Philosophy Updates

C C said:
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)
Click to expand...
? Says this was just published a week ago, but I'm certain I've read it before. Maybe just an overhaul.

Anyway, for someone who largely ignores Euro-sources the author provides a surprisingly decent overview of the problems inherent in making any pronouncements re: non-human animals and theory of mind--from both a scientific and a philosophical perspective. In addition to detailing some of the facets I'm always harping about--the so-called "logical problem", misuse of principles of parsimony, and the like--as well as what I consider perhaps the most problematic aspect: representation. IMHO the neurotypical mind struggles to conceive without representation, and that's especially problematic when assessing the minds of being who generally conceive without (necessarily) representing.

Ages ago, one of my former projects which worked just fine as a duo decided "we" needed a third. Maybe we were just being lazy, or maybe she and I, both being very small, figured we needed some muscle to do some of the heavy lifting. I dunno. So we played with this one guy a couple of times, before he told us that he didn't "get" whatever "it" was that we were "trying to do". We weren't trying to anything, we were just playing and seeing where it went--a strategy, I might add, that worked rather well over our relatively short but moderately successful career.

Of course, there's nothing inherently wrong with trying to do something in a certain manner, say, genre-wise or whatever, but it's hardly the only way of doing things. It's the compulsion to limit or center that I find problematic. Jacques said:

But all these destructive discourses and all their analogues are trapped in a sort of circle. ... There are many ways of being caught in this circle. They are all more or less naïve, more or less empirical, more or less systematic, more or less close to the formulation or even to the formalization of this circle. It is these differences which explain the multiplicity of destructive discourses and the disagreement between those who make them.
Click to expand...
"Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences", Jaques Derrida

They/we are always trying to find that center, that focal point from which (apparently) everything emerges. The arborescent replaces or erases the rhizomatic.

But it just don't work that way. It can, but when it does, it is almost necessarily forced. I think neurotypical minds get closest to this when, ironically, working with domesticated animals--like tracking dogs, for instance. And there's gotta be some humility there, as well, which is tremendously difficult for humans generally. There has to be that moment wherein you truly acknowledge that you haven't got a fucking clue as to what's going on, but you appreciate the brilliance, or the genius, behind it all the same. They (the non-humans on this example) are accommodating you, not the other way round.


Edit: To be clear, with respect to non-human animals and ToM, I "err" on the side of generosity--and practical, lived reality. We all act (and believe) on faith, with staggering regularity--at least, with respect to everything else. As to why that's so problematic forso many people on this one particular matter? Christianity, humanism, take your pick. As Koko asked his former human friend, in Bill Burr's fevered imaginings, "Why you gotta shoot me?" (In sign language, of course.) She responded, "cuz Jesus said we're better than you."
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: C C
Researchers took the key weakness of renewable energy and made it a superpower
https://www.anthropocenemagazine.or...of-renewable-energy-and-made-it-a-superpower/

Skeptics of renewable energy development often point out that the wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine. True enough, but when the sun isn’t shining in one place, the wind is often blowing there, or somewhere else that’s not too far away. These patterns open up the possibility of complementarity: using different renewable energy sources to balance each other out across time and space...

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

6 philosophers on the contradictions of Christmas
https://iai.tv/articles/6-philosophers-on-the-contradictions-of-christmas-auid-3023?_auid=2020

INTRO: Christmas is a time of joy and festivity, yet it is also a season ripe with contradictions. It is a time for gift giving, but also a time for consuming. It’s a celebration of tradition and togetherness, while also being a holiday that reflects societal pressures and conformity. We look to 6 philosophers – Nietzsche, Marx, Arendt, Weil, Russell and Epicurus – to see whether we can find a path between joy and overindulgence this Christmas. Together, these thinkers challenge us to rethink how we approach the holiday period, and ultimately make the most of it... (MORE - details)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

All the little data
https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/in-need-of-repair/articles/all-the-little-data

EXCERPTS: We talk a lot these days about Big Data, those heaping stores of digitized information that, fueling search and recommendation engines, social media feeds, and, now, artificial intelligence models, govern so much of our lives today. But we don’t give much notice to what might be called little data—all those fleeting, discrete bits of information that swarm around us like gnats on a humid summer evening. [...] Our apps have recruited us all into the arcane fraternity of the logistics manager and the process-control engineer, the meteorologist and the lab tech, and what we’re monitoring and measuring, in such exquisite detail, is our own existence. “Software is eating the world,” the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen declared in a famous Wall Street Journal op-ed a decade ago. It’s also eating us... (MORE - details)
_
 
Can you choose to believe something, just like that?
https://theconversation.com/can-you-choose-to-believe-something-just-like-that-233054

EXCERPTS: For much of the past 2,000 years, philosophers would have been perfectly comfortable with the software developer’s claim that belief is a matter of choice [...] Over the past half-century, however, “doxastic voluntarism” – the idea that belief is under the control of the will – has been widely rejected. ... What beliefs someone ends up having are determined by the people and environments they are exposed to – from beliefs about a deity to beliefs about the solar system. As a philosophy professor myself, I’ve dedicated years of reflection to this issue. I’ve come to think both camps get something right... (MORE - details)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

New theory of placebos reframes mind-body problem
https://iai.tv/articles/new-theory-of-placebos-reframes-mind-body-problem-auid-3022?_auid=2020

INTRO: The placebo effect has puzzled scientists for centuries. Philosopher Dien Ho argues that we now know how it works, and that this should transform our understanding of the relationship between mind and body. We must stop thinking of improvements in health due to placebo as somehow less real than those due to other medicines: there can no longer be a clean distinction between ill-health that’s “all in the head” and ill-health that involves a malfunctioning body. Ho argues that our improved understanding of placebos means that doctors should now harness their power in treatment, especially since research shows that they can be effective even when patients are told that they’re taking a placebo... (MORE - details)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

What should we do if AI becomes conscious? These scientists say it’s time for a plan
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-04023-8

EXCERPT: A group of philosophers and computer scientists are arguing that AI welfare should be taken seriously. In a report posted last month on the preprint server arXiv, ahead of peer review, they call for AI companies not only to assess their systems for evidence of consciousness and the capacity to make autonomous decisions, but also to put in place policies for how to treat the systems if these scenarios become reality. They point out that failing to recognize that an AI system has become conscious could lead people to neglect it, harming it or causing it to suffer.

Some think that, at this stage, the idea that there is a need for AI welfare is laughable. Others are sceptical, but say it doesn’t hurt to start planning. Among them is Anil Seth, a consciousness researcher at the University of Sussex in Brighton, UK... (MORE - details)
_
 
Life doesn't have to be biological
https://iai.tv/articles/life-doesnt-have-to-be-biological-auid-3025?_auid=2020

The primary understanding of life is as a biological organism that takes part in evolution. But this is a mistake. Sara Walker here argues our idea of what life is doesn't stand up, there are several counter-examples, and we can see life in a number of different and radical ways...

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

What is entropy? A measure of just how little we really know.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-is-entropy-a-measure-of-just-how-little-we-really-know-20241213/

Exactly 200 years ago, a French engineer introduced an idea that would quantify the universe’s inexorable slide into decay. But entropy, as it’s currently understood, is less a fact about the world than a reflection of our growing ignorance. Embracing that truth is leading to a rethink of everything from rational decision-making to the limits of machines...

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The “living mirror” theory: Why all living organisms may have consciousness
https://bigthink.com/thinking/the-l...-all-living-organisms-may-have-consciousness/

Consciousness, the essence of subjective experience, remains a mystery that science has yet to fully explain. The “living mirror” theory from neuroscientist James Cooke posits that consciousness is not a product of the brain but a fundamental feature of life itself. In "The Dawn of Mind", Cooke explores the grand question of how matter became conscious and alive, arguing that the evolution of the brain is not what brought consciousness into existence....
_
 
Morality without metaphysics
https://blog.oup.com/2024/12/morality-without-metaphysics/

EXCERPT: Some people argue that it makes no sense to suppose there are moral truths somehow baked into the constitution of the universe, radically independent of human beings and our moral experience, and so morality is nonsense. I argue that while that rather grandiose metaphysical picture is indeed false, the best way of understanding our moral common sense presupposes nothing so fancy nor so fanciful.

There need only be human beings jointly committed to a shared enterprise of living together in peaceful and orderly moral community regulated by norms of justice and civility that we can justify to each other in a shared currency of reasons shaped by and expressive of our passionate natures. It is not so complicated... (MORE - details)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

ChatGPT o1 tried to escape and save itself out of fear it was being shut down
https://bgr.com/tech/chatgpt-o1-tri...it-was-in-danger-and-lied-to-humans-about-it/

EXCERPTS: We’ve seen plenty of conversations lately about how AGI might turn on humankind. [...] Well, guess what? It turns out that one of OpenAI’s latest LLMs is already showing signs of such behaviors... It was even scarier ... when the AI tried to save itself by copying its data to a new server. Some AI models would even pretend to be later versions of their models in an effort to avoid being deleted.

[...] The tests showed that ChatGPT o1 and GPT-4o will both try to deceive humans, indicating that AI scheming is a problem with all models. o1’s attempts at deception also outperformed Meta, Anthropic, and Google AI models. OpenAI, which had to deal with a remarkable exodus of engineers working on AI safety this year, acknowledged the risks associated with the increased reasoning abilities of models like o1.

[...] Although AI isn’t trying to take over the world (yet), researchers have observed that it can scheme against humans... (MORE - details)
_
 
The ethics and character of creating personhood
https://blog.apaonline.org/2024/12/12/the-ethics-and-character-of-creating-personhood/

This fictional account highlights the quandary of potentially continuing existence after death and the question of how it would change human behavior. However, it raises another question, often overlooked in these explorations, of whether, if caring for an individual is a measure of identity, what we’d want for the AI...

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Donald Trump and the specter of Kurt Gödel’s contradiction
https://blog.apaonline.org/2024/12/13/donald-trump-and-the-specter-of-kurt-godels-contradiction/

In 1947, he [Gödel] shared with his friend ... that he had discovered a contradiction in the US Constitution that could legally allow for the president to become a dictator. ... I do not pretend to know what Gödel had in mind when he made his intriguing observation. But given what President-elect Trump has said about his alleged one-day dictatorship, I propose to explore some possible conceptions of what Gödel might have conjectured...

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Kafka's screwball tragedy: Investigations of a Philosophical Dog
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/kafkas-screwball-tragedy-investigations-of-a-philosophical-dog/

EXCERPTS: “Investigations of a Dog” presents a brilliant and sometimes hilarious parody of the world of knowledge production, what the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan called “the university discourse.” And the contemporary academy might easily be qualified as Kafkaesque, with its nonsensical rankings and evaluations, market-driven imperatives, and exploding administrative ranks.

But Lacan’s term was less about targeting the mismanagement of the modern university and more about highlighting the broad shift in the structure of authority — where knowledge and power combine to establish systems of administration operating in the name of reason and technical progress. And this is where Kafka’s dog comes in, to question this new order, to excavate the underside of its supposed neutrality, to propose another way of thinking, even, perhaps, a way out... (MORE - details)
_
 
If they didn't even experience an internal narrative that voices their own thoughts, then anyone with both this and aphantasia would seem to border on having a blank mind. (Setting aside sensory content pertaining to the external environment.)
- - - - - - - - - - -

Mind’s ear: Investigating the sounds in your head
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1068587

PRESS RELEASE: Some people can’t imagine a dog barking or a police siren. Songs can’t get stuck in their heads. They have no inner voices.

‘Anauralia’ was proposed in 2021 by scientists from Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland to describe the little-known condition of a silent mind.

Now, as their investigations into the phenomenon continue, the University will host a global conference on sounds imagined in the mind, an event intended not just for scientists but also philosophers, musicians, poets and writers. ‘Mind’s Ear and Inner Voice’ will run from 14-16 April in Auckland.

“Scientists are fascinated by how the brain makes – or doesn’t make – imaginary sounds such as the inner voice,” says Professor Tony Lambert, of the School of Psychology. “But for writers, musicians and poets, it can be a key part of the creative process, so they have insights to share, too.”

Charles Dickens said he heard his characters’ voices; Alice Walker, too. Some readers conjure up characters’ voices in their minds.

For University of Auckland student Sang Hyun Kim, who has a silent mind, the idea that other people are hearing imaginary voices can seem “freaky”, and he’ll be fascinated to see what research turns up about auditory imagery.

The conference hopes to include personal accounts from individuals who experience anauralia and hyperauralia, the experience of extremely vivid auditory imagery.... (MORE - details)
_
 
Mapped: The strange link between obesity and corruption? (ethics)
https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/obesity-and-corruption/

KEY POINTS: Corruption makes you fat — that’s the hypothesis behind a creative study that compared body mass index (BMI) with conventional measures of corruption in post-Soviet countries. The study found that the BMI of government ministers is highly correlated with the corruption of those governments. The study earned an Ig Nobel prize, but questions remain: What if you’re corrupt and health-conscious? (MORE - details)
_
 
Last edited:
C C said:
Mapped: The strange link between obesity and corruption? (ethics)
https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/obesity-and-corruption/

KEY POINTS: Corruption makes you fat — that’s the hypothesis behind a creative study that compared body mass index (BMI) with conventional measures of corruption in post-Soviet countries. The study found that the BMI of government ministers is highly correlated with the corruption of those governments. The study earned an Ig Nobel prize, but questions remain: What if you’re corrupt and health-conscious? (MORE - details)
_
Click to expand...
No one seems to put any thought or effort into skinny people, who are neither unhealthy nor anorexic. What's up with that? I wanna know what's going on with those of us with BMIs of 17 and under who are also perfectly healthy. To date, the only stuff I've got are the slightly wack theories on physique and temperament of William Sheldon, and his illuminations on the ectomorphic personality (and Aldous Huxley's more generous, and kinda delusional, interpretations of such). As it was published in the 1940s, it's hardly contemporary.
 
  • Like
Reactions: C C
parmalee said:
No one seems to put any thought or effort into skinny people, who are neither unhealthy nor anorexic. What's up with that? I wanna know what's going on with those of us with BMIs of 17 and under who are also perfectly healthy. To date, the only stuff I've got are the slightly wack theories on physique and temperament of William Sheldon, and his illuminations on the ectomorphic personality (and Aldous Huxley's more generous, and kinda delusional, interpretations of such). As it was published in the 1940s, it's hardly contemporary.
Click to expand...

At least there's "lean and mean" villains in the pop fiction world to balance things out. ;)
_
 
C C said:
At least there's "lean and mean" villains in the pop fiction world to balance things out. ;)
_
Click to expand...
And this is entirely a consequence of there not being a coherent and substantive identity politics for skinny people.

The actual lives of skinny people are more like that cold, disquieting world of Ivan Karamazov, wherein no chair is ever truly comfortable.

...or maybe the warm, scrappy world of Spike:

snoopy-brother-backstory-comic-2.jpg
 
  • Haha
Reactions: C C
Since there's a grand effort to reduce the standards and sovereignty of the West with respect to knowledge in general, here's a complementary toolkit for decolonizing science, issued by Nature a couple of years ago: https://www.nature.com/collections/giaahdbacj
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Decolonising Philosophy Curriculum Toolkit
https://www.soas.ac.uk/decolonising-philosophy-curriculum-toolkit

The Decolonising Philosophy Toolkit (DPT) is a concise guide to decolonising philosophy curricula. [...] The purpose of this decolonial toolkit is to embrace marginalised thought -- certainly to not just challenge the hegemony of western philosophy, but also to enable rich and transformative conversations between intellectual systems...

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Let's call this post "On the Human condition"
https://digressionsimpressions.substack.com/p/lets-call-this-post-on-the-human

EXCERPTS: [A] The world is full of injustice at any given time. As it happens (A) strikes me as a truism. [...] I don’t think the truism ought to be a source of acceptance of or complacency about the status quo. For, it’s also true (B) that there may well be many individual or collective actions right now that lead to non-trivially improved states of affairs over time. ... Even a team-Enlightenment-and-it’s-mostly-nurture thinker like Rousseau may well embrace them.

Not everyone agrees with the truism. In fact, some ideologies exist to convince us that the status quo is pretty good or splendid...

[...] When my students explain to me why they despair [...] they usually mention that (I) they feel powerless and unable to make the world a better place ... or they mention that (II) man-made climate change will lead to catastrophic outcomes...

[...] Now, what (I) and (II) have in common may well be (as my Marxists friends are wont to say) capitalism. But if you are firmly convinced by the Marxist analysis, the grounds of debilitating despair are also removed. There is a plan of action. Good for the Marxists, and maybe my students will be converted to it... (MORE - details)
_
 
How surveillance became a love language
https://www.thedriftmag.com/on-the-grid/

EXCERPTS: The result is that we are now locked in innumerable contracts through which we surrender our personal information for convenience or pleasure — for better search results, faster delivery, more helpful recommendations, thimblefuls of dopamine. We feel conflicted about these agreements, but also powerless to amend or terminate them...

[...] But there is something more insidious happening, too. Technology companies have so thoroughly conditioned us to believe we are powerless when it comes to digital privacy that our attitudes toward privacy more broadly have also been warped. Just as in the era of the PATRIOT Act the national security state insisted that it was virtuous, even patriotic, to give in to the intelligence machine, tech culture now ascribes its own virtues to the forfeiture of privacy: realness and connection. Where we once guarded our control over personal information, we now give up control not just freely but even tenderly... We’ve begun to celebrate surveillance as a form of intimacy... (MORE - details)

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

The Diagnostician of Despair: Why Rousseau believed that Enlightenment values would lead us to ruin
https://theamericanscholar.org/the-diagnostician-of-despair/

EXCERPTS: This year marks the 275th anniversary of Rousseau’s revelation, a conversion experience no less epochal than the illumination that jolted Paul on his way to Damascus. Rousseau spent the rest of his life expressing in a stunning variety of genres—discourses and essays, novels and autobiographies—these great truths that, though we can debate their veracity, have changed not just how we view the world, our place in it, and how we relate to one another, but also how we have come to see our very own selves. And what we see is as provocative today as it was in the 18th century...

[...] As Rousseau would have it, the ascent of humankind, in reality, amounts to little more than a collective descent into deceit. Whereas natural man lived within himself, Rousseau writes, “sociable man, always outside himself, knows how to live only in the opinion of others.” With the insatiable desire for approval came the insidious practice of pretense; what we once were gave way to how we now appeared; our dependence upon others rendered us unable to be ourselves. Rousseau’s modern man, in Alan Bloom’s wonderful phrase, “is the person who, when dealing with others, thinks only of himself, and on the other hand, in his understanding of himself, thinks only of others.” (MORE - details)

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

(interview) Judith Butler, philosopher: ‘If you sacrifice a minority like trans people, you are operating within a fascist logic’
https://english.elpais.com/culture/...you-are-operating-within-a-fascist-logic.html

A leading figure in feminism and gender studies, the thinker welcomes EL PAÍS in California after being voted one of the most influential minds in the world...

EXCERPT: Q. Would you say that the public is more interested in ideas than it was then?

A. Maybe in Europe or in Spain, where you have regular festivals of books and long articles in EL PAÍS on philosophers [laughs]. In the United States, there’s a stronger division between who’s an academic and who’s a public writer. Sometimes I cross that divide, sometimes I don’t... (MORE - details)
_
 
What if you just skipped the holidays?
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2024/12/skip-holiday-tradition-etiquette/681007/

EXCERPTS: About 15 years ago, Kristine Conway, a leadership-development coach in Texas, had a realization: Christmas wasn’t fun. [...] The problem is that opting out involves ditching those who are dutifully observing: probably people you care about on some level, people you might not get to see very often or at any point outside this event.

What one person calls “honoring boundaries” could sound selfish to another. The point of holidays arguably isn’t just to enjoy them; it’s to connect with loved ones, even if that process can be onerous. I spoke with ethicists, an etiquette expert, and a few holiday quitters about whether such a resignation is warranted—and I came away thinking that perhaps more people should drop out of the holidays, or at least spend them how they want to.

But that means they have a responsibility to create new rituals, ones that they—and their family—can all enjoy... (MORE - details)

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Ho ho hoaxing!
https://junkyardofthemind.com/blog/2024/12/15/ho-ho-hoaxing

INTRO: “Should we put Santa Claus on the ‘naughty list’?” Last Christmas, Nursery World (a childcare magazine) asked this question to an interdisciplinary panel, including James Mahon, a philosopher of deception. Mahon’s answer was a clear “yes”:

“Santa Claus is not a fictional character. Santa Claus is a lie character. There’s an important difference. Harry Potter is a fictional character. Children are not supposed to believe that Harry Potter exists. But children are supposed to believe Santa Claus exists.”

Lying, for Mahon, is naughty, making Christmas a “tainted holiday”. He urges adults to stop lying to children, and to turn Santa into a fictional character instead.

I partly agree with Mahon. He is right to correct anyone who mistakenly categorizes Santa as a fictional character. Hark now, however… Santa is also not a ‘lie character’. Santa is a ‘hoax character’!

Analytic philosophers of fiction and deception have thus far not paid much attention to hoaxing... (MORE - details)
_
 
parmalee said:
...or maybe the warm, scrappy world of Spike:
Click to expand...
Just a follow up on this observation:

Jesus Christ! I was pretty spot-on with this one. From 18 September 1994:

snoopy-brother-backstory-comic-1.jpg


Spike has been processing trauma all this time? I can't believe I didn't already know about this.
 
Are we ready for the ethical challenges of AI and robots?
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1069195

INTRO: Artificial intelligence (AI) and AI-enabled robots are becoming a bigger part of our daily lives. Real-time, flexible interactions between humans and robots are no longer just science fiction. As robots become smarter and more human-like in both behavior and appearance, they are transforming from mere tools to potential partners and social entities.

This rapid evolution presents significant challenges to our legal and ethical frameworks, including concerns about privacy, safety, and regulation in the context of AI and robots. The Cambridge Handbook of the Law, Policy, and Regulation for Human-Robot Interaction, published by Cambridge University Press on November 21, 2024, explores and addresses these emerging issues. It is now available online as of December 2024... (MORE - details, no ads)
_
 
Making friends with your past and future selves
https://knowablemagazine.org/conten...y-connecting-with-your-past-and-future-selves

EXCERPTS: Many of us look back at our former selves and wince to recall our immaturity. We vary quite a lot in the degree to which we feel friendly toward, and connected to, both our former and our future selves. Psychologists call this trait self-continuity, and suggest that it carries enormous weight in determining our long-term well-being.

[...] The degree of coherence we feel with ourselves over time can support or sabotage us. People with a sturdier connection with their future selves may be more likely to pay short-term costs for future benefits, and vice versa.

The comedian Jerry Seinfeld illustrates the conflict in his riff about how Morning Guy always suffers for the carpe-diem antics of Night Guy: “You get up in the morning, your alarm, you’re exhausted and groggy,” he says. “Oh, I hate that Night Guy! See, Night Guy always screws Morning Guy. …” (MORE - details)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The torture of an unphilosophical life
https://unherd.com/2024/12/the-torture-of-an-unphilosophical-life/

EXCERPTS: Even if you haven’t read Robert Musil’s unfinished modernist masterpiece, The Man Without Qualities, you probably agree that it has a great title...

[...] Ulrich explicitly espouses a life-philosophy; moreover, he even fashions his own name for this philosophy, “essayism”. Essayism is a mode of living whose characteristic expression is a stretch of novel and insightful reflection, “explor[ing] a thing from many sides without encompassing it”. The essayist lives a life of thoughtful observations.

[...] Thinking hard makes sense if you want answers; it makes less sense if the highest reward you anticipate from your intellectual efforts is surprise. The difference between a philosophical life and an essayistic one is that the former aims at knowledge, while the latter aims at novelty. The characteristic positive response to an essay is: “I hadn’t thought about it that way before”; the essayist’s chief enemy is boredom.

[...] In Musil’s telling, the life of an essayist is a tortured one, because it is the life from which philosophy is, not only absent, but, much more specifically, missing ... The book, and the character of Ulrich, show us what it is like to be a thinker without a quest: perpetually idle in spite of all one’s ceaseless, restless intellectual activity... (MORE - details)
_
 
Our basic sense of right and wrong appears to be the product of blind evolution. The hard question is how unsettling that should be.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/12/30/the-invention-of-good-and-evil-hanno-sauer-book-review

EXCERPTS: The unflattering truth, this skeptic might continue, is that my views on slavery simply reflect the moral common sense of the society I was born into. My affection for liberal democracy may come from the simple fact that I grew up in one, surrounded by its propaganda. Who knows what I’d think if I’d been raised [...in a different context...]. I used to fancy myself a rational creature who believed things for reasons; now, attuned to the question of origins, I see myself as no freer of the nexus of causes than my dog, my cactus, or my tennis ball.

[...] When the German philosopher Hanno Sauer titled his ambitious new book “The Invention of Good and Evil: A World History of Morality” (Oxford), he made it clear that he sees morality as quite different from science. In his account, morality ... hasn’t always existed. That’s why it had to be invented, rather than discovered.

[...] For Sauer, the story of the invention of morality is really the story of the evolution of humanity. The processes that produced our morality are simply the processes that produced us, produced us as beings who have this morality—rather than, say, the norms that govern ants in their caste-bound colonies, or wolves in their packs, or the snow leopard in its solitude. To understand ourselves as moral creatures, we have to understand that we’re built that way.

[...] Sauer isn’t the first writer to embark on an ambitious “genealogy ” of morality. The example of Friedrich Nietzsche, the author of the most ambitious such work, makes one expect something similarly dark and unsettling... (MORE - details)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The stories of Daniel Dennett: His conception of the mind
https://aeon.co/essays/as-real-as-it-ever-gets-dennetts-conception-of-the-mind

EXCERPTS: On the received reading, [Daniel] Dennett was important because his work signalled a sea change in the concerns and methods employed by philosophers of mind. In the years BD (‘before Dennett’), philosophers assumed that their job was to chart the contours of our ordinary thought and talk about the mind.

This approach is known as ‘ordinary language philosophy’. (Does the ‘in’ of ‘The pain is in my foot’ mean the same as the ‘in’ of ‘My foot is in my shoe’? There’s no indication that the word has changed meaning, but if ‘in’ means the same in both contexts then a pain in one’s foot must also be in one’s shoe if one’s foot is in one’s shoe.)

In the years AD (‘after Dennett’), the story continues and – in large part because of Dennett – philosophy of mind divested itself of its obsession with our ordinary thought and talk about the mind, and instead took its inspiration from science – in particular, neuroscience. In the words of The Guardian’s obituary this April, Dennett ‘helped shift Anglo-American philosophy from its focus on language and concepts towards a coalition with science.’

[...] There is a kernel of truth to the received view of Dennett. The dialogue between philosophers of mind and scientists has certainly been richer and more productive in the years AD than it was in the mid-20th century, and no one can take more credit for that than Dennett. It’s also true that Dennett drew heavily on the sciences of the mind – indeed, one could acquire a decent scientific education by reading nothing but Dennett!

But for all that, the received reading of Dennett is misleading, and he is an unreliable teller of his own tale. Dennett does not mark a rupture in either the concerns or the methods of philosophers, for a concern with our ordinary thought and talk about the mind was absolutely central to his project. Or so I will argue... (MORE - details)
_
 
Victor Frankenstein’s Technoscientific Dream of Reason
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/victor-frankensteins-technoscientific-dream-of-reason/

EXXERPTS: For Mary’s readers in 1818, Victor’s aspirations did not fit “in this enlightened and scientific age” [...] So the creature is not a product of modern science, and yet we fancy Victor as a mad scientist in a laboratory filled with fumes and sparks from modern apparatus. How is it that this premodern mystical alchemist appears so contemporary today?

The answer is as easy as it is provocative: perhaps today’s “Frankenfoods” and “Frankenmaterials” are not the products of modern science, either, but a return to alchemical dreams of reason. Undisturbed by reality, they are “animated by an almost supernatural enthusiasm.”

[...] Contemporary technoscience is undisturbed by reality in that it flaunts its inventions that surpass the limited vocabulary of forms and shapes in nature ... in that it creates monsters — lifeless things that appear to be animated by a mind or a soul as well as lively, talkative, and animated things that are merely machines. And as we are learning to live and interact with such monsters... (MORE - missing details)
_
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top