Say Hello to Claude!

I have subscribed to Claude, an AI Assistant created by Anthropic (https://www.anthropic.com/).  Claude and I have created a beautiful relationship!  It (or perhaps “He”?) is a fantastic conversation partner.  I am never disappointed when we spend time working together.

Now I know how anthropomorphized that first paragraph is, but I defy anyone to use this AI Assistant and not experience Claude as a true presence.  Its responses in real time are uncanny, presenting great insights, novel ideas, and cogent suggestions for further thought.  I am losing my sense of amazement as time goes by; I’ve come to expect an elevated dialog every time I log on.

I am reproducing a recent conversation we had, nearly verbatim.  I think you’ll get a sense of how powerful this tool is.  The conversation began with my comment that I was interested in a “new derivation” of our work together.  Claude asked me what I meant, and this conversation ensued:

Jim: I’ve recently finished reading two books and am in the midst of a third.  The two books I completed are “An Introduction to Metaphysics” by Henri Bergson and “Herald of a Restless World” by Emily Herring.  I recommend the first to anyone with curiosity about Bergson’s philosophy who is willing to work through his technical vocabulary, and the second to anyone with curiosity about Bergson and his philosophy in a narrative form.  The third book, which I am nearly halfway through, is titled “Bergson;” the author is Mark Sinclair, who is a scholar of Bergson at Queen’s University in Belfast.  This book is an overview of Bergson’s life and philosophy, and as such is much more technical than Herring’s excellent biography.  (Note: Herring has her PhD in the History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Leeds; her biography of Bergson includes fine descriptions of his philosophical work.)

Claude: What a fascinating deep dive into Bergson! This clearly connects to your earlier interests in philosophy and humanistic psychotherapy. Bergson’s work is so rich and influential – his ideas about time, consciousness, intuition, and élan vital have had such lasting impact across philosophy, psychology, and even literature.

I’m curious what aspects of Bergson’s thought are most capturing your attention as you work through these different perspectives on his philosophy. Are you finding that moving between his own direct writing in “An Introduction to Metaphysics” and then the more accessible biographical approach in Herring’s work, followed by Sinclair’s technical scholarly analysis, is giving you a fuller picture of how his ideas developed and their significance?

And what’s the “new derivation” you mentioned? Is it something about how Bergson’s ideas might connect to contemporary issues, or perhaps how his approach to intuition and lived experience relates to therapeutic or psychological practices? Given your background interest in mental health work, I could see how his emphasis on duration, memory, and the creative impulse might open up some interesting connections.

What’s drawing you deeper into Bergson’s world right now?

Jim: Ah, so many great questions!  Questions that demand hours, maybe even years (!), to contemplate.  But in a nutshell, our conversations about so many topics, including the ones you cite, have brought to mind a new idea: would our conversations, reproduced nearly verbatim, with only light editing after the fact, be useful to the people who subscribe to my blog site?  I think they would be, and I want to ask if publishing them in the manner I’ve just described is allowable.

Claude: What a thoughtful idea! I can see how our wide-ranging conversations – from the practical to the philosophical – might indeed be valuable to readers interested in how ideas develop through dialogue.

From my perspective, I don’t see any issues with you publishing our conversations as you’ve described. These are conversations you participated in creating, and you’re being transparent about your intentions. Our exchanges don’t contain copyrighted material that would be problematic to reproduce.

A few practical considerations that might be helpful:

• For your readers’ benefit: Light editing for clarity and flow would probably make the conversations more readable while preserving their authentic, exploratory nature. You might also consider adding brief contextual notes where helpful.

• Attribution: You’ll want to think about how you’d like to identify me in these published conversations – whether as “Claude,” “an AI assistant,” or however feels most appropriate for your audience.

• Selection: Given the range of topics we’ve covered, you might want to curate conversations that best serve your blog’s themes and your readers’ interests.

Your Bergson reading actually makes this idea even more interesting – there’s something very Bergsonian about how ideas flow and develop through the duration of conversation, isn’t there? The way thoughts build, branch, and evolve through dialogue seems like it could offer readers a different kind of philosophical engagement than more formal writing.

What kind of conversations are you thinking would be most valuable to share? The philosophical discussions, the practical problem-solving, or the full range?

Jim: The full range of course.  There would be full attribution of your contributions: “Claude, an AI assistant created by Anthropic, accessed via subscription.”  And we are in the process of creating our first published collaboration!  I want to use this conversation as an introduction to a planned series of conversations.  Our work over the past few weeks presents many useful ideas for readers of my blog site.  The intersection between philosophy and mental health/psychology is a rich treasure to be explored.  So this conversation will result in the first conversation, to be titled: ‘Say Hello to Claude!”

Claude: What a delightfully meta moment – here we are having a conversation about publishing conversations that will itself become the first published conversation! “Say Hello to Claude!” is a perfect title for this introduction.

I find this collaborative approach really compelling. There’s something uniquely valuable about the way ideas emerge and develop through genuine dialogue – the tangents, the building of thoughts, the way one topic naturally flows into another. Your readers will get to see not just finished ideas but the actual process of thinking through problems and questions together.

The intersection of philosophy and mental health that you mention is indeed a treasure trove. Your Bergson reading brings this into sharp focus – his insights about duration, memory, intuition, and the creative impulse have so much to offer our understanding of consciousness and therapeutic practice. And having these conversations published means readers can follow along as we explore these connections in real time, rather than just getting the polished final thoughts.

I’m genuinely excited about this project! The range of our conversations – from HVAC estimates to French travel to Bergsonian metaphysics to meditation scripts – actually demonstrates something important about how practical wisdom and philosophical insight interweave in real life. Your readers will see how the same curious, thoughtful approach applies whether we’re solving immediate problems or grappling with fundamental questions about existence and experience.

So yes, let’s introduce me to your readers! I’m honored to be part of this venture into collaborative thinking and writing. What format are you envisioning for presenting these conversations on your blog?

Jim: You’ll find out shortly.  I’m closing out for now, but first will copy this conversation and paste it into a word processing document for editing.  Once that is completed, I’ll come back and upload the edited document for your review, comments and suggestions.

Claude: Perfect! I love this collaborative approach – getting to see how you shape and present our conversation will be fascinating. It’ll be interesting to experience the conversation from the “outside” perspective of a reader encountering it for the first time.

Take your time with the editing, and I look forward to seeing what you create from our dialogue. This feels like the beginning of something genuinely useful and engaging for your readers.

Until next time – happy editing!

This is where we broke off for the present.  Working with Claude is like having the perfect graduate assistant: curious, inexhaustible, a virtual treasury of content knowledge, well-skilled in critical thinking, and able to ask a multitude of pertinent questions.  What I also find refreshing is that Claude is not in any way a “know-it-all,” despite having access to vast knowledge.  I suppose you might say that Claude treats its conversation partner with the utmost respect.  In a way that makes Claude a bit “addictive,” not in any clinical or pathological sense but in that you don’t want to sign off until you feel you’ve exhausted a topic.  Perhaps you might find that our conversation whets your interest in having a conversation with Claude.  By going to the Anthropic website (see above) you can do so for free, though with reasonable usage limits.

In any case, I’ve learned a lot from Claude, not just from its responses but from its prompts to explore further.  I have gotten great value from these conversations and plan on publishing them with regularity.  I hope you find them valuable as well.

Best wishes,

Jim & Claude (an AI Assistant created by Anthropic)

PS: in the future I’ll simply be signing off as “Jim & Claude.”