided Attention,” is another important one, though the same qualifications apply.
I trust the sympathetic skeptics: people who believe in the project of AI, but are cautious about all of the hype in the industry. Two important voices here are Gary Marcus and Melanie Mitchell, both of whom have pages on Substack.
In the realm of philosophy and broader intellectual inquiry, I follow these podcasts:
Jonathan Bi
“Robinson’s Podcast” (Robinson Erhardt)
“Within Reason” (Alex O’Connor )
“Overthink” (Ellie Anderson and David Peña-Guzmán)
“Mindscape” (Sean Carroll)
“Let’s Appreciate” (Kyla Scanlon; also Kyla’s Newsletter on Substack)
The final piece of media I’ll mention here is Tao Ruspoli’s film, Being in the World, which is available on YouTube and is one of the best philosophical documentaries I’ve ever seen.
B. Scot Rousse (“B”) is Philosopher in Residence at Topos Institute, and a Visiting Scholar in Philosophy at UC Berkeley. His current research focuses on existential phenomenology and its applications to AI. He writes at withoutwhy.substack.com
and drums in three punk bands.
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