Philosophy Updates

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

Presumed referent: https://www.sciforums.com/threads/philosophy-updates.166232/post-3741115

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Penrose vs Harris vs Scott: Are there multiple selves?
https://iai.tv/articles/penrose-vs-harris-vs-scott-are-there-multiple-selves-auid-2995?_auid=2020

INTRO: We can feel and even act like different people in different situations and at different times. Is a single self enough to hold together our messy, often contradictory collection of experiences and drives? At HowTheLightGetsIn 2024 in London, Sam Harris, Roger Penrose and Sophie Scott met to debate The Divided Self, hosted by Jack Symes. The bestselling philosopher, quantum physicist and leading neuroscientist investigated whether we need to update our model of the self, and how to do it...

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Would our lives be more meaningful if the universe had a purpose?
https://blog.apaonline.org/2024/11/...ore-meaningful-if-the-universe-had-a-purpose/

EXCERPT: On Nagel and Goff’s view, as on Hegel’s, the historical emergence of these phenomena is thus part of an unfolding purpose or plan immanent in the universe—the story, as Nagel says (echoing Hegel), of “the universe gradually waking up and becoming aware of itself.”

Whatever you might think about the plausibility of this view (an issue I don’t intend to weigh in on here), it’s not hard to see why one might be drawn to it. For apart from any explanatory advantages it might offer over the Darwinian view, it seems to carry with it the alluring suggestion that our lives are more meaningful than we think...

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INTRO (Zach): My interpretation of Nietzsche’s aphorism “How the ‘Real World’ at Last Became a Myth.” In this aphorism, Nietzsche traces out the real/appearance distinction throughout the history of philosophy: from Plato to Nietzsche’s own mature philosophy...

VIDEO LINK: How the real world became fake news
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The potential miscalculation in this area is myopically focusing on the extroverted individual as a universal standard -- those who in extreme cases may deteriorate after only a few hours of being bereft of social interaction. In contrast to the "camels" who actively seek intervals of peace and personal time to themselves, to avoid going mad from the garrulous crowd.
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On the several shapes of loneliness
https://blog.apaonline.org/2024/11/14/on-the-several-shapes-of-loneliness/

EXCERPT: While loneliness has not been the focus of analytic philosophy, there has been a recent surge of interest in the topic, perhaps due to the scientific attention, or, more likely, in connection to the COVID-19 pandemic. Psychological approaches typically distinguish loneliness as perceived lack of social interaction from objective social isolation. However, philosophical analysis shows that there are further aspects to take into account. Recent work on loneliness and its connection to health highlights three ways of defining loneliness...

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BMI restrictions & reproductive justice in the “Ozempic Baby” era
https://blog.apaonline.org/2024/11/15/bmi-restrictions-reproductive-justice-in-the-ozempic-baby-era/

INTRO: In recent months, stories of so-called “Ozempic babies” have captured public attention, as individuals previously considered infertile report unexpected pregnancies after using popular weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. While the phenomenon has stirred excitement for some, it also highlights deeper ethical issues in fertility care—especially the reliance on BMI-based restrictions. For many, BMI cutoffs represent more than a medical guideline; they echo longstanding barriers in reproductive healthcare that disproportionately impact marginalized groups, including Black, Indigenous, LGBTQIA+, and disabled individuals. By framing BMI thresholds as necessary safeguards, fertility clinics risk perpetuating a pattern of exclusion that obscures the complex social factors truly influencing health, raising profound ethical questions about autonomy, justice, and equity in reproductive care...

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Can Philosophy help to articulate fair principles for low-income housing?
https://blog.apaonline.org/2024/11/...ulate-fair-principles-for-low-income-housing/

EXCERPT: But do we know what we’re talking about in this area? Despite all the confident and sometimes righteous lip service paid to low-income housing—whatever that amounts to—philosophical work on justice has not provided enough specific guidance. Several major philosophical treatises on justice published since the 1950s, from the most right-libertarian to the most egalitarian, say little about access to housing. Thankfully that has started to change during the last 15 years...
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Splitting the hard problem of consciousness in two
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/...ting-the-hard-problem-of-consciousness-in-two

KEY POINTS: The hard problem of consciousness has framed consciousness studies for a generation. This blog explains what the hard problem is and why it needs to be split into two very different problems. One problem is the scientific problem, which we call the neurocognitive engineering problem. The second problem is the philosophical problem, which we call the enlightenment gap...

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Can RFK Jr. fix our dysfunctional public health agencies?
https://reason.com/2024/11/15/can-rfk-jr-fix-our-dysfunctional-public-health-agencies/

EXCERPTS: In fact, the CDC, the FDA, and the NIH have long needed drastic reform. But is putting RFK Jr. in charge of HHS the right way to fix these dysfunctional public health agencies? His priorities may not be the drastic reforms that are actually needed...

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Do animals have the same rights as humans?
https://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/do-animals-have-the-same-rights-as-humans/

EXCERPT: Animal ethics, a division within applied ethics that deals with such disputes over animal issues, is one of today’s most hotly debated fields. It includes discussions on the moral status of animals, the use of animals for food or for experimentation, the ethics of having zoos, aquariums, xenotransplantation, and consumption of dog meat, among various other topics. Such topics are not only interesting in their own right but also invite us to reflect critically on our often-assumed position atop the animal kingdom...

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New UFO hearings continue an “endless loop” of sensation
https://bigthink.com/13-8/new-ufo-hearings-continue-an-endless-loop-of-sensation/

KEY POINTS: Two subcommittees of the House Oversight Committee recently held a joint hearing titled “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Exposing the Truth.” As with previous congressional hearings on UAPs, there were many extraordinary claims but essentially no extraordinary evidence. Astronomer Adam Frank argues that scientific inquiry into UAPs is worthwhile, but we should maintain high evidentiary standards instead of perpetuating a “circular conservation” that lacks tangible proof...
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Do animals have the same rights as humans?
https://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/do-animals-have-the-same-rights-as-humans/

EXCERPT: Animal ethics, a division within applied ethics that deals with such disputes over animal issues, is one of today’s most hotly debated fields. It includes discussions on the moral status of animals, the use of animals for food or for experimentation, the ethics of having zoos, aquariums, xenotransplantation, and consumption of dog meat, among various other topics. Such topics are not only interesting in their own right but also invite us to reflect critically on our often-assumed position atop the animal kingdom...
Why do these guys always overlook the more nuanced approaches towards animal rights/liberation, i.e. Continental, post-human, neo-Wittgensteinian, basically all of the field of Critical Animal Studies? Vicki Hearne, who probably died from smoking too much (I think? can't recall), is turning in her grave.

Also this:
As recently reported by Peter Singer in his 2023 book Animal Liberation Now, research conducted in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland found that 67 percent of ethicists and 63 percent of non-ethics philosophy professors considered it morally wrong to eat meat from mammals. This shows that even though there may be a relatively high percentage of professors who believe eating meat is wrong, there is still a significant number of ethicists or philosophy professors who do not particularly see eating meat as wrong.

Dude, we know how percentages work: 20 percent do something, then, obviously, 80 percent don't do that something. You don't need to tell us this.
 
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Research reveals even single-cell organisms exhibit habituation, a simple form of learning (philosophy of mind fodder)
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1064991

EXCERPT: Up until recently, habituation — a simple form of learning — was deemed the exclusive domain of complex organisms with brains and nervous systems, such as worms, insects, birds, and mammals.

But a new study, published Nov. 19 in Current Biology, offers compelling evidence that even tiny single-cell creatures such as ciliates and amoebae, as well as the cells in our own bodies, could exhibit habituation akin to that seen in more complex organisms with brains.

The work, led by scientists at Harvard Medical School and the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona, suggests that single cells are capable of behaviors more complex than currently appreciated.

“This finding opens up an exciting new mystery for us: How do cells without brains manage something so complex?” (MORE - details, no ads)
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Spinoza’s Psychological Theory (SEP entry, recent substantive revision)
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spinoza-psychological/

Ancient Theories of Freedom and Determinism (SEP entry, recent substantive revision)
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freedom-ancient/

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Does space need environmentalists?
https://www.noemamag.com/does-space-need-environmentalists/

But amid such promising developments are worries among some scientists and environmentalists who fear humans will repeat the errors that resource extraction has wrought on Earth. [...] If we have mining in space, do we need a preemptive anti-mining campaign to protect our solar system from rampant exploitation before it is too late?

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Mathematical thinking isn’t what you think it is
https://www.quantamagazine.org/mathematical-thinking-isnt-what-you-think-it-is-20241118/

The mathematician David Bessis claims that everyone is capable of, and can benefit greatly from, mathematical thinking. David Bessis was drawn to mathematics for the same reason that many people are driven away: He didn’t understand how it worked. [...] Through it all, he never stopped questioning what it actually means to do math. Bessis wasn’t content to simply solve problems. He wanted to further interrogate — and help other people understand — how mathematicians think about and practice their craft...

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Beyond law: When states use ethics to excuse war crimes
https://www.justsecurity.org/104969/states-ethics-excuse-war-crimes/

Despite differences between these cases, the ethical narrative used by liberal states to justify war crimes remains remarkably consistent, and dates back centuries. [...] It is no wonder, then, that by depicting war crimes as both necessary and honorably motivated, this “dirty hands and barbaric enemy” narrative is appealing to states, including Israel, seeking to justify or excuse war crimes. As the past reveals, it has been very effective in enabling states to create almost complete impunity for atrocities...

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The false religion of transhumanism
https://iai.tv/articles/the-false-religion-of-transhumanism-auid-3006?_auid=2020

INTRO: The transhumanists of Silicon Valley aim to become more than human – to copy life, edit humanity, and delete death. But Àlex Gómez-Marín argues that transhumanism is a false religion masquerading as a technological program. God is long dead, but Silicon Valley is building a digital one. And this new God, contends Gomez-Marin, is a death-cult, promoting a self-immolating future for our species, for the supposed benefit of a post-human race that shall be better equipped, happier, and live forever here on planet earth and soon depart beyond the stars...

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Why you should get to know Thomas Aquinas, even 800 years after he lived
https://theconversation.com/why-you...-aquinas-even-800-years-after-he-lived-239976

Aquinas is a giant of Western philosophy and theology, and for good reason. His writing is clear, well organized, free from bombast – ideas shine through his words. Famously, he insisted that faith and reason are in harmonious partnership, integrating the known science, philosophy and theology of his day into a comprehensive, interconnected system. All this helps explain why his work has maintained an enduring appeal, even as equally brilliant medieval thinkers have sunk into oblivion. But Aquinas’ devotees have often used his ideas as blunt instruments, wielding the weight of his words against their own foes – giving him a reputation as a Catholic battle-ax...

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Shannon Vallor says AI does present an existential risk — but not the one you think
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/...ethics-technology-edinburgh-future-perfect-50

EXCERPTS: In her new book The AI Mirror, Vallor argues that it’s our tendency to misperceive AI as a mind — and to think it may even have the capacity to be more moral than us because it’s more “objective” and “rational” — that poses a real existential risk to humanity, not anything the AI itself might do.

[...According to Vallor...] That rhetorical strategy is actually what scares me. It’s not the machines themselves. It’s the rhetoric of AI today that is about gaslighting humans into surrendering their own power and their own confidence in their agency and freedom. That’s the existential threat, because that’s what will enable humans to feel like we can just take our hands off the wheel and let AI drive...

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Jordan Peterson’s prophecies: The Canadian thinker’s self-made deity is a symptom of the modern Western malady
https://www.newstatesman.com/cultur...son-prophecies-we-who-wrestle-with-god-review

EXCERPTS: At the end of We Who Wrestle with God, Jordan Peterson tells the reader that the book is a “response to the brilliant Nietzsche”.

For the  Canadian psychologist and leading prophet of the counter-cultural right [...] the malady of the West is the collapse of meaning that befalls human beings when their values are unmoored from any transcendental order – the condition Nietzsche diagnosed as nihilism...

[...] “The Bible is the library of stories on which the most productive, freest and most stable and peaceful societies the world has ever known are predicated – the foundation of the West, plain and simple.”

Reduced to a collection of inspiring legends, however, Christianity cannot exorcise the spectre of nihilism. Thinking of the Christian religion as a bulwark to shore up a particular civilisation leaves it less than a universal truth and risks the cultural relativism that Peterson condemns in woke thinkers...
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AI's scientific path to trust
https://www.axios.com/2024/11/24/artificial-intelligence-science-google-deepmind-trust

INTRO (excerpts): Top researchers this week said scientific discoveries using AI, like new drugs or better disaster forecasting, offer a way to win people's trust in the technology, but they also cautioned against moving too fast. [...] Public trust in AI is eroding, putting the technology's wide adoption and potential benefits at risk. [...] the painstaking, thorough work of science can be at odds with the "move fast break things" ethos of the tech industry that is driving AI's development. Scientists in the U.S. also face a tide of skepticism about their work...

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Silicon Valley’s tech elite want to make superbabies. They shouldn’t
https://sfstandard.com/opinion/2024...elite-want-to-make-superbabies-they-shouldnt/

INTRO (excerpts): . . . The family is part of the next boom to hit Silicon Valley: fertility tech for producing “superbabies.” High-profile tech entrepreneurs like Open AI CEO Sam Altman, 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki, and billionaire entrepreneur Peter Thiel are backing startups with names such as Orchid Health, Gattaca Genomics, and Genomic Prediction.

These companies promise to tell prospective parents how to “mitigate more risks” and capitalize on “life’s potential.” They offer to screen embryos for multigene conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, and depression...

[...] Clinically, PGT-P has limited accuracy and utility. And concerns abound about entrepreneurs peddling snake oil, or of supporters embracing eugenics. But another drawback underlies PGT-P: the folly of parents who try to achieve total control over their children...

Silicon Valley is full of quirky and eccentric people. The ranks of tech innovators include a high number of neurodivergent people. Diversity in thought and behavior has been a net gain for technological progress. Selecting for superbabies sends a signal against such diversity.

But proponents of PGT-P aren’t as in control as they may believe when they try to pick some traits while rejecting others...
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Many worlds, many selves
https://aeon.co/essays/why-identity-morality-and-faith-splinter-in-the-multiverse

EXCERPTS: As a philosopher of religion, I am interested in how [...] if it’s true that we live in a vast multiverse, then our understanding of identity, morality and even God must be reexamined. [...] This all might sound very abstract and hypothetical, but if the Many-Worlds interpretation is correct, then Parfit’s idea of fission was part of reality long before philosophers existed to contemplate it.

As the physicist Sean Carroll put it in his book Something Deeply Hidden (2019): ‘the life-span of a person should be thought of as a branching tree, with multiple individuals at any one time, rather than as a single trajectory – much like a splitting amoeba.’ What are we to make of the idea that the human person ought to be thought of like a phylogenetic tree, a set of descendants branching off from each other forever but sharing a common ancestor? The philosophical implications for our understanding of personal identity are mind-boggling... (MORE - details)
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This is a crossover issue posted in both the "Compromised Science" thread and the "Philosophy Updates" thread.
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The dangerous myth of value-free science (part 1)
https://iai.tv/articles/the-dangerous-myth-of-value-free-science-auid-3011?_auid=2020

INTRO: Scientists working for the World Health Organization recently found no evidence for links between cellphone radiation and brain cancer. But other scientists argue that there is good evidence linking cellphone use with increased tumor risk. Disagreement runs deep throughout science, so how can we trust its results? Some claim that to be trustworthy, science should strive to be unpolluted by ethical and political values. This is a mistake, argues Kevin C. Elliott. Aiming for the ideal of value-free science makes scientists less, not more trustworthy. It sweeps under the carpet the values that are unavoidably part of interpreting evidence and choosing between different scientific models. Instead, these values should be brought into the open, so that they can be subjected to much-needed scrutiny...

This is Part 1 of a 2-part series. Part 2 is available here (also below).

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Bias in science can and must be exposed (part 2)
https://iai.tv/articles/bias-in-science-can-and-must-be-exposed-auid-3012?_auid=2020

INTRO: When science tries to free its methods from the influence of political and ethical values, it pursues a dangerous fantasy. Or so claimed Kevin C. Elliott in yesterday’s IAI article. Today, Jacob Stegenga argues that, on the contrary, scientists should always strive to keep their research free of all values. While many areas of science, from medical research to cosmology, are full of uncertainty and controversy, scientists can use the scientific method to gradually strip away their prejudices, and thereby uncover the best models and interpretations of evidence. Far from actively deploying their values in their research, as Elliott advocates, scientists should do all they can to keep their politics and ethics out of their research...

This is part 2 of a 2-part series. Read part 1 here (also above).
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What ancient Greek and Roman philosophers thought about vegetarianism
https://theconversation.com/what-an...ilosophers-thought-about-vegetarianism-242968

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The government has withdrawn its misinformation bill. A philosopher explains why regulating speech is an ethical minefield
https://theconversation.com/the-gov...ulating-speech-is-an-ethical-minefield-244174

INTRO: Misinformation and disinformation are major concerns worldwide. The federal government’s misinformation bill aimed to respond to the threats posed by false, misleading and harmful information. The bill met strong opposition in the senate and has just been withdrawn.

Legal efforts to suppress misinformation are ongoing. Around the world, many countries are considering legislation to suppress specific types of misinformation or require online platforms to suppress it.

Such laws are always controversial. They encounter some well-known practical and ethical problems – and some surprising ones... (MORE - details)

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Large language models (LLMs) are often poor philosophers. But these shortcomings make them more useful for teaching, not less.
https://blog.apaonline.org/2024/11/...-make-them-more-useful-for-teaching-not-less/

INTRO: There are a few reasons why a philosophy instructor might hesitate to use assignments with AI. One worry is that AI will just encourage students to cheat or otherwise turn their brains off.

Another worry (and source of contempt!) is that current LLMs are just bad philosophers. They make basic logical errors. They traffic in caricatures. They fail to maintain a consistent position. They repeat themselves. They have trouble focusing on one issue. They stumble when you push the discussion past the surface. They hallucinate. Worst of all, they are bullshitters: machines that sound smart without any regard for the truth.

These complaints are sometimes overblown. With practice, you can design assignments that mitigate the above problems. And even if you think that—at their core—LLMs are mere bullshitters, the fact remains that they often do not act like mere bullshitters.

Still, I agree that current LLMs are not especially impressive philosophers. Is this a reason for not using assignments with AI? It depends on the form those assignments take... (MORE - details)

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Asexuality and Epicureanism
https://blog.apaonline.org/2024/11/26/asexuality-and-epicureanism/

INTRO: What makes sex desirable? Aren’t there lots of risks and downsides? Unless you’re trying to reproduce, why have sex at all?

Maybe you’ve considered these questions, or maybe they seem silly to you. Perhaps they seem silly because your social norms and your experience are shaped by sexual attraction, i.e., a particular desire to have sex with a certain other person. If sexual attraction justifies having sex, then the questions above either don’t arise or they’re rather weak.

But people like me who are asexual or ace (the A in LGBTQIA) don’t experience sexual attraction in this sense. Some ace folks have sex and some don’t, but what’s common to ace folks’ sexual decision-making is that it doesn’t rely on sexual attraction.

As Angela Chen discusses in her book Ace, ace folks’ experiences raise an important question for everyone: what role should sexual attraction play in sexual decision-making? Chen suggests that those who do experience sexual attraction should be wary of relying on it much in their decision-making.

If that’s right, then ace perspectives can point the way toward a more fulfilling sexual landscape for everyone, because ace folks who do pursue sex are already making sexual decisions not based on sexual attraction. There are all kinds of reasons for and against sex besides sexual attraction, and ace perspectives provide models for relying on these other reasons... (MORE - details)
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Civic Solitude: Why Demoncracy Needs Distance (book & audio interview of author)
https://newbooksnetwork.com/civic-solitude

EXCERPT: Drawing on extensive research about polarization and partisanship, Talisse argues that certain core democratic capacities can be cultivated only at a distance from the political fray. If we are to meet the responsibilities of democratic citizenship, we must occasionally step away from our allies and opponents alike. We can perform this self-work only in secluded settings where we can engage in civic reflection that is not prepackaged in the idiom of our political divides, allowing us to contemplate political circumstances that are not our own... (MORE - details)

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How cancel culture panics ate the world
https://newrepublic.com/article/188316/cancel-culture-panics-ate-world

EXCERPT: The gambit of Stanford literature professor Adrian Daub’s clarifying new book, The Cancel Culture Panic: How an American Obsession Went Global, is the contention that, in fact, we don’t really know what “cancel culture” is. Moreover, the very fact that we think we do sustains it.

Like every moral panic, cancel culture skirmishes thrive on contradictory impulses: incuriosity regarding accuracy coupled with intense, even prurient interest in perceived violations of norms; presumptive familiarity cut with historical amnesia. Before we have even read the latest cancel culture narrative, we already know the roles, the sides, and where we stand. Yet still we find ourselves consuming each one as the baleful harbinger of something new, strange, and profoundly threatening to the integrity of the polity. What is cancel culture? Daub offers a working definition with three main elements... (MORE - details)

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What is decolonisation?
https://aeon.co/essays/what-is-behind-the-explosion-in-talk-about-decolonisation

INTRO: Decolonisation talk is everywhere. Scholars write books about decolonising elite universities. The government of India, a country that has been independent for 77 years, built a new parliament building in order to ‘remove all traces of the colonial era’. There are infographics on how to decolonise introductory psychology courses and guides on how businesses may decolonise their work places. Some Christians from regions that used to be colonies look to decolonise mission work through Biblical readings of Christ’s suffering. Why have expressions of decolonisation become so popular? And is there coherence to these many disparate uses of the term?

All these varied and even contradictory forms of decolonisation talk seek to draw upon the moral authority, impact and popular legitimacy of the 20th century’s great anticolonial liberation movements. And it is the gap between these movements’ promise of liberation and the actuality of continued power inequalities even after independence that has given the analytical and political space for such a wide, eclectic and contrasting array of individuals, groups and projects to wield the concept of ‘decolonisation’ to generate support for their endeavours. In the process, decolonisation talk has become more and more attenuated from the historical events of decolonisation... (MORE - details)

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History’s Specter: The impossible story of communism
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/sean-mcmeekin-history-communism/

INTRO (excerpts): The story of communism is one of the greatest tragedies in modern history. The movement grew, above all, out of horror at the terrible human toll of early capitalism. [...] In the decades after The Communist Manifesto appeared, a plethora of organizations -- from electoral parties to workingmen’s leagues to secret societies and terrorist groups -- took shape, committed to making the theory a reality. Modern socialist as well as communist movements trace their descent from them...

[...] But the actual communist regimes that came into being in the 20th century violated the theory, silenced the debates, betrayed the hope, and never achieved the goals. Industrial workers did not seize power in the advanced capitalist states. Instead, in the most important cases, groups of ruthless militants seized power in heavily agrarian states driven to collapse by world war -- above all, Russia in 1917 and China in 1949. Then, facing opposition from without and division from within, they resorted to dictatorship, terror, and ultimately mass murder to impose their vision of the future by force.

Yet the hope did not immediately expire, and around the globe millions continued to rally to the communist cause and believe in its promise, even as millions of others suffered and perished at the hands of communists. But eventually, little was left of the communist states but cumbersome, repressive bureaucracies that could neither compete with capitalist economies nor keep the allegiance of their own populations. In the end, they either collapsed under their own weight (as in Europe) or made unholy bargains with capitalism so that their leaders could remain in charge (as in Asia).

Today, 107 years after the first great communist revolution, the country in which it took place has become a corrupt, aggressive, quasi-fascist dictatorship. Other remnants of communist power include the strange, pharaonic totalitarianism of North Korea, the repressive state capitalism of China and Vietnam, and a desperate Cuba bending under the weight of its own corrupt elite and the long, cruel US embargo. No one who still hopes to counteract the enormous damage that unfettered capitalism continues to wreak upon the world can afford to overlook or explain away this somber and dispiriting record... (MORE - details)
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Imperfect Parfit
https://philosophersmag.com/imperfect-parfit/

EXCERPTS: Even in academic philosophy, however, individual eccentricity sometimes becomes too overwhelming to escape remark. In the case of Derek Parfit, one of the first things either a critic or admirer will acknowledge is just how odd a man he was. That his admirers apparently feel little misgiving in making this admission might be because, by the time he died in 2017, Parfit had safely established himself as among the most influential moral philosophers of his generation. [...] Parfit’s influence indeed extends outside of academia: Reasons and Persons is a revered text in the effective altruist movement.

He was also notoriously perfectionistic, obsessive, and a philosophical autodidact. Never satisfied for long with his own work, following Reasons and Persons, Parfit became increasingly preoccupied by more general questions concerning the nature of moral truth... [...] David Edmonds’s new biography, Parfit: A Philosopher and His Mission to Save Morality, is written on the assumption that its subject met with success in the mission alluded to in the subtitle – or, at any rate, that there was nothing fundamentally misguided about the way Parfit pursued its success...

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Nietzsche’s Eternal Return in America
https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2024/11/nietzsches-eternal-return-in-america/

EXCERPTS: If Nietzsche had stayed sane enough to know of his burgeoning fan base across the pond, he may have delighted in this cultural exchange. After all, before Nietzsche’s work came to America, America came to him, in the form of the Transcendentalist philosophy of Ralph Waldo Emerson. As a teen, Nietzsche had discovered Emerson’s works and read them as thoroughly as Ahmari read Nietzsche. Nietzsche and Emerson had similar life trajectories...

[...] Many early American interpreters of Nietzsche immediately saw similarities between Nietzsche’s ideas and American pragmatism. The pragmatic American mind allowed for Nietzsche’s work to be utilized in whatever way the readers saw fit, and sure enough, American thinkers produced a dizzying array of interpretations...

[...] Nietzsche also achieved a unique resonance in America because he was known for being a critic of Christianity in a country that has retained Christian belief for much longer than other Western countries...

[...] The Nietzschean post-structuralists became popular in the academy at around the same time that many American Protestants were losing their faith in God, and Nietzsche’s attacks on Christianity provided the perfect philosophy for a secularizing generation. Nietzsche’s brief aphorism written in a private notebook, “There are no facts, only interpretations,” became the cornerstone on which they built their critical theory. Christianity was hegemonic for much of Western society, but there are other grand narratives, so the argument goes, that are just as valid, and because truth is relative, one cannot just accept Christian truth as objective truth. Postmodern was the term used to describe this loss of grand narratives... (MORE - details)

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"Ignorance and Bliss: On Wanting Not to Know", by Mark Lilla – the enduring power of stupidity (book review)
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2...-lilla-review-the-enduring-power-of-stupidity

INTRO: This is at once a wise and wonderfully enjoyable book. Mark Lilla treats weighty matters with a light touch, in an elegant prose style that crackles with dry wit. Almost every one of the short sections into which the narrative is divided – and there is a narrative, cunningly sustained within what seems a relaxed discursiveness – takes careful aim and at the end hits the bullseye with a sure and satisfying aphoristic thwock.

The central premise of the book is simply stated: “How is it that we are creatures who want to know and not to know?” Lilla, professor of humanities at Columbia University, New York, and the author of a handful of masterly studies of the terrain where political and intellectual sensibilities collide, is an acute observer of the vagaries of human behaviour and thought in general, and of our tendency to self-delusion in particular... (MORE - details)

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Awkwardness can hit in any social situation – here are a philosopher’s 5 strategies to navigate it with grace
https://theconversation.com/awkward...5-strategies-to-navigate-it-with-grace-244107

EXCERPT: As a philosopher who studies moral psychology, I’m interested in awkwardness because I wanted to understand the ways social discomfort stops people from engaging with difficult topics and challenging conversations. Awkwardness seems to inhibit people, even when their moral values suggest they should speak up. But it has a positive role to play, too – it can alert people to areas where their social norms are lacking or outdated.

People often blame themselves when things take a turn toward the awkward. But awkwardness is really a collective failure – people aren’t awkward, situations are. And they become awkward because you don’t have the resources to navigate your way through tricky social situations... (MORE - details)
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Philosophy of mind is very different now
https://xphi.net/2024/12/02/philosophy-of-mind-is-very-different-now/

INTRO: A few decades ago, it felt like almost the entire field of philosophy of mind was focused on a pretty narrow range of questions (the mind-body problem, consciousness, the nature of intentionality, etc.). Insofar as anyone wanted to work on anything else, they often justified those interests by trying to explain how what they are doing could be connected back to this “core” of the field.

Clearly, things have changed a lot. These days, people are working on all sorts of different things that don’t connect back in any obvious way to the short list of topics that so dominated the field a few decades ago... (MORE - details)

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Looking back at the Future of Humanity Institute: It's rise and fall
https://asteriskmag.com/issues/08/looking-back-at-the-future-of-humanity-institute

EXCERPTS: On April 16, 2024 ... after 19 years ... died one of the quirkiest and most ambitious academic institutes in the world. Future of Humanity Institute’s mission had been to study humanity’s big-picture questions: our direst perils, our range of potential destinies, our unknown unknowns. Its researchers were among the first to usher concepts such as superintelligent AI into academic journals and bestseller lists alike, and to speak about them before such groups as the United Nations.

To its many fans, the closure of FHI was startling. This group of polymaths and eccentrics, led by the visionary philosopher Nick Bostrom, had seeded entire fields of study, alerted the world to grave dangers, and made academia’s boldest attempts to see into the far future. But not everyone agreed with its prognostications. And, among insiders, the institute was regarded as needlessly difficult to deal with — perhaps to its own ruin. In fact, the one thing FHI had not foreseen, its detractors quipped, was its own demise... (MORE - details)
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The Pecking Order: Social Hierarchy as a Philosophical Problem (book review)
https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/the-pecking-order-social-hierarchy-as-a-philosophical-problem/

EXCERPTS: For all the work on social equality in the last quarter-century, however, it remains difficult to specify what meaningful social equality (or inequality) is. Moreover, because so much writing about social equality is framed as part of a dispute among egalitarians, who take the value of equality for granted, it remains difficult to specify why social equality (or inequality) matters.

Niko Kolodny’s The Pecking Order makes substantial advances on both fronts. We have, says Kolodny, claims against inferiority—that is, against being subordinate to others in a social hierarchy constituted by asymmetries in power, authority, or regard. Once we understand these claims, he argues, we will see that we already do recognize that inferiority matters...

[...] This book is essential reading for anyone concerned with the ancient question of whether equality should be a social ideal. ... Kolodny’s strategy involves showing that many “commonplace claims” about political morality cannot be vindicated without relying on claims against inferiority... (MORE - details)

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(paper) Signs of consciousness in AI: Can GPT-3 tell how smart it really is?
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-024-04154-3

ABSTRACT: The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming how humans live and interact, raising both excitement and concerns—particularly about the potential for AI consciousness. For example, Google engineer Blake Lemoine suggested that the AI chatbot LaMDA might become sentient. At that time, GPT-3 was one of the most powerful publicly available language models, capable of simulating human reasoning to a certain extent.

The notion of GPT-3 having some degree of consciousness could be linked to its ability to produce human-like responses, hinting at a basic level of understanding. To explore this further, we administered both objective and self-assessment tests of cognitive (CI) and emotional intelligence (EI) to GPT-3. Results showed that GPT-3 outperformed average humans on CI tests requiring the use and demonstration of acquired knowledge.

However, its logical reasoning and EI capacities matched those of an average human. GPT-3’s self-assessments of CI and EI didn’t always align with its objective performance, with variations comparable to different human subsamples (e.g., high performers, males). A further discussion considered whether these results signal emerging subjectivity and self-awareness in AI. Future research should examine various language models to identify emergent properties of AI.

The goal is not to discover machine consciousness itself, but to identify signs of its development, occurring independently of training and fine-tuning processes. If AI is to be further developed and widely deployed in human interactions, creating empathic AI that mimics human behavior is essential. The rapid advancement toward superintelligence requires continuous monitoring of AI’s human-like capabilities, particularly in general-purpose models, to ensure safety and alignment with human values. (MORE - details)
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Animal Social Cognition (new SEP entry)
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/animal-social-cognition/

INTRO: Nonhuman animals have long been seen as a crucial source of evidence regarding the nature and origins of human social capacities, such as communication, deception, culture, technology, politics, and morality. Humans distinctively excel at these forms of sociality, which led theorists in many disciplines to hypothesize that humans possess unique adaptations facilitating advanced social cognition. Many of these social activities presume an ability to attribute mental states such as perceptions, beliefs, and desires to other social agents, which might suggest that humans uniquely evolved a “theory of mind” that enables these attributions.

At the same time, theorists have long appreciated that many animals also have complex social lives and social abilities, and that humans and some current animals evolved from a common ancestor which likely possessed precursors to our cognitive abilities. This appreciation led to decades of intense research into whether any animals also have a theory of mind—a question which quickly proved difficult to answer, for a variety of scientific and philosophical reasons reviewed below. Many important philosophical positions also have a stake in the outcome of this research... (MORE - details)

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Fish Have a Brain Microbiome. Could Humans Have One Too?
https://www.quantamagazine.org/fish-have-a-brain-microbiome-could-humans-have-one-too-20241202/

EXCERPT: Recently, a study published in "Science Advances" provided the strongest evidence yet that a brain microbiome can and does exist in healthy vertebrates — fish, specifically. Researchers at the University of New Mexico discovered communities of bacteria thriving in salmon and trout brains. Many of the microbial species have special adaptations that allow them to survive in brain tissue, as well as techniques to cross the protective blood-brain barrier.

[...] The human gut microbiome plays a critical role in the body, communicating with the brain and maintaining the immune system through the gut-brain axis. So it isn’t totally far-fetched to suggest that microbes could play an even larger role in our neurobiology. ... Even in small numbers, Link said, resident microbes could influence our brain metabolism and immune systems. If they are truly present, this would suggest an extra layer of neurological regulation that we didn’t know existed. We already know that microbes influence our neurobiology: Right now, microbes in your gut are modulating your brain activity through the gut-brain axis by producing metabolites that are sensed by enteric neurons winding through your digestive system... (MORE - details)

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Why Values are Always Apt for Technological Disruption
https://philosophicaldisquisitions.blogspot.com/2024/11/why-values-are-always-apt-for.html

INTRO: A common claim in the philosophy of technology is that technologies can alter social values. That is to say, technologies can change both how we perceive and understand values, and the way in which we prioritise and pursue them.

A classic example is the value of privacy. Some argue that the prevalence of surveillance technology, combined with the allure of convenient digital services, has rendered this value close-to-obsolete. When push comes to shove, most people seem willing to trade privacy for digital convenience. Contrariwise, there are those that think that the technological pressure placed on the value of privacy means that it is more precious than ever and that we must do everything we can to preserve it.

But how exactly does technology alter values? It must have something to do with the way technology mediates our relationship with the world around us. In this article, I want to briefly outline some of my own thinking on this topic... (MORE - details)
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Ethnic studies boosts critical thinking, equity awareness in high school students
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1067255

High school students enrolled in ethnic studies develop the ability to think analytically about the causes of social inequalities, a University of Michigan study suggests...

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Why you shouldn’t lie to your children about Father Christmas [or Santa Claus], according to philosophers
https://theconversation.com/why-you...er-christmas-according-to-philosophers-245070

In a recent publication, I reviewed philosophers’ views on the ethics of deception and applied them to parental lies. Three themes recurred...

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Scholastic Humor Database
https://docs.google.com/document/d/...teM/edit?pli=1&tab=t.0#heading=h.3zjdvf52fp3b

EXCERPT: In 2022, I published a paper on this (“Scholastic Humor”), and since then colleagues have brought further examples to my attention. (Thanks, everyone!). With the present document, I aim to do three things: (1) catalog and present these jokes in Latin and facing English translation, (2) give credit where it’s due, and (3) expand the collection, by encouraging readers of Scholastic philosophy to submit jokes they come across in their readings. This document is open-access, and will be updated on a rolling basis. It is very much a work in progress... (MORE - details)
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A realist about reasons: A conversation with Tim Scanlon
https://brownpoliticalreview.org/2024/12/a-realist-about-reasons/

INTRO: A world-renowned moral and political philosopher, T. M. Scanlon spent over 35 years at Harvard (and before that, 18 years at Princeton) as a scholar, teacher, and writer dedicated to addressing some of the most elemental questions of morality, justice, and rights.

In fact, one of his books, What We Owe to Each Other, became the basis of moral contractualism, a theory that has shaped contemporary thinking on everything from public health, to economic equality, to how we think about the fundamental social and political contracts that sustain our democracy. It also framed a four-season hit show on NBC called The Good Place, in which characters actively deploy the philosophy to redesign the afterlife.... (MORE - details)

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Nietzsche, Whitehead, and psychedelic philosophy: catalysts for existential joy
https://iai.tv/articles/psychedelics-can-be-catalysts-for-existential-joy-auid-3017?_auid=2020

EXCERPTS: We know psychedelics are being increasingly used to treat mental health conditions. But not enough is made of their positive benefits for healthy people. Sam Woolfe here argues that psychedelics are catalysts for existential joy i.e., the joy of simply being alive.

[...] This essay will first describe what existential joy is and then elucidate how psychedelics can catalyse or manifest the various aspects of this particular kind of joy. I will draw on the ideas of Irvin Yalom, Martin Buber, and Friedrich Nietzsche with this aim in mind, and then present a concept that I call the will to novelty: the fundamental drive that humans have for the new and the different, which ties into psychedelic states. I will also connect this drive to psychological research and the metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead, which can be called a philosophy of creativity: the view that the creation of novelty is the essential characteristic of the universe... (MORE - details)
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Have we achieved general AI?
https://theness.com/neurologicablog/have-we-achieved-general-ai/

As I predicted the controversy over whether or not we have achieved general AI will likely exist for a long time before there is a consensus that we have. The latest round of this controversy comes from Vahid Kazemi from OpenAI...

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Scientists are no longer sure the universe began with a bang
https://aeon.co/essays/scientists-are-no-longer-sure-the-universe-began-with-a-bang

EXCERPTS: . . . The 20th century changed everything. Lemaître’s hypothesis, initially met with scepticism, suggested that the Universe had a fiery origin – one that might be discoverable. Today, many of us still believe this story. [...] The question of our Universe’s birth seems settled. And yet, despite how the Big Bang is portrayed in popular culture, many physicists and philosophers of physics have long doubted whether science can truly tell us that time began. In recent decades, powerful results developed by scientifically minded philosophers appear to show that science may never show us that time began. The beginning of time, once imagined as igniting in a sudden burst of fireworks, is no longer an indisputable scientific fact... (MORE - details)

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Has the universe been designed to support life? Now we have a way to test it!
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1066752

In short:

“We exist, therefore the universe is made to host us”: the anthropic principle has sparked intense debate in cosmology since its first formulation. A new paper published in JCAP proposes a way to test it. To falsify it, all three of the following conditions must be confirmed by observations:

• Cosmic inflation occurred

• Axions exist

• Dark matter is not made of axions

If all these conditions are proven true, the anthropic principle would lose its validity, and our universe would appear highly improbable... (MORE - details)

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Abudamce movement: "Abundance is an emerging political ideology and identity. Fundamentally we believe we can increase the availability of housing, transportation, clean energy, quality education, and many other things in society—this should make it easier for regular people to build good lives for themselves and their children."

Progressives Against Abundance?
https://www.breakthroughjournal.org/p/progressives-against-abundance

EXCERPTS: Last month, the Roosevelt Institute’s Rhiana Gunn-Wright asked, rhetorically, “what base does the abundance movement represent?” Many of us within the movement responded [...] After my own reply to this effect, Gunn-Wright blocked me.

Gary Winslett called this rhetorical incuriosity a “blind spot” for progressives. I would go further. By making this accusation and then ignoring the answers, Gunn-Wright and her abundance-skeptical compatriots are engaging in something more like projection than ignorance. Their ostensible critique is that abundance lacks a genuine constituency, providing window dressing for powerful vested interests.

But that’s precisely the gist of an increasingly widespread critique of “The Groups,” the network of progressive advocacy outfits which are, arguably, laundering elite ideological projects through the rhetoric of social justice (or criminal justice, or climate justice, or whatever). The Groups are, after all, mostly just the beneficiaries of large progressive philanthropies, not representative or broad membership-based organizations... (MORE - details)
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