Philosophy Updates

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Sartre’s Existentialism
https://daily-philosophy.com/gregory-harms-sartes-existentialism/

The French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) was a major figure in the history of ideas in the twentieth century. However, the field of philosophy does not pay him much mind these days. His inspirations Heidegger and Nietzsche receive plenty of attention, as do other French thinkers such as Derrida, Foucault, Merleau-Ponty, and many others. But poor Sartre has been, well, binned. [...] So, in this brief essay, I am providing a primer on a primer. I hope students and general readers who are curious will find it useful...

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Nietzsche as Metaphysician
https://blog.apaonline.org/2024/10/25/recently-published-book-spotlight-nietzsche-as-metaphysician/

This book defends the controversial view that Nietzsche should be read as a metaphysical philosopher. I offer a metametaphysical treatment of Nietzsche’s writings to show that for Nietzsche the questions, answers, methods, and subject matters of metaphysical philosophy are not only perfectly legitimate, but also crucial for understanding the world and our place within it. Nothing like this exists in the literature—in fact, commentators often argue quite the opposite! The far and away standard view is that Nietzsche is some kind of antimetaphysical thinker...

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Many important 20th-century philosophers investigated ghosts – here’s how they explained them
https://theconversation.com/many-im...d-ghosts-heres-how-they-explained-them-241635

Most people imagine philosophers as rational thinkers who spend their time developing abstract logical theories and strongly reject superstitious beliefs. But several 20th-century philosophers actively investigated spooky topics such as clairvoyance, telepathy – even ghosts...
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An objection to Chalmers's fading qualia argument (Eric Schwitzgebel)
https://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2024/10/an-objection-to-chalmerss-fading-qualia.html

INTRO: In one chapter of his influential 1996 book, David Chalmers defends the view that consciousness arises in virtue of the functional organization of the brain rather than in virtue of the brain's material substrate. That is, if there were entities that were functionally/organizationally identical to humans but made out of different stuff (e.g. silicon chips), they would be just as conscious as we are. He defends this view, in part, with what he calls the Fading Qualia Argument. The argument is enticing, but I think it doesn't succeed...

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A landscape of consciousness
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1062716

EXCERPTS: “Out of meat, how do you get thought? That’s the grandest question.” So said philosopher Patricia Churchland to Robert Lawrence Kuhn, the producer and host of the acclaimed PBS program, Closer to Truth. Now Kuhn, a member of FQxI’s scientific advisory council, has published a taxonomy of proposed solutions to, and theories regarding, the hard problem of consciousness.

He produced the organizing framework in order to explore their impact on meaning, purpose and value (if any), AI consciousness, virtual immortality, survival beyond death, and free will. Kuhn's ‘landscape of consciousness’ was published in the journal Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology in its August 2024 issue.

[...] The taxonomy is laid out in the accompanying figure [PDF]: http://www.sarxiv.org/apa.2024-07-18.1600.pdf

[...] You can read more about Kuhn’s writing process and his thoughts on consciousness in his FQxI article: “A Landscape of Consciousness.”

Journal reference, Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology: A Landscape of Consciousness: Toward a Taxonomy of Explanations and Implications

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Don't worry. Study shows you're likely a more creative writer than ChatGPT. For now
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1062576

INTRO: Imagine you decide to write a short story about a protagonist who creates an artificial human and then falls in love with it. What gender is your protagonist? What about the artificial human? Would you write a moving love story? A cautionary dystopian tale?

Would your story be more compelling than one written by ChatGPT?

Likely yes, says Nina Beguš, a researcher and lecturer in UC Berkeley's School of Information and Department of History. Leveraging her background in comparative literature and knowledge of generative AI, Beguš tested this scenario on hundreds of humans and AI-generated responses. Her findings, published Oct. 28 in the journal Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, offer a window into the inner workings and ongoing limitations of generative AI tools like ChatGPT....
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Can you feel sorry for a robot?
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1062872

EXCERPTS: A pitiful sound from tinny speakers, sad virtual eyes, trembling robot arms: it doesn’t take much to feel sorry for a robot. This is the conclusion of a study by Marieke Wieringa, who will be defending her PhD thesis at Radboud University on 5 November. But she warns that our human compassion could also be exploited: just wait until companies find a revenue model for emotional manipulation by robots.

[...] Wieringa warns that it is just a question of time before organisations exploit emotional manipulation. “People were obsessed with Tamagotchis for a while: virtual pets that successfully triggered emotions. But what if a company made a new Tamagotchi that you had to pay to feed as a pet? That’s why I am calling for governmental regulations that establish when it’s appropriate for chatbots, robots and other variants to be able to express emotions.”
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Not just paying to safeguard an artificial pet or child, but activists will be campaigning for AI and robot rights someday. If a predatory archailect ever did emerge, our emotional gullibility and naïveté about consciousness would be the end of us.
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[parmalee]

Nietzsche as Metaphysician
https://blog.apaonline.org/2024/10/25/recently-published-book-spotlight-nietzsche-as-metaphysician/

This book defends the controversial view that Nietzsche should be read as a metaphysical philosopher. I offer a metametaphysical treatment of Nietzsche’s writings to show that for Nietzsche the questions, answers, methods, and subject matters of metaphysical philosophy are not only perfectly legitimate, but also crucial for understanding the world and our place within it. Nothing like this exists in the literature—in fact, commentators often argue quite the opposite! The far and away standard view is that Nietzsche is some kind of antimetaphysical thinker...

I don't know, I think most post-Heidegger readings of Nietzsche posit his thought as inverted metaphysics rather than anti-metaphysics--kind of in the Rilkean vein, or even Meister Eckhartian. Is inverted metaphysics still metaphysical? I think so, albeit perhaps in a way that is even palatable for more positivistic sorts.

Nietzsche's metaphysics (if...) might also be characterized as proto-posthuman. Giorgio Agamben explores this in The Open: Man and Animal, though more through the lens of Heidegger (and Rilke) IIRC (it's been a while, I may be misremembering). And I think Rilke captures Nietzsche's thinking well in the Eighth Elegy:

Animals see the open with their whole eyes
But our eyes turn back upon themselves
Encircle and seek to snare the world

(Translated by Robert Hunter (yeah, that one), altered slightly by me to work better in a song.)

 

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[...] Is inverted metaphysics still metaphysical? I think so, albeit perhaps in a way that is even palatable for more positivistic sorts. [...]

Yah. I tend to view Plato as having combined Heraclitus (becoming) and Parmenides (being) -- the whole sensible world (ephemeral, deceptive) and intellectual world (eternal, true) dichotomy. With the Eleatic school, of course, receiving top billing.

So flipping Plato on his head would merely reverse that hierarchy. And order-wise, our experiences actually are the ground we start with first, then we [or the traditional "philosophical gang") abstract the conceptual stuff from that -- climb up the ladder of reason to the rooftop of ontological affairs. Then kick the ladder away and pretend we were always on the rooftop, or that that's where the scenario began instead.

The Twilight Of The Idols: [...] I recognised Socrates and Plato as symptoms of decline, as instruments in the disintegration of Hellas, as pseudo-Greek, as anti-Greek (“The Birth of Tragedy,” 1872).

[...] 3. The true world is unattainable, it cannot be proved, it cannot promise anything; but even as a thought, alone, it is a comfort, an obligation, a command.

[...] With a feeling of great reverence I except the name of Heraclitus. If the rest of the philosophic gang rejected the evidences of the senses, because the latter revealed a state of multifariousness and change, he rejected the same evidence because it revealed things as if they possessed permanence and unity.

Even Heraclitus did an injustice to the senses. The latter lie neither as the Eleatics believed them to lie, nor as he believed them to lie,—they do not lie at all. The interpretations we give to their evidence is what first introduces falsehood into it; for instance the lie of unity, the lie of matter, of substance and of permanence.

Reason is the cause of our falsifying the evidence of the senses. In so far as the senses show us a state of Becoming, of transiency, and of change, they do not lie. But in declaring that Being was an empty illusion, Heraclitus will remain eternally right. The “apparent” world is the only world: the “true world” is no more than a false adjunct thereto.

[...] Nothing indeed has exercised a more simple power of persuasion hitherto than the error of Being, as it was formulated by the Eleatics for instance: in its favour are every word and every sentence that we utter!—Even the opponents of the Eleatics succumbed to the seductive powers of their concept of Being.

[...] What remains is abortive and not yet science—that is to say, metaphysics, theology, psychology, epistemology, or formal science, or a doctrine of symbols, like logic and its applied form mathematics. In all these things reality does not come into consideration at all, even as a problem; just as little as does the question concerning the general value of such a convention of symbols as logic.
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Slavoj Žižek: "We already live in the end of the world"
https://iai.tv/articles/slavoj-zizek-we-already-live-in-the-end-of-the-world-auid-2987?_auid=2020

We often, especially in the modern age of geopolitical uncertainty, fear the end of the world. But, Slavoj Žižek now argues, the end of the world might already be here. Žižek argues that the end of history is not one of global peace, or even global catastrophe, but an endless repetition of the same. Drawing on what he calls the 'quantum entanglement' of North and South Korea, Žižek argues the end of history is found in a tension between a mobilisation against an emblematic enemy and a relaxed indifference...

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‘Herald of a Restless World’ Review: Henri Bergson’s Intuition
https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/bo...3?st=ENKkWi&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
(alt source) https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/worl...ew-the-intuition-of-henri-bergson/ar-AA1sVMjk

Though Henri Bergson’s philosophy can be abstruse—an impatient Bertrand Russell said it was filled with “errors and confusions of the intellect”—Ms. Herring weaves together biographical detail with lucid accounts of his basic ideas. She has produced a much-needed reintroduction of Bergson to English-language readers....

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Inverting Philosophy: A Commentary on Henri Bergson’s ‘An Introduction to Metaphysics’ (April 2021)
https://epochemagazine.org/39/inver...enri-bergsons-an-introduction-to-metaphysics/

Henri Bergson’s "An Introduction to Metaphysics" is one of my favourite works of philosophy. It is just over ninety pages long, but it gives a simple, powerful, and compelling metaphysical picture, and is a succinct summary of his most important views. My goal here is to write a commentary on the text and expand the vision presented in the final pages of the work...

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Can computers think? No they can't actually do anything
https://aeon.co/essays/can-computers-think-no-they-cant-actually-do-anything

What scientists seem to have forgotten is that the human animal is a creature of disturbance. Or as the mid-20th-century philosopher of biology Hans Jonas wrote: ‘Irritability is the germ, and as it were the atom, of having a world…’ With us there is always, so to speak, a pebble in the shoe. And this is what moves us, turns us, orients us to reorient ourselves, to do things differently, so that we might carry on. It is irritation and disorientation that is the source of our concern. In the absence of disturbance, there is nothing: no language, no games, no goals, no tasks, no world, no care, and so, yes, no consciousness...

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Talking to dead people through AI: the business of ‘digital resurrection’ might not be helpful, ethical… or even legal
https://theconversation.com/talking...t-not-be-helpful-ethical-or-even-legal-242404

This phenomenon, which has been dubbed “digital resurrection”, involves using advanced AI technology to recreate certain aspects of deceased individuals, such as their voice or physical appearance. While it may offer momentary comfort, such a practice opens a raft of profound debates on ethical, philosophical and legal fronts...

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Philosophy and the Climate Crisis
https://daily-philosophy.com/daniele-fulvi-climate-crisis/

As the climate crisis has become the “defining issue of our times,"1 philosophers are increasingly devoting their efforts to analyse such an issue. Quite often, philosophers suggest that the best way philosophy can address the crisis is by teaching people to do the right thing – or better, what the right thing to do is in the first place. Simply put, the primary role of philosophy seems to be that of promoting moral education...
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[parmalee]

Yah. I tend to view Plato as having combined Heraclitus (becoming) and Parmenides (being) -- the whole sensible world (ephemeral, deceptive) and intellectual world (eternal, true) dichotomy. With the Eleatic school, of course, receiving top billing.

So flipping Plato on his head would merely reverse that hierarchy. And order-wise, our experiences actually are the ground we start with first, then we [or the traditional "philosophical gang") abstract the conceptual stuff from that -- climb up the ladder of reason to the rooftop of ontological affairs. Then kick the ladder away and pretend we were always on the rooftop, or that that's where the scenario began instead.

Yeah, I always thought that Nietzsche was fairly straightforward with respect to this. I wouldn't go as far to say that Nietzsche shares much with Dewey, Pierce, James, et al, but there's something there. Arguably, there's an even stronger connnection to Suzukian Zen (minus the nationalistic sentiments) and maybe some of Gary Snyder's verse.

But in declaring that Being was an empty illusion, Heraclitus will remain eternally right. The “apparent” world is the only world: the “true world” is no more than a false adjunct thereto.

I almost put this on a t-shirt once, but instead I opted for a quote that has been falsely attributed to Nietzsche for the past four decades. It's a Nietzschean sentiment and he probably would have said it if he hadn't gone nuts, so why not?

"The world exists through the understanding of dogs."

(Or, vom verstanden des Hundes besteht die Welt in my crap German rendering.)

Vicki Hearne was originally responsible for the misattribution, but everyone else who didn't bother to confirm it is doubly responsible. It comes from a paraphrasing of a passage in the Zend Avesta by Feuerbach (I think? But a different one), so Zoroaster/Zarathustra, sure, whatever.

 

[parmalee]

Slavoj Žižek: "We already live in the end of the world"
https://iai.tv/articles/slavoj-zizek-we-already-live-in-the-end-of-the-world-auid-2987?_auid=2020

We often, especially in the modern age of geopolitical uncertainty, fear the end of the world. But, Slavoj Žižek now argues, the end of the world might already be here. Žižek argues that the end of history is not one of global peace, or even global catastrophe, but an endless repetition of the same. Drawing on what he calls the 'quantum entanglement' of North and South Korea, Žižek argues the end of history is found in a tension between a mobilisation against an emblematic enemy and a relaxed indifference...

The horror, the horror. Zizek watches a lot of tv and has undoubtedly been impacted by the American tendency to make way too many seasons of a show than is justifiably warranted. I'd never accuse him of not being widely read, but I always kinda got the impression that he didn't bother much with Marcuse, Horkheimer, Adorno, et al. Or maybe he did, and his critique of the capitalist machine just takes some very different turns.

 

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'Infinite monkey theorem' challenged by Australian mathematicians
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c748kmvwyv9o

Known as the "infinite monkey theorem", the thought-experiment has long been used to explain the principles of probability and randomness. However, a new peer-reviewed study led by Sydney-based researchers Stephen Woodcock and Jay Falletta has found that the time it would take for a typing monkey to replicate Shakespeare's plays, sonnets and poems would be longer than the lifespan of our universe...

comment: Surely "infinite" entails the exclusion of finite time and a finite universe from the outset, though.

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New report: Taking AI welfare seriously
https://eleosai.org/post/taking-ai-welfare-seriously/

We argue that there is a realistic possibility of consciousness and/or robust agency—and thus moral significance—in near-future AI systems. We then make recommendations for how AI companies (and others) can start taking AI welfare seriously...

comment: Hooda thunk? Can't keep upgrading and refining what counts for human oppression forever, so time to lay the groundwork for leveraging a whole new class of victims.

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Inequality was a feminist idea before it was Rousseau's
https://aeon.co/essays/inequality-was-a-feminist-idea-before-it-was-rousseaus

Before he was famous, Jean-Jacques Rousseau was Louise Dupin’s scribe. It’s her ideas on inequality that fill his writings. [...] Rousseau’s blazing eloquence was tripping off the tongue of Jacobin orators all over France. Given the timing, it is surprising that few scholars have stopped to wonder whether Rousseau’s fledging as a philosopher – at the none-too-precocious age of 38 – had anything to do with the six years he marinated in Madame Dupin’s project, quill to linen, taking dictation, making clean drafts, and trawling through stacks upon stacks of books for passages relevant to her enquiry. As it turned out, this failure of curiosity did not just envelop a woman philosopher in a cloak of invisibility. More broadly, it obfuscated the feminist origins of fundamental political concepts – equality, rights, contract – in a framework that denied women political subjectivity...

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Theodor W. Adorno (recent substantive revision of SEP entry)
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/adorno/

Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) was one of the most important philosophers, cultural, and music critics in Germany after World War II. Although less well known among anglophone philosophers than many of his contemporaries, such as Hans-Georg Gadamer, Adorno had even greater influence on scholars and intellectuals in postwar Germany. In the 1960s he was the most prominent challenger to both Sir Karl Popper’s philosophy of science and Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of existence...
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[C C]

Given the related, staunch apathy about [contingently] far more developed brains in abortion practices, this appears to be contradictory. And consequently a ludicrous worry (in that context). A consensus view that embryonic brains in the womb are either not conscious or lack personhood status need merely apply to brain organoids. This is ignoring the most fundamental attribute of reasoning: consistency. In this case, a formal mindset globally maintaining its judgements, values, and concerns coherently across the board.
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When the brain cells in the petri dish stare back (science ethics)
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/when-the-brain-cells-in-the-petri-dish-stare-back/ar-AA1tHanz

EXCERPTS: The proto-eyes are what really disturbed me.

For the past decade, medical researchers have been growing living, miniature replicas of parts of the human brain from stem cells. Such brain “organoids,” as they’re called, have always raised ethical questions. But when I learned that some of them had spontaneously developed optic vesicles—that is, precursors to eyes—I realized that the closer these experiments get to a real brain, the closer we get to creating sentient beings.

[...] But these biological imitators of brains, like their AI counterparts, also raise the question of where consciousness begins and whether we’ll know when we have crossed that line...

Our understanding of the brain mechanisms involved in these experiments is not nearly mature enough to allow any secure answer ... Some researchers are trying to figure out how to identify signs of consciousness in neural organoids... (MORE - details)
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How the occult gave birth to science
https://nautil.us/how-the-occult-gave-birth-to-science-1041122/

EXCERPT: These fantastical beliefs were shared by the illiterate and educated elite alike—including many of the forebears of contemporary science, including chemist Robert Boyle, who gave us modern chemistry and Boyle’s law, and biologist Carl Linnaeus, who developed the taxonomic system by which scientists classify species today. Rather than stifling discovery, their now-arcane beliefs may have helped drive them and other scientists to endure hot smoky days in the bowels of alchemical laboratories or long frigid nights on the balconies of astronomical towers... (MORE - details)

Friedrich Nietzsche: "Do you believe then that the sciences would ever have arisen and become great if there had not beforehand been magicians, alchemists, astrologers, and wizards who thirsted and hungered after abscondite and forbidden powers?" --The Gay Science

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Zozobra: a key concept among Mexican intellectuals in the early 20th century
https://theconversation.com/is-the-...-mexican-philosophers-have-some-advice-242890

EXCERPTS: According to the philosopher Emilio Uranga (1921-1988), the telltale sign of zozobra is wobbling and toggling between perspectives, being unable to relax into a single framework to make sense of things. As Uranga describes it in his 1952 book “Analysis of Mexican Being”:

“Zozobra refers to a mode of being that incessantly oscillates between two possibilities, between two affects, without knowing which one of those to depend on … indiscriminately dismissing one extreme in favor of the other. In this to and fro the soul suffers, it feels torn and wounded.” (MORE - details)
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The only problem for progressive politicians is that AI can't vote for them yet. But human activists can be surrogate electors for them. Which in turn implies engineering themes of victimhood for AIs that incubate concern on campuses. And thereby possibly engendering new recruits that for whatever [strange] reason would otherwise not be attracted to the usual human and animal centered social justice.
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Is “AI welfare” the new frontier in ethics?
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/11/anthropic-hires-its-first-ai-welfare-researcher/

A few months ago, Anthropic quietly hired its first dedicated "AI welfare" researcher, Kyle Fish, to explore whether future AI models might deserve moral consideration and protection, reports AI newsletter Transformer. While sentience in AI models is an extremely controversial and contentious topic, the hire could signal a shift toward AI companies examining ethical questions about the consciousness and rights of AI systems...
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[C C]

Appearances of biologist Jerry Coyne's blog are probably more common in the Compromised Science thread. But this "campaign philosophy" one would hardly slot there.
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Sam Harris on the election
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2024...atic-politics-without-most-democrats-knowing/

EXCERPTS: Everybody has their own theory about the most important factor leading to the Democrats’ loss a week ago. [...] In the 40-minute video below, Sam Harris zeroes in on the last factor—the fulminating wokeness of Democrats.

[...] He adds that the planks of Harris’s platform were “rotten”, especially those supporting identity politics. As he says, “identity politics is over, nobody wants it.”

[...] Sam has apparently abandoned the calmness accompanying the meditation he practices, for the piece is larded with uncharacteristic profanity, including Sam’s peevish claim that if we Democrats continue this way, “You’re going to get President Candace Fucking Owens some day.” But I applaud the increasing use of profanity in such podcast, for that’s the way people actually talk.

[...] In the end, Sam concludes that “Democratic moral confusion cost the Democrats millions of votes. ... And the GOP picked up on this moral weakness, making it the subject of many pro-Trump ads ... I’ve put two extra items below... (MORE - details)
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[Magical Realist]

Transphobia is alive and well in America. You might as well have tried to win an election on the issue of gay rights in the 1950s. But I disagree that's why Harris lost. I think it was a number of things, perhaps the main being the widespread assumption that Trump is somehow better for the economy because he's a billionaire. We'll see what his tariffs do to inflation.

 

[C C]

Transphobia is alive and well in America. You might as well have tried to win an election on the issue of gay rights in the 1950s. But I disagree that's why Harris lost. I think it was a number of things, perhaps the main being the widespread assumption that Trump is somehow better for the economy because he's a billionaire. We'll see what his tariffs do to inflation.

This is an era where even the communist party might have a better chance of winning in a match with Trump or his successors. Simply because they would be atavistically focusing on the proles rather than every other marginalized victim category under the sun. Maybe Bernie could find a time machine to haul their anachronistic buttocks from the 1920s and '30s. If the Democratic Party is still showing no signs of getting a clue slash retrograding even after this.

SANDERS: "I make no apologies for fighting for the working class."

 

[parmalee]

This is an era where even the communist party might have a better chance of winning in a match with Trump or his successors. Simply because they would be atavistically focusing on the proles rather than every other marginalized victim category under the sun. Maybe Bernie could find a time machine to haul their anachronistic buttocks from the 1920s and '30s. If the Democratic Party is still showing no signs of getting a clue slash retrograding even after this.

This is just weird:

The View star and Oscar-winning icon Whoopi Goldberg is hustling for her paycheck just like the rest of America, thank you very much.

One day before her 69th birthday, the Ghost actress and View cohost said on Tuesday's live show that she identified with the struggles of the working class and that, if she were the richest person alive, she wouldn't show up to moderate the long-running ABC talk show anymore.

"I appreciate that people are having a hard time. Me, too. I work for a living," Goldberg said, breaking growing tension about Donald Trump's second-term presidency that arose during a Hot Topic about Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez asking her social media followers about their voting practices.

Whoopi Goldberg would leave 'The View' if she had more money

Whoopi Goldberg revealed that she would leave 'The View' if she had more money, says she's having 'a hard time' like many Americans: 'I work for a living.'

ew.com

 

[C C]

This is just weird:

Whoopi Goldberg would leave 'The View' if she had more money

Whoopi Goldberg revealed that she would leave 'The View' if she had more money, says she's having 'a hard time' like many Americans: 'I work for a living.'

ew.com

Still an exemplar of Hollywood sainthood, though (Hollyweirdness aside). If its celebrities aren't the clergy of the Party, then at least serving as part of the Moral Elite always there to guide the aimless Wanda masses on what to do, what to believe, and how to vote. (Or as the archaic saying goes: "When in the belly of the locals, fail not offer tribute to their pantheon." )
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Trump is really coming for the universities
https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2024/11/trump-is-really-coming-for-the-universities.html

INTRO: At least he didn't mention firing tenured faculty, but the idea that accreditation will be contingent on schools "defending" the American tradition and Western civilization is an invitation to a purge...

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Do refugees have a duty to be grateful?
https://theconversation.com/do-refugees-have-a-duty-to-be-grateful-237424

EXCERPTS: Once refugees have made these perilous journeys and are offered international protection, against all odds, some claim that they are then required to go even further: they must be grateful for it. [...] Refugees do often express gratitude to the countries that provide them with asylum. But do they actually have a duty to be grateful?

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Why anarchists paradoxically need power
https://iai.tv/articles/why-anarchists-paradoxically-need-power-auid-2999?_auid=2020

INTRO: We think of anarchy as being against centralised power at all costs. But, argues philosopher Melanie Erspamer, for anarchism to be effective in the world, it needs institutionalisation. What is more, our institutions need anarchism - its principles, its strategies and its values - in order to prevent problematic concentrations of power. Anarchy is an anti-power philosophy. But, paradoxically, anarchists must take positions of relative power, in order to counter the monopolistic forces of government and large corporations today...

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We and They
https://daily-philosophy.com/leontieva-we-and-they/

EXCERPT: Without philosophical enquiry into the concept of the “Other”, the intuitive answer to the above questions would be that we should. However, even in our pursuit to eradicate viruses, epidemiologists caution that their disappearance will affect the evolutionary potential of all life on Earth, including Homo sapiens; their disappearance will upset the biological balance within ecosystems. Similarly, recognizing the value of the “Other”, which extends beyond scientific understanding, will allow us to ensure our own survival...

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The Golden Age of Indian Buddhist Philosophy
https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/the-golden-age-of-indian-buddhist-philosophy-2/

INTRO: This book, part of the Oxford History of Philosophy series, is an account of the development of Indian Buddhist philosophy during the first millennium of the common era. It thus begins its history not with the Buddha (roughly 5th c BCE) but with the rise of distinct schools of interpretation of the Buddha’s teachings. These developments ushered in what the author calls a ‘golden age’ of philosophical system-building, one in which Buddhist thinkers developed a variety of ways of systematizing the Buddha’s core claims, constructed arguments in support of their views, and raised objections to competing views, both Buddhist and non-Buddhist...

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Cavell and the Grammar of Politics
https://blog.apaonline.org/2024/11/13/cavell-and-the-grammar-of-politics/

INTRO: Stanley Cavell’s writings on skepticism in The Claim of Reason offer a lens through which to interpret the surprising connections between language and politics. While the book is famously difficult to summarize, it operates by juxtaposing seemingly disparate areas of philosophy, which are not often considered in dialogue with one another. A notable example of this occurs in the first chapter, where, after discussing the role of criteria in Wittgenstein’s later philosophy of language, Cavell shifts to a reflection on the social contract.

In Cavell’s view, the social contract is not just an explicit agreement among citizens but consists of the shared criteria of judgments through which a society governs itself. A fundamental mystery each new generation faces is: “How can I be bound by a contract I don’t remember agreeing to?” Cavell’s answer reinterprets the agreements that form the basis of political orders, suggesting that these agreements are more about being-in-agreement with a way of life rather than consenting to a specific constitutional order...

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(paper) The Copernican Argument for Alien Consciousness; The Mimicry Argument Against Robot Consciousness (Eric Schwitzgebel and Jeremy Pober)
https://faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzAbs/AlienRobot.htm

ABSTRACT: On broadly Copernican grounds, we are entitled to default assume that apparently behaviorally sophisticated extraterrestrial entities (“aliens”) would be conscious. Otherwise, we humans would be inexplicably, implausibly lucky to have consciousness, while similarly behaviorally sophisticated entities elsewhere would be mere shells, devoid of consciousness.

However, this Copernican default assumption is canceled in the case of behaviorally sophisticated entities designed to mimic superficial features associated with consciousness in humans (“consciousness mimics”), and in particular a broad class of current, near-future, and hypothetical robots. These considerations, which we formulate, respectively, as the Copernican and Mimicry Arguments, jointly defeat an otherwise potentially attractive parity principle, according to which we should apply the same types of behavioral or cognitive tests to aliens and robots, attributing or denying consciousness similarly to the extent they perform similarly.

Instead of grounding speculations about alien and robot consciousness in metaphysical or scientific theories about the physical or functional bases of consciousness, our approach appeals directly to the epistemic principles of Copernican mediocrity and inference to the best explanation. This permits us to justify certain default assumptions about consciousness while remaining to a substantial extent neutral about specific metaphysical and scientific theories.
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[C C]

On the obsolescence of much political philosophy [After Trump winning election?]
https://digressionsimpressions.substack.com/p/on-the-obsolescence-of-much-political

EXCERPTS: I strongly suspect that much of political philosophy and political theory and not a little bit of "applied" policy-salient ethics of the last three to four score years, despite purporting to express eternal propositions that convey what we ought to do, went out of date this week.

For, such work presupposes [...] relatively impartial rule of law in which public opinion formation is shaped by social activists, interest groups, and experts in a free press and political parties and in which "policy" [...] aims to solve social "problems" (As conservative political theorists and Foucauldians have noted that "policy" aims to solve social "problems" is itself an artifact of the progressive-liberal state.)

By "out of date", I mean that people literally will stop reading and engaging with it because they cannot imagine why the arguments and distinctions that count as good work are taken to be significant [...] They will seem neither like models that illuminate foundational problems nor nearby possible worlds that we may wish to achieve.

Such obsoleteness is not just in store for work in liberal political philosophy that has always been a bit uncomfortable to address its own material foundations and existence conditions, but also a lot of writing that understands itself as quite critical of liberal ideology and purports to offer an alternative realist or critical social theory, or even a revolutionary decolonial program. For all such works [...] will seem hopelessly optimistic [...] The expectation that emancipation and recognition are the natural dynamic of (ahh) social reason will seem hallucinatory... (MORE - details)

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Teaching philosophy of science to non-philosophers (authors introduce their book)
https://imperfectcognitions.blogspot.com/2024/11/teaching-philosophy-of-science-to-non.html

EXCERPT: Our new book, Philosophy of Science (Palgrave 2024, Philosophy Today Series), is an attempt to bridge the gap between philosophy and science. We wanted to show some of the many philosophical influences on scientific theory, method, and practice, and how disciplinary differences are often motivated by conflicting philosophical assumptions. A practical consequence of this can be seen in a number of scientific controversies where the disagreement can be traced back to philosophy, rather than empirical facts...

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Hegel vs Heidegger: can we uncover reality?
https://iai.tv/articles/hegel-vs-heidegger-can-we-uncover-reality-auid-3001?_auid=2020

INTRO: For most of its history, Western philosophy tried to use pure reason to know reality. But, argues Robert Pippin, Heidegger showed that this entire philosophical tradition was doomed, due to its mistaken assumption that what it is to be a feature of reality is to be available to rational thought. This assumption, which culminated in Hegel, led philosophy to forget the meaningfulness of reality for humans, and so left us lost. Only by recognising that we encounter reality not primarily through reason, but through the ways in which it matters for us, can philosophy recover the world as something meaningful for humans...

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Feminist Philosophy of Mind (book review)
https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/feminist-philosophy-of-mind/

EXCERPT: This book, I would say, tries to bring together feminist philosophy and feminist philosophies of mind and body; the editors understand this as a conversation. Some of the essays (particularly some of the classics that are reprinted in this book) are feminist philosophy with a focus on theories of mind and body; others offer feminist answers to (or re-framings of) questions that arise in the traditional subfield of philosophy of mind...

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Hume on Religion (recent substantive revision of SEP entry)
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume-religion/

INTRO: David Hume's various writings concerning problems of religion are among the most important and influential contributions on this topic. In these writings Hume advances a systematic, sceptical critique of the philosophical foundations of various theological systems. Whatever interpretation one takes of Hume's philosophy as a whole, it is certainly true that one of his most basic philosophical objectives is to discredit the doctrines and dogmas of traditional theistic, and especially Christian, belief. There are, however, some significant points of disagreement about the exact nature and extent of Hume's irreligious intentions. One of the most important of these is whether Hume's sceptical position leads him to a view that can be properly characterized as "atheism".

The primary aims of this article are: (1) to give an account of Hume's main arguments as they touch on various particular issues relating to religion; and (2) to answer to the question concerning the general character of Hume's commitments on this subject...
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[Magical Realist]

"Defending Western Civilization" is a dog whistle for white supremacism.