Philosophy Updates

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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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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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.
 
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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...
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.
 
'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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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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