Philosophy Updates

New journal: Philosophy of AI
http://philai.net/

The journal is dedicated to publishing high-quality contributions to current debates on the philosophical foundations and ethical evaluation of artificial intelligence and is now open for regular submissions.

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Maimonides
https://theconversation.com/as-a-ra...erplexed-has-sparked-debate-ever-since-208277

As a rabbi, philosopher and physician, Maimonides wrestled with religion and reason – the book he wrote to reconcile them, ‘Guide to the Perplexed,’ has sparked debate ever since.

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How climate science got hijacked by alarmists (philosophy of science activism)
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INTRO: Judith Curry was a department chair at Georgia Tech when she spread alarm about climate change. The media loved her then. She claimed there was an increase in hurricane intensity.

But then some researchers pointed out gaps in her research: years with low levels of hurricanes. “Like a good scientist, I went in and investigated."

When she acknowledged a lack of evidence that hurricane intensity had increased, she was ruthlessly attacked by climate alarmists. Her career suffered. Now Curry reveals nefarious ways “the science” about climate change has been corrupted...

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Kind of jibes a tad with theory-ladenness in some respects (but more generic).
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Language conceals reality
https://iai.tv/articles/language-conceals-reality-auid-2756

INTRO: We normally think of words as a tool for describing the world around us. A helpful shorthand or label for expressing meaning. But words have power. The way we describe things affects how we see them. But worse still, words, by directing attention, can act as off-switches for the mind, limiting a broader understanding of a situation, argues Nick Enfield.

EXCERPTS: How I see an image is a private matter. But how I label it is an imposition upon others. Think about this when you are next in an art gallery. The plaque next to each exhibit contains words that constrain how you view the exhibit....

[...] This is linguistic framing. It is one of the things that language is especially good for. Framing is not just a different way of viewing a scene. It is an act of influence. It uses language to direct people to see things in one way as opposed to the other ways they might have seen them. This tends to shut off our awareness of those other ways of seeing... (MORE - details)

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Rubber hand illusions shed new light on our bodily sense of self
https://psyche.co/ideas/rubber-hand-illusions-shed-new-light-on-our-bodily-sense-of-self

EXCERPT: We don’t experience the world purely in our minds, but as ‘embodied agents’, says Roy Salomon, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Haifa in Israel. Your sense of self is as connected to your limbs and guts as to the thoughts racing in your mind.

‘If we want to get a handle on the sense of self and consciousness, the first thing we have to try to understand is: how do we get this feeling, this illusion that the brain builds up, that we exist as a body in the world?’ Salomon says.

One approach researchers are using is to investigate what’s going on when the bodily sense of self is disrupted. In a recent paper in Nature Scientific Reports, Salomon and his colleagues examined how having experienced altered states in the past might change how a person regards their bodily self, whether those states arose via psychedelic drug trips or from psychosis, a condition where people have hallucinations and delusions that often affect their sense of self... (MORE - details)

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Beyond substantiality and illusion: the problem of the self in Buddhist constructivism
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-024-02746-7

ABSTRACT: The notion of the “Self” is one of the most critical issues in contemporary cognitive science. Whether the self is a single and independent real entity or a collection of constantly changing experiences has been at the core of debates between the substance theory and the illusion theory.

Compared to the neglect of this issue in Western tradition studies, the meticulous practice of mindfulness/awareness in Eastern research traditions has long focused on this contradiction. This paper navigates the intricate dimensions of the “Self” by weaving together the Oriental framework of the five aggregates with the Middle Way, the principles of constructivism, and the empirical methodologies of experimental philosophy.

This approach bridges the gap by synthesizing introspective first-person experiences with objective third-person scientific observations to enrich the understanding of self-constructivism. The implications of these findings extend into the practical realms of psychology and philosophy, offering a scaffold for future research to elucidate the multifaceted nature of the self further.
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Sex, mental health, and the culture wars
https://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/sex-mental-health-culture-wars/

EXCERPTS: . . . Simply stated, sex is seen less and less as an activity that contributes to mental health. Instead, it’s increasingly seen as an abstraction, only vaguely related to the currently more important activity of establishing and policing identity.

[...] Many Americans increasingly seem to want to protect themselves from sex, rather than embrace it. Note that enthusiastically pursuing your sexual identity or orientation is not the same thing as embracing sexuality itself. And knowing what you don’t want is not the same as knowing what you do want.

In fact, many of the newly minted sexual identities and orientations are about not having sex: asexual (lacking in sexual attraction to others), graysexual (inbetween asexual and sexual), aromantic (little to no romantic feelings toward others), or lithromantic (can feel romantic love but has no need for those feelings to be reciprocated). When people talk about sexual identity, they’re referring less to what they do, and more to the community to which they belong.

[...] If behavior “does not correlate with identity,” then what is identity based on? And on what basis do individuals decide to accept their own erotic behavior? (MORE - details)
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Quantum mechanics, the Chinese room and the limits of understanding
https://johnhorgan.org/cross-check/...-chinese-room-and-the-limits-of-understanding

That doesn’t mean the Chinese room experiment has no value. Far from it. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy calls it “the most widely discussed philosophical argument in cognitive science to appear since the Turing Test.” Searle’s thought experiment continues to pop up in my thoughts. Recently, for example, it nudged me toward a disturbing conclusion about quantum mechanics, which I’ve been struggling to learn...
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How the feminist philosopher Helene Stöcker canonised Nietzsche
https://psyche.co/ideas/how-the-feminist-philosopher-helene-stocker-canonised-nietzsche

Despite Nietzsche’s reputation for misogyny, his work inspired a leading women’s rights activist of the early 20th century...

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On sex, gender and their consequences: interview with Louise Antony
https://freethinker.co.uk/2024/02/i-am-a-gender-eliminativist-interview-with-louise-antony/

(excerpt) Freethinker: One final question. For you as a socialist intersectionalist feminist, what is fundamentally at the heart of this debate about sex and gender?

Antony: I am a gender eliminativist. I believe that gender is real, but I think it should not be. People should be allowed to flourish in all sorts of different ways, depending on their different aptitudes, proclivities, characteristics and so forth. It is a fundamental injustice to try to package people into these socially preformed categories of man and woman, boy and girl. The elimination of that kind of categorisation is very important to me. As a feminist, I think that anyone who is being gender transgressive is putting us on the right road. So I want to give absolute support to trans people... (MORE - more details)
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The “blind spot” in science that’s fueling a crisis of meaning
https://bigthink.com/13-8/why-science-must-contend-with-human-experience/

Science is the most powerful and successful form of objective knowledge gathering. However, we lack a comparable understanding of how our lived experiences are essential to all human knowledge. In the 2024 book The Blind Spot, Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser, and Evan Thompson argue that this conceptual disconnect between the observer and the observed is fueling a crisis of meaning...
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Otherkin: The next frontier of social justice
https://occidentaldissent.com/2015/02/23/otherkin-the-next-frontier-of-social-justice/

“Otherkin” are trans people who believe they were born into the wrong race, the wrong species, or even on the wrong planet.

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species dysphoria: The experience of dysphoria associated with the feeling that one's body is of the wrong species.

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Otherkin
https://otherkin.wiki/wiki/Otherkin

Otherkin are a subculture of people who identify as something other than human. Each individual discovers for themself how and why they are otherkin. Most otherkin believe they are nonhuman in a spiritual way, or otherwise somehow non-physical, such as from reincarnation, psychology, trans-species dysphoria, or metaphor. All otherkin know that they are physically human, in that they look like humans, were born like humans, and live in the way that most humans do. However, some otherkin believe their own bodies are different from most human bodies, such as having genes from supernatural ancestors.

Joseph P. Laycock, assistant professor of religious studies at Texas State University, considers the belief to be religious, but most otherkin firmly disagree with being classified as a religion. This is because otherkin are not a formal organization with leaders or members, they do not agree on any cosmological or spiritual beliefs (some otherkin do not believe in spirituality at all), and otherkin independently come to the conclusion that they are other than human, sometimes without even knowing anybody else felt that way. By definition, otherkin is not a religion, and is not similar to a religion.

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'I look at a cloud and I see it as me’: The people who identify as objects
https://www.vice.com/en/article/zmb...e-it-as-me-the-people-who-identify-as-objects

Otherkin are known for identifying as animals and mythical creatures, but some people in the community controversially say they identify as weather, plants, and abstract concepts as well.
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Folklore is philosophy
https://aeon.co/essays/folktales-like-philosophy-startle-us-into-rethinking-our-values

EXCERPTS: The demons of academic philosophy come in familiar guises: exclusivity, hegemony and investment in the myth of individual genius. As the ethicist Jill Hernandez notes, philosophy has been slower to change than many of its sister disciplines in the humanities: ‘It may be a surprise to many … given that theology and, certainly, religious studies tend to be inclusive, but philosophy is mostly resistant toward including diverse voices.’

[...] Folklore is an overlooked repository of philosophical thinking from voices outside the traditional canon. As such, it provides a model for new approaches that are directly responsive to the problems facing academic philosophy today. If, like Ibronka, we find ourselves tied to the devil, one way to disentangle ourselves may be to spin a tale... (MORE - details)
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Could AI-designed proteins be weaponized? Scientists lay out safety guidelines. (ethics)
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00699-0

Could proteins designed by artificial intelligence (AI) ever be used as bioweapons? In the hope of heading off this possibility — as well as the prospect of burdensome government regulation — researchers today launched an initiative calling for the safe and ethical use of protein design.
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Familiar song and dance number. Maybe decolonization of knowledge is already offering publication perks to contrarian, "traditionalist" subcultures of the West itself (not just latter's "external" victims of past oppression).
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Quantum physics and the end of naturalism
https://iai.tv/articles/quantum-phy...us-universe-bruce-gordon-auid-2765?_auid=2020

INTRO Naturalism, the idea that there are no gods, spirits, or transcendent meanings, is the leading theory of our time. However, in this instalment of our idealism series, in partnership with the Essentia Foundation, Bruce Gordon argues that quantum mechanics not only beckons the end of naturalism, but also points towards the existence of a transcendent mind.
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Orthodox Science as a (mostly good) religion
https://mikeklymkowsky.substack.com/p/orthodox-science-as-a-mostly-good

So what is the benefit of thinking about science as a religion? Most of all it helps us recognize when scientists are acting like scientists and when they are not. When scientists act in their own self/ego-driven interests or when hijacking the prestige of science to advocate for racist policies, eugenic interventions, and various forms of quackery.
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Among the antinatalists (the case against having children)
https://harpers.org/archive/2024/03/the-case-against-children-elizabeth-barber/

As our Google Doc sprawled, more reasons not to have kids accumulated: Philanthropic antinatalism (meaning, in this context, generously sparing the unborn from the suffering of life), which is probably the dominant strain.

But there is also misanthropic antinatalism, which is concerned about the harm that your kids will do to others and the planet, eating its animals and washing beaded facial scrubs down the drain and so forth.

Also worth considering is whether you might be happier without kids: Antinatalists also talk about maternal regret, which some research shows is more common than we tend to admit. Perhaps there can be happiness, they argue, in not having to worry about the happiness of a person you made, in avoiding the pain of witnessing your child’s inevitable unhappiness...
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The coddling of the American undergraduate
https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/m...es/the-coddling-of-the-american-undergraduate

The university campus is rapidly becoming a locus of infantilizing social control that any independent-minded student should seek to escape...

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How pseudo-intellectualism ruined journalism
https://www.persuasion.community/p/how-pseudo-intellectualism-ruined

Journalists were once skeptical of big words and complex theories. They were anti-intellectual. Now they are something worse: pseudo-intellectual. A dose of working-class realism can save journalism from groupthink...

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The paradox of desert
https://justice-everywhere.org/general/when-whatever-you-do-you-get-what-you-least-deserve/

Either way, the soldier who pauses is morally superior to the soldier who shoots without hesitation. However, there will be situations in which a soldier is killed precisely because he acted in the morally better way.

This is only one example of what I call the “paradox of desert”. This paradox is not the familiar observation that “bad things happen to good people”. Instead, it is that the very thing, namely acting rightly, that incurs the cost, also makes the cost (especially) undeserved...

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The mystery of consciousness shows there may be a limit to what science alone can achieve
https://theconversation.com/the-mys...imit-to-what-science-alone-can-achieve-225034

Take the example of my area of research: the philosophy of consciousness. Some philosophers think that consciousness emerges from physical processes in the brain – this is the “physicalist” position. Others think it’s the other way around: consciousness is primary, and the physical world emerges from consciousness. A version of this is the “panpsychist” view that consciousness goes all the way down to the fundamental building blocks of reality, with the word deriving from the two Greek words pan (all) and psyche (soul or mind).

Still others think that both consciousness and the physical world are fundamental but radically different – this is the view of the “dualist”. Crucially, you can’t distinguish between these views with an experiment, because, for any scientific data, each of the views will interpret that data in their own terms...
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How logic and reasoning can fail as scientific tools
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/logic-reasoning-fail-scientific-tools/

KEY POINTS: The conventional rules of logic are often used to explain practically every phenomenon in the Universe and have their roots in mathematics and deduction. However, they are based on certain assumptions that may not always apply in all circumstances, including notions such as cause-and-effect that don't necessarily apply in our quantum reality. These three spectacular examples from the history of science show how even seemingly airtight logical arguments, like "reductio ad absurdum," failed even great scientists in an absurd Universe... (MORE - details)

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How [today's] universities killed the academic
https://unherd.com/2024/03/how-universities-killed-the-academic/

EXCERPTS (Kathleen Stock): Is it possible to write a satirical campus novel anymore? Satire requires exaggeration and the pointed introduction of absurdity, but it is hard to see how modern university life could be further embellished in these respects. As usual, there were some classic stories served up this week for civilians to laugh at.

[...] The organisation that first uncovered the story about microaggressions is the Committee for Academic Freedom, newly formed by philosophy lecturer Edward Skidelsky to push back against institutional incursions on free inquiry...

[...] while the general public increasingly gets the joke, and a growing band of disgruntled renegades joins organisations like CAF, it is still true that most employees within relevant institutions remain po-faced and acquiescent in the light of blatantly stupid initiatives by their managers and colleagues. Partly this is because they are frightened to do otherwise...

[...] perhaps an even bigger causal factor in the UK was the move towards conceiving of the student as a customer. Among the many unintended effects of this unfortunate reframing was a difference in the kind of candidate who would get appointed into lecturing positions. And the change is significantly responsible for the idiotic atmosphere we now see.

And philosophy itself has a crucial role to play here. So many humanities departments house people who call themselves philosophers but who are no such thing, according to the traditional understanding of that term. Out of politeness or fear of intellectual confrontation, they have been allowed by actual philosophers to get away with it. The predictable result is thousands upon thousands of former students who sincerely believe that truth is relative, sex is fluid, cis het white men are scum and all the rest of it. We need to wrest the discipline back from these charlatans... (MORE - missing details)

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What is Left? Rebecca Solnit on the perennial divisions of the American Left
https://lithub.com/what-is-left-rebecca-solnit-on-the-perennial-divisions-of-the-american-left/

The people and groups and agendas grouped together as the left contain not just contradictions but sworn enemies...
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Thoughts on current research in analytic philosophy
https://richardpettigrew.substack.com/p/thoughts-on-current-research-in-analytic

INTRO: In the year 2024, 140 years after Frege’s Grundlagen, almost 100 years after Carnap’s Aufbau, and 85 years after Stebbing’s Thinking, in what state do we find the research produced in academic analytic philosophy?

As I’ve said before, I think things are better than they’ve been for eighty years or so. There is still a great deal to do to rectify access to the discipline and improve its culture—though again things have improved significantly in these respects thanks to the initiatives of MAP, SWIP, as well as tireless work by other groups and individuals.

And many of the academic departments that foster and fund much of the research itself are under threat, while the outlook for humanities in higher education more broadly is, to put it mildly, bleak.

So it might seem a strange moment at which to celebrate the work coming out of this discipline. But in fact I think it’s important precisely because the value I see in current work is what these cuts—those already made and those sadly to come—are intent to throw away. So I think it’s important to say that the research produced is, I think, of very high average quality at the moment... (MORE - details)
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What a wondrous thread! CC seems to have provided food for thought on a groaning feast table. Searle's Chinese room, erotic behavior and identity, language limiting thought, coddled undergrads, the embodied Self....I feel like I've fallen behind on the most interesting reading! Will try to look in here more often and catch up a bit.
 
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C C said:
With respect to #1, superficial digital cloning is the best you're going to get, unless some future brain implant mediated by AI can actually tap into your thoughts and sensory data and record/organize a crude identity template (that will still fall short of the original).
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(Dec 4) Could you move from your biological body to a computer?
https://theconversation.com/could-y...uter-an-expert-explains-mind-uploading-218035

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I think in the not too distant future, they will sell robots where you could upload your brain(or anyone else's) without the host dying.

It wouldn't be them but it would be better than nothing... would keep the atheists happy.
 
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Revisiting the "Experience Machine" thought experiment
https://theness.com/neurologicablog/the-experience-machine-thought-experiment/

INTRO: In 1974 Robert Nozick published the book, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, in which he posed the following thought experiment: If you could be plugged into an “experience machine” [...] that could perfectly replicate real-life experiences, but was 100% fake, would you do it?

The question was whether you would do this irreversibly for the rest of your life. What if, in this virtual reality, you could live an amazing life – perfect health and fitness, wealth and resources, and unlimited opportunity for adventure and fun?

Nozick hypothesized that people generally would not elect to do this (as summarized in a recent BBC article). He gave three reasons – we want to actual do certain things, and not just have the experience of doing them; we want to be a certain kind of person and that can only happen in reality; and we want meaning and purpose in our lives, which is only possible in reality.

A lot has happened in the last 50 years and it is interesting to revisit Nozick’s thought experiment. I would say I basically disagree with Nozick, but there is a lot of nuance that needs to be explored... (MORE - details)

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The world is both subjective and real
https://iai.tv/articles/the-world-is-both-subjective-and-real-paul-franks-auid-2789?_auid=2020

INTRO: Philosophers since Descartes have questioned whether our experience reflects a reality outside of our minds. In this instalment of our idealism series, in partnership with the Essentia Foundation, Paul Franks argues that the basic insight of Kant’s approach - perspectivism - harmonizes far better with our ordinary experience of the world, and with Einstein’s relativistic physics, than Berkeley’s immaterialist view... (MORE - details)

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Indiana can’t make universities more conservative with a law
https://archive.is/TNj2j

INTRO: Indiana’s Republican governor has just signed new law that introduces “intellectual diversity” as a standard for tenure decisions in state universities. Under the law, campus boards of trustees will determine what intellectual diversity consists of, and lack of such diversity can be grounds for denying tenure. Intellectual diversity also must be considered in the post-tenure review process.

The background context here, in case you don’t already know, is that professors largely support the Democratic Party, or they are left-wing rather than conservative. The data are overwhelming. For instance, one study of top universities found that out of 7,243 faculty only 314 registered as Republican. In my personal experience, I have found that libertarians are scarce as well.

As a libertarian-leaning professor, I am unhappy about this state of affairs. That said, I fear the Indiana law will make matters worse rather than better... (MORE - details)
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C C said:
Revisiting the "Experience Machine" thought experiment
https://theness.com/neurologicablog/the-experience-machine-thought-experiment/

INTRO: In 1974 Robert Nozick published the book, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, in which he posed the following thought experiment: If you could be plugged into an “experience machine” [...] that could perfectly replicate real-life experiences, but was 100% fake, would you do it?

The question was whether you would do this irreversibly for the rest of your life. What if, in this virtual reality, you could live an amazing life – perfect health and fitness, wealth and resources, and unlimited opportunity for adventure and fun?

Nozick hypothesized that people generally would not elect to do this (as summarized in a recent BBC article). He gave three reasons – we want to actual do certain things, and not just have the experience of doing them; we want to be a certain kind of person and that can only happen in reality; and we want meaning and purpose in our lives, which is only possible in reality.

A lot has happened in the last 50 years and it is interesting to revisit Nozick’s thought experiment. I would say I basically disagree with Nozick, but there is a lot of nuance that needs to be explored... (MORE - details)

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This has inspired so much of popular culture, movies like Total Recall, The Matrix, even video games like Fallout 3 to adult cartoons like American Dad. Each of them(with the exception of Total Recall) have one thing in common. Each character much prefers the "real" world.

I would go with the American Dad version, a vat of goo that you jump in and breath through a snorkel like device when you fancy a holiday. Even then you give up your control over your reality, so maybe I'd think more if I actually owned one of these Vats...

Decisions decisions.

Life might suck for some people, or be boring but at least it's real(unless you think we're in a matrix), I personally strive to make the people around me happy and that means everything to me. So a 2 week holiday in the Vat would be the only option that would attract me.
 
Consciousness does not cause your actions (epiphenomenalism)
https://iai.tv/articles/consciousness-does-not-cause-your-actions-auid-2792?_auid=2020

INTRO: Motivated by Darwin’s theory of evolution, we think consciousness must have a function. We think consciousness must play some role in our behaviour, and be able to cause and influence what we do. We think about raising our left arm, and then it raises. Surely consciousness has causal power. But this is an illusion, writes Helen Yetter-Chappell.

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A theory of emotion based on a universal model (paper)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-024-02869-x

ABSTRACT: The complexity of emotions has thus far limited our understanding of them. To obtain a clear understanding of the nature of emotion, this paper proposes a novel emotion theory and establishes a universal model of the conscious world in the human brain, the substanguage and interaction model (SIM). Based on an analysis of the possibilities of the interaction process in the SIM, two basic emotions that are indecomposable factors within all emotions—hope and fear—are identified. A questionnaire survey reveals that this basic emotion exhibits high acceptability. Based on emotion theory, this paper reasonably explains the phenomena of facial attraction and infantile facial preference and discusses the psychological reasons for phonocentrism, the phenomenon of preferring the spoken word over the written word. In addition, this paper explores the possibility of artificial intelligence possessing self-emotions. Emotions are relevant to many areas of human knowledge, as well as to everyone’s daily lives, and the simple, clear way to understand emotions provided in this paper may be instructive for everyone.

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The radical conservative case for genetic enhancement
https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2024/03/27/the-radical-conservative-case-for-genetic-enhancement/

EXCERPTS: Eventually, a combination of embryo selection and gene editing may be essential just to stay where we are now. This is because the modern world has been quietly fostering the accumulation of deleterious mutations in all of us. [...] Those who reject radical enhancement may need to embrace some amount of genetic engineering simply to stay where we are now. We may need to keep repairing the post just to preserve the parts of it that we cherish.

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The deaths of effective altruism
https://www.wired.com/story/deaths-of-effective-altruism/

EXCERPTS: Effective altruism is the philosophy of Sam Bankman-Fried ... Effective altruism pitches itself as a hyperrational method of using any resource for the maximum good of the world. Here in Silicon Valley, EA has become a secular religion of the elites. ... Before the fall of SBF, the philosophers who founded EA glowed in his glory. Then SBF’s crypto empire crumbled, and his EA employees turned witness against him. The philosopher-founders of EA scrambled to frame Bankman-Fried as a sinner who strayed from their faith. Yet Sam Bankman-Fried is the perfect prophet of EA, the epitome of its moral bankruptcy...
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