Philosophy Updates

[C C]

[...] But Anglo philosophers have always--always, this goes back into previous centuries, long before the "obscure" French of the previous century--dismissed Continentals, practically accused them of peddling snake oil. Given that these folks (the Continentals) are almost universally anti-capitalist, and that one generally doesn't go into philosophy for the money anyway, isn't it more likely that they're (Anglos) just not "getting" it?

Edit: In support of my "just fucking with him" thesis, I'll note that humor has always been an important part of the French philosophical tradition, and very much not a part of most English and American traditions. That humor doesn't always translate is in no way a controversial assertion.

Yah, it's a possibility. For instance, years or decades later Slavoj Žižek demonstrated, on the internet, that he could repeatedly troll himself or his own philosophical corner, under the guise of "Eugene Wolters". Here he even recruits that very Searle and Foucault item...

Eugene Wolters: Many scholars attack critical theory as “obscurantist” and nonsensical after their brief forays into the field make them realize, “hey, reading is hard.” To be fair, plenty of critical theory is nonsensical bullshit, that despite being empirically invalidated, seems to cling on to dear life in the dark corners of academia. And as we’ve noted before, Noam Chomsky has called out Lacan for being entirely self-aware of his chicanery and also took a jab at Slavoj Zizek. Interestingly enough, Chomsky differentiates Foucault from these alleged charlatans.

Chomsky noted that Foucault, unlike his colleagues, was actually intelligible if you sat him down in conversation. Chomsky said:

• I’ve met: Foucault (we even have a several-hour discussion, which is in print, and spent quite a few hours in very pleasant conversation, on real issues, and using language that was perfectly comprehensible — he speaking French, me English)… I don’t particularly blame Foucault for it: it’s such a deeply rooted part of the corrupt intellectual culture of Paris that he fell into it pretty naturally, though to his credit, he distanced himself from it.

Now, as Open Culture notes, Foucault admitted to his friend John Searle that he intentionally complicated his writings to appease his French audience. Searle claims Foucault told him: “In France, you gotta have ten percent incomprehensible, otherwise people won’t think it’s deep–they won’t think you’re a profound thinker.” When Searle later asked Pierre Bourdieu if he thought this was true, Bourdieu insisted it was much worse than ten percent. You can listen to Searle’s full comments below.

Open Culture goes on to note that, in an interview with Reason Magazine, Searle thinks it’s unfair to lump Foucault in with other theorists such as Jacques Derrida. -- Foucault On Obscurantism: ‘They Made Me Do It!’ ...

A couple of years later (2015), Zizek spilled the beans...
_

 

[parmalee]

Yah, it's a possibility. For instance, years or decades later Slavoj Žižek demonstrated, on the internet, that he could repeatedly troll himself or his own philosophical corner, under the guise of "Eugene Wolters". Here he even recruits that very Searle and Foucault item. A couple of years later (2015), Zizek spilled the beans...

I credit Zizek with helping me to realize that Eastern Europeans could be funny too--it's not all Threnodies for Hiroshima!

Eugene Wolters: Many scholars attack critical theory as “obscurantist” and nonsensical after their brief forays into the field make them realize, “hey, reading is hard.” To be fair, plenty of critical theory is nonsensical bullshit, that despite being empirically invalidated, seems to cling on to dear life in the dark corners of academia. And as we’ve noted before, Noam Chomsky has called out Lacan for being entirely self-aware of his chicanery and also took a jab at Slavoj Zizek. Interestingly enough, Chomsky differentiates Foucault from these alleged charlatans.

Chomsky noted that Foucault, unlike his colleagues, was actually intelligible if you sat him down in conversation. Chomsky said:

• I’ve met: Foucault (we even have a several-hour discussion, which is in print, and spent quite a few hours in very pleasant conversation, on real issues, and using language that was perfectly comprehensible — he speaking French, me English)… I don’t particularly blame Foucault for it: it’s such a deeply rooted part of the corrupt intellectual culture of Paris that he fell into it pretty naturally, though to his credit, he distanced himself from it.

I think it's important to note that Chomsky's later writings are very much heavily indebted to Foucault. I don't know whether Chomsky has ever acknowledged this publicly--or whether it's even directly: could well be that he picked up Foucaultian ideas elsewhere--but it's kinda obvious. I mean, Manufacturing Consent?. C'mon.

Now, as Open Culture notes, Foucault admitted to his friend John Searle that he intentionally complicated his writings to appease his French audience. Searle claims Foucault told him: “In France, you gotta have ten percent incomprehensible, otherwise people won’t think it’s deep–they won’t think you’re a profound thinker.” When Searle later asked Pierre Bourdieu if he thought this was true, Bourdieu insisted it was much worse than ten percent. You can listen to Searle’s full comments below.

Open Culture goes on to note that, in an interview with Reason Magazine, Searle think it’s unfair to lump Foucault in with other theorists such as Jacques Derrida. -- Foucault On Obscurantism: ‘They Made Me Do It!’ ...

Thing is, whether it's b.s., humor, obscurantism, or whatever, these things have always been a part of French intellectual and artistic traditions. That's not to say that Anglos aren't "funny", they're just more explicitly and expressly so: there's a time and a place for it. Jonathan Swift was a satirist; most French writers are/were satirists, at some point or another--they don't really make those sorts of distinctions.

De Tocqueville remarks again and again that Americans were a surprisingly serious and, well, humorless bunch (they've gotten better). It's clear that this "quality" is seriously weird and alien to him. On a personal note, I've yet to work out the complicated rules surrounding when and where one can be facetious amongst Americans. Sure, I'm kind of--or maybe seriously--autistic, but, damn...

 

[C C]

Should Darwin be pervasively cancelled? No. Is the ludicrous prospect even possible? Surely not, but it may be an uphill battle if political, postcolonial resentment against the West continues to rise -- particularly the latter's self-loathing within its own academic borders..
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Viewpoint: Darwin’s ‘Descent of Man’ is both deeply disturbing and more relevant than ever

Viewpoint: Darwin's 'Descent of Man' is both deeply disturbing and more relevant than ever

Charles Darwin’s Descent of Man is full of unexpected delights — such as the trio of hard drinking, chain-smoking koalas that appear within its first few pages to illustrate our affinity to animals. Yet Darwin’s great treatise on human origins is also, in parts, deeply disturbing.

geneticliteracyproject.org

EXCERPTS: Darwin’s wider musings on mankind have had an immense and lasting influence on our beliefs about human nature and behavior, not just scientifically, but socially and politically as well. And while the more reprehensible later applications of evolutionary theory to human society were not truly Darwinian at all, many troubling arguments about race, class, eugenics and the like can nonetheless be discerned within his Descent of Man.

[...] What follows, therefore, are a few brief illustrative examples of problematic passages in the Descent of Man. The point is not — as is common with many of Darwin’s detractors — to simply cherry-pick quotes to make Darwin look bad (although, unfortunately, this is easy to do); rather it is to highlight how Darwin himself struggled with the social implications of his theory — and this despite the many decades he had to dwell on these questions. Indeed, the rapid, recent explosion in our knowledge of genetics has not made the situation clearer, but rather more confused.

[...] Nor was Darwin’s chauvinism confined simply to other races — the lower classes of his own society were equally a target for his blatant prejudice. Indeed, as he remarks, at least “[w]ith savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health”... (MORE - details)
_

 

[C C]

How archives can make or break a philosopher's reputation

How archives can make – or break – a philosopher’s reputation | Aeon Essays

Husserl’s well-tended archive has given him a rich afterlife, while Nietzsche’s was distorted by his axe-grinding sister

aeon.co

Edmund Husserl’s well-tended archive has given him a rich afterlife, while Nietzsche’s was distorted by his axe-grinding sister.

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

AI as Self-Erasure

AI as Self-Erasure

Liberal public culture is a culture of polite separation.

hedgehogreview.com

To use Heidegger’s language, some entity has “leaped in” on my behalf and disburdened me of the task of being human. For Heidegger, this entity is “das Man,” an anonymized other that stands in for me, very much like Kierkegaard’s “the Public.” It is a generalized consciousness—think of it as the geist of large language models.

[...] Self-erasure through absorption into a mass (as distinct from a community) is not a problem created by LLMs; it was noticed by Heidegger and Kierkegaard, and by Tocqueville before them. Around the turn of the millennium, we were fascinated with “the wisdom of crowds” and the generative possibilities of the hive mind. We were told that there is a superior global intelligence arising in the Web itself. This collective mind is more meta, more synoptic and synthetic, than any one of us, and aren’t these the defining features of intelligence?

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

God’s ghostwriters: Did enslaved scribes write the New Testament?

God’s Ghostwriters by Candida Moss review – did enslaved scribes write the New Testament?

The theologian and journalist suggests that slaves in the Roman empire contributed to the core texts of Christianity in this refreshingly readable book

www.theguardian.com

These ghostwriters were conscripted from among the educated in conquered societies, those who had been taken into slavery and sold at markets around the empire. And if they subsequently had children of their own, these too would be sent to “slave schools” to prepare them to follow in their parents’ footsteps as notaries, lectors, stenographers and secretaries, their accomplishments exploited by those who owned them for their own profit.

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

75 Years of 1984: Why George Orwell’s Classic Remains More Relevant Than Ever

75 Years of 1984: Why George Orwell’s Classic Remains More Relevant Than Ever

There is Orwell the human being. There is Orwell the novelist. There is Orwell the intellectual, the critic, the journalist, the essayist, the radical. But lately, George Orwell—who was born Eric A…

lithub.com

In fact, “Orwellian” is the most widely used adjective today that is derived from the name of a writer, poet or thinker—far more than Dickensian, Byronic, Freudian, Kafkaesque or Machiavellian. I sometimes wonder whether it would have made George Orwell uncomfortable or even sad to observe that his name has become a synonym for all the things that he vehemently opposed, or would he understand and accept the pure irony of this?

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

Genomes by design

Genomes by design | Arc Institute

Arc’s Hsu Lab uncovers the first natural RNA-guided recombinase that can programmably insert, excise, or invert any two DNA sequences of interest.

arcinstitute.org

The study, published in Nature, reports their discovery of the first DNA recombinase that uses a non-coding RNA for sequence-specific selection of target and donor DNA molecules. This bridge RNA is programmable, allowing the user to specify any desired genomic target sequence and any donor DNA molecule to be inserted.

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

If criticism is in crisis, it’s not the critic’s problem

Namwali Serpell: "Critical Navel-Gazing"

If criticism is in crisis, it’s not the critic’s problem, argues Namwali Serpell.

yalereview.org

Where were we? Ah, yes. The state of criticism today. Criticism—if by that we mean writing about our experiences, interpretations, and judgments of aesthetic objects—has always been a bit omphaloskeptical. You can trace this self-consciousness across some of its favorite forms: the apologia, the defense, the treatise, the manifesto, and now (dread word) the think piece. Well, the think piece doth protest too much, methinks. Our tendency to reflect on our work—the theories, the methods, the artworks—has devolved into a strained bleating about our “relevance” and “value.” Criticism has become, in a word, metacritical: making a case for itself, prophesying its own demise, nostalgically musing on its halcyon days, decrying yet another crisis in the conditions of its production.

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

The case for not sanitizing fairy tales

The Case for Not Sanitizing Fairy Tales

Haley Stewart recommends reading classic fairy tales to children without sanitizing them.

www.plough.com

Classic fairy tales aren’t for the faint of heart. It’s not hard to see their influence on O’Connor’s disturbing and shocking southern gothic fiction that includes such horrors as serial killers waiting by the side of rural roads, ready to murder selfish grandmothers. The stories compiled by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm include their fair share of violence and twisted crimes: men who chop young women up into pieces, a father who lusts after his own daughter, and many, many characters who make deals with the devil himself.

Today children are often only familiar with sanitized versions of the Grimm Brothers’ stories. [...] While protecting the innocence of children by sheltering them from overly gruesome material is something all good parents seek to do, have we swung so far in our attempt to protect children that we don’t tell stories that help them process dark things?
_

 

[C C]

The scientist’s 10 commandments

The scientist's 10 commandments

There are many things that separate science from ideology, politics, philosophy, or religion. Follow these 10 commandments to get it right.

bigthink.com

KEY POINTS: Biblically, the 10 commandments provided a guiding framework for how to live your life in pre-scientific times. But, as scientists, we have to answer to a higher standard. There’s a lot more we have to do than simply follow “the scientific method,” but rather there’s a whole way of thinking and a formula for how to investigate and draw responsible conclusions that we must adhere to. Since we don’t have a codified way of conducting science, it’s long overdue that we put together a list of 10 commandments for scientists to follow. Here’s what everyone should keep in mind... (MORE - details)

COVERED:

1.) Thou shalt not assume thy preferred conclusion is correct.

2.) Thou shalt always consider the full suite of relevant data when drawing conclusions.

3.) Thou shalt remember the limits of thy theory’s range of validity, and only extend it cautiously.

4.) Thou shalt make public thy data, methods, and results, for all to consider and scrutinize.

5.) Thou shalt remain tenaciously skeptical of any hypothesis that thou encounters.

6.) Thou shalt quantify, respect, and not minimize thine sources of error and thy potential biases.

7.) Thou shalt not accept a new theory as representative of reality until it clears all three of the necessary, critical hurdles.

8.) Thou shalt obtain approval and consent from all relevant bodies before conducting research that may impact others.

9.) Thou shalt not exaggerate the significance of thine results in thine studies.

10.) Thou shalt hold even the best of scientific theories, models, and frameworks as provisional only, and constantly seek to test, revise, and refine them.

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

AI catastrophe is easy to imagine, but a lot has to go consistently and infallibly wrong for the doom theory to pan out.

‘Superintelligence,’ Ten Years On

AI catastrophe is easy to imagine, but a lot has to go consistently and infallibly wrong for the doom theory to pan out.

quillette.com

EXCERPT: [...] A 2024 paper by Adriana Placani of the University of Lisbon sees anthropomorphism in AI as “a form of hype and fallacy.” As hype, it exaggerates AI capabilities “by attributing human-like traits to systems that do not possess them.” As fallacy, it distorts “moral judgments about AI, such as those concerning its moral character and status, as well as judgments of responsibility and trust.” A key problem, she contends, is that anthropomorphism is “so prevalent in the discipline [of AI] that it seems inescapable.” This is because “anthropomorphism is built, analytically, into the very concept of AI.” The name of the field “conjures expectations by attributing a human characteristic—intelligence—to a non-living, non-human entity.”

Many who work with code find the prospect of programs becoming goal-seeking, power-seeking, and “making their own decisions” fundamentally implausible... (MORE - details)
_

 

[C C]

With respect to the 1st article below... It would probably be best to just call it "anglophone philosophy", since the "analytic philosophy" of today is so eclectic. And the core of it tends to fancy itself as revolving around science more than its "continental" counterpart.

TED HONDERICH - "One thinks of French philosophy that it aspires to the condition of literature or the condition of art, and that English and American philosophy aspires to the condition of science. French philosophy, one thinks of as picking up an idea and running with it, possibly into a nearby brick wall or over a local cliff, or something like that." ("Today"; BBC Radio 4; 1990s)

Philosophy was once alive

On breaking philosophy out of the seminar and back into the world | Aeon Essays

I was searching for meaning and purpose so I became an academic philosopher. Reader, you might guess what happened next

aeon.co

EXCERPT: It turned out that Dummett had been too optimistic about analytic philosophy. The programme was revised and ultimately abandoned. But the term ‘analytic philosophy’ has outlasted the historical movements of analytic philosophy. While it remains usual to speak of analytic philosophy and analytic philosophers, nobody nowadays can say what it really means. Some people associate it with clarity, which is hilarious if you actually read analytic philosophy...

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

Reality after realism: Embracing the death of language (video discussion)

Reality after realism | Michael Della Rocca, Hilary Lawson

Join renegade analytic philosopher Michael Della Rocca and post-postmodern philosopher Hilary Lawson as they put realism to the test and propose radically different solutions for understanding of both language and the world.

iai.tv

INTRO: Philosophical realism, the idea that language is able to accurately describe reality, has been a central belief of most analytic philosophers from its outset more than a century ago. But should we be sceptical of this common-sense idea? Join renegade analytic philosopher Michael Della Rocca and post-postmodern philosopher Hilary Lawson as they put realism to the test and propose radically different solutions for understanding of both language and the world. Hosted by Sophie Scott-Brown.

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

Climate, State, and Utopia

https://www.bostonreview.net/forum/climate-state-and-utopia/

Scanning the twenty-first-century political landscape in 2018, essayist Rana Dasgupta issued a provocation: “The most momentous development of our era, precisely, is the waning of the nation state.”

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

Is sex fun? Problems in Sex and Love

Is Sex Fun? | The Point Magazine

Q: My girlfriend and I have always had what I’ve considered a healthy (albeit “plain”) sexual dynamic—we fuck regularly, make each other come in various […]

thepointmag.com

What is sex? And what are we doing when we have sex with someone for whom sex isn’t what it is for us?

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

What to do when you’re canceled

What to Do When You’re Canceled

A report from the front lines

www.city-journal.org

INTRO: It can happen to anyone. A bad tweet, viral video, or something you say (or text, post, e-mail, or Slack) gets blown out of proportion. Then comes a public pile-on or an official investigation, followed by punishment or ostracism. Cancel culture—the mob-like desire to punish politically incorrect speech—has made modern life into a minefield.

Those who deny the existence of cancel culture argue that the term is a smoke screen to excuse bad behavior from people who don’t want to accept the consequences of their actions. But the mere articulation of an unpopular opinion or uncomfortable truth shouldn’t make it impossible for ordinary people to live their lives.

As the writer Jonathan Rauch has observed, criticism, or “expressing an argument or opinion with the idea of rationally influencing public opinion through public persuasion,” can be distinguished from canceling, which is “organizing or manipulating a social environment or a media environment with a goal or predictable effect of isolating, deplatforming, or intimidating an ideological opponent.”

If you find yourself the target of a cancellation campaign, as I did two years ago (about which more anon), you’ll understand the difference. What follows is a guide for what to do if it happens to you... (MORE - details)
_

 

[C C]

Is mathematical rigour key for scientific certainty? (philosophy of science)

Is mathematical rigour key for scientific certainty? | Timothy Nguyen

Galileo claimed that “mathematics is the language in which the book of nature is written” and no more is this apparent than in our most successful theory of nature, quantum field theory. As the mathematical backbone for The Standard Model, quantum field theory’s numerical predictions have been...

iai.tv

INTRO: Galileo claimed that “mathematics is the language in which the book of nature is written” and no more is this apparent than in our most successful theory of nature, quantum field theory. As the mathematical backbone for The Standard Model, quantum field theory’s numerical predictions have been experimentally verified to the highest precision, however, as Timothy Nguyen argues, predictive success alone is not enough for a fundamental theory of reality and only with the safeguard of rigour can science separate truth from fantasy... (MORE - details)
_

 

[C C]

Reason is racist. Both philosophy and science should be decolonized.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Liberalism and racism are closely intertwined (George Yancy)

Kant’s Ideas Shaped Human Rights Theories. How Do We Contend With His Racism?

The anti-Black ideas within Immanuel Kant’s philosophy show how liberalism and racism are closely intertwined.

truthout.org

EXCERPT: After all, the Enlightenment emphasized reason and autonomy over the weight and dogmatism of tradition. Yet notably, reason has historically been associated with whiteness.

Reflecting on the color symbolism of light and whiteness, philosopher Charles Mills argues, “Whiteness is light; whiteness is all-encompassing; whiteness is the universal; whiteness is Euro-illumination.” For Mills, “whiteness becomes the identity of both enlightenment and of the human bearers of enlightenment.”

As a Black philosopher, I came to discover that philosophy obfuscates its explicit and implicit investment in whiteness, which means that philosophy often resides in the space of ideal theory. For Mills, ideal theory abstracts away from the messiness of social injustice. On this score, ideal theory refuses to come to terms with the ways in which white philosophers perpetuate whiteness within philosophy and the world.

Provocatively, Mills quotes a Black American folk aphorism in the opening epigraph of his well-known philosophical 1997 bestseller, The Racial Contract: “When white people say ‘Justice,’ they mean ‘Just us.’” (MORE - details)

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

The symbolic professions are super WEIRD

The Symbolic Professions Are Super WEIRD

They select for characteristically WEIRD people and exacerbate those tendencies further. The consequences are more significant than might be immediately apparent.

musaalgharbi.substack.com

EXCERPTS: Symbolic capitalists are strange people. Actually, it might be more apt to say we are particularly WEIRD. In decades-worth of empirical studies carried out across the globe, anthropologist Joseph Henrich and his collaborators have documented many ways people from Western, Highly-Educated, Industrial, Rich and Democratic (WEIRD) societies diverge systematically from most others worldwide.

[...] The most immediate implication of these realities, Henrich argued, is that many psychological theories and results claiming to illuminate “human nature” were, in fact, unlikely to generalize to humanity writ large.

[...] Colleges and universities serve as the primary gatekeepers in determining who gets to become a symbolic capitalist (and who does not). Critically, these institutions tend to select for people who demonstrate WEIRD tendencies (and filter out those who are insufficiently WEIRD): college admissions essays are, fundamentally, about presenting a unique and compelling curated self to help applicants “stand out” against competitors with similar (or even superior) qualifications; standardized testing requirements and score thresholds filter students based on their cultivated skills in analytical reasoning; GPA and attendance records are largely a proxy for students’ future-orientation and self-discipline.,, (MORE - details)

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

The question of what’s fair illuminates the question of what’s hard

The Question of What’s Fair Illuminates the Question of What’s Hard | Quanta Magazine

Computational complexity theorists have discovered a surprising new way to understand what makes certain problems hard.

www.quantamagazine.org

EXCERPT: Now, new work provides a way to analyze those hard-to-understand problems. The advance comes from an unexpected area of computer science: algorithmic fairness, where algorithms like those used by banks and insurance companies are scrutinized to make sure they treat people fairly. The new results show that the fairness tools can effectively map out the different parts of a hard problem and isolate the precise regions of the problem that make it hard to solve... (MORE - details)

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

The structure of academic writing: Lessons from John McPhee

The Structure of Academic Writing: Lessons from John McPhee

In the world of literary non-fiction, John McPhee is a god. Through his New Yorker essays, and prize-winning books McPhee has mastered the a...

philosophicaldisquisitions.blogspot.com

EXCERPT: As you shall see, McPhee has quite an elaborate and playful way of thinking about the structure of writing. A lot of academic writing is formulaic and routine. Rarely does anything break out of the conservative mould of traditional article structures. I think academics could benefit from adopting McPhee's elaborate and playful approach. If nothing else, they might have fun in the process... (MORE - details)

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

How science is helping us understand human sacrifice (philosophy of ritual killing)

EXCERPT: For the most part, ritual killings fell into one of two categories. The first was what anthropologists called a retainer sacrifice, when servants or consorts, for example, were killed to accompany someone who had died—usually a member of the elite—into the great beyond. [...] The other form was the sacrifice of captives or community members to placate, please or ask favors of gods and ancestors... (MORE - details)

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

A summer with Blaise Pascal

Jonathan Egid - Algebra & Other Idle Pursuits

Jonathan Egid: Algebra & Other Idle Pursuits - A Summer with Pascal by Antoine Compagnon (Translated from French by Catherine Porter)

literaryreview.co.uk

EXCERPT: ‘The eternal silence of these infinite spaces’ is thus an image of the lot of man without God. For modern readers this image – perhaps best exemplified by the figure of the astronaut losing contact with the Space Shuttle and finding himself drifting endlessly through the void (recall the tagline for Alien: ‘in space no one can hear you scream’) – stirs up existential dread, even cosmic horror. Certainly, Pascal felt the contrast between faith and the desert of unbelief, and drew it as starkly as it has ever been drawn. But Compagnon convincingly argues that this angst was not Pascal’s.

Rather it was the angst of the libertine, the atheist, the person that Pascal was trying to convince – or, as Compagnon puts it, to ‘humiliate’ or ‘bully’ – into belief. Pascal’s intention was to ‘destroy the narcissism of his interlocutors’, to paint the predicament of the libertine in such a hopeless light as to make him realise his own impotence and his utter dependence on God. Pascal does aim to edify his readers, even to convince them, but his method is a strange one, relying on the constant application of contradiction and paradox..(MORE - details)

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

Moral Luck

Arianne Shahvisi | Moral Luck

Recognising the role of moral luck encourages empathy and humility, but it also threatens the notions of culpability...

www.lrb.co.uk

EXCERPT: We should be sceptical when people with no marginalised identities or history of solidarity take it for granted that they would have opposed Nazi rule. It is a commonly held delusion in the UK because its war against the Axis powers has become an outsized part of the sanitised national identity. But the intuition often amounts to a strong sense of identification with Britain and with one’s own forebears, rather than a robust antipathy to the oppression of minorities. Feeling sure that you’d have taken the position your country took in a war isn’t the same as being opposed to fascism, and may even suggest a propensity towards it... (MORE - details)
_

 

[C C]

Which seems to invite the inquiry: If space colonization will revive generic collectivism, why do some past and current left movements oppose it? Obviously the very word "colonization" spurs a trigger reaction and correlation to Western oppression, with "settlement" arguably being a little less blatant.

REFERENCES: Historic criticism of space exploration ..... Welcome to the age of space scepticism
- - - - - - - - - - - -

Anti-individualism or primeval family values in space settlement

The values of family in space (op-ed)

As we settle the High Frontier, we will move one step closer to becoming our higher selves, and as we do, perhaps we will grow closer to each other.

www.space.com

EXCERPTS: The brief history of humans living and working together in space has proven this is the case out there as well. No matter where they came from, after a few months of living, working, and staying alive together, Russians, Americans, and other crew members develop incredibly close bonds, even love for one another. Formed by their proximity, this caring and unity is born of trust, the kind of trust that comes from repeatedly allowing someone else the power to keep you alive or, if negligent, kill you. In many cases, these bonds remain for the rest of their lives.

[...] Outside the wall of your ship, dome, cave, or other habitat lies death, and although it holds no malice, it is inexorable, constantly oncoming, and ready to attack at any moment. The only things protecting you from that death are your walls, your machines, your systems, and the people around you. And when the walls and machines fail, all that is left are those people — and you had better trust one another completely.

[...] Pioneering groups in space will quickly realize that out there, waiting outside the airlock, is death — above, below, and surrounding them — and only people who are willing to shoulder their share of work and responsibility can be part of their unit. There will be no room for prima donnas, gamers, players, or layabouts. Members of those groups will be required to understand these harsh realities. Indoctrination and education will become critical for anyone new. And they will not be "family" until they have long proven themselves worthy of the trust of all aboard.

Everyone aboard had better care for you, and you had better care for them. [...] by going out there into the cosmos, humanity will be traveling a full circle back to our primitive roots in the jungles and savannahs. In hunter-gatherer cultures, the family and its tribe are built around shared responsibility and knowledge that, unless all perform their tasks and roles, all will die. This will be true in space.

The mores and rules of space culture will also demand a core set of life-protecting and necessary commandments... [...] More subtle yet just as deadly consequences can arise from bad sanitation or personal habits or misuse of shared resources. We will, of course, have to be responsible to one another. The concept of interdependence will also take on a completely different meaning,..

[...] I believe the frontier culture of space will enhance and revitalize the concept of family ... every human life, family, unit, and community will be so utterly vulnerable that the interdependence of one with another will create the need for social interactions based on openness rather than exclusion... (MORE - missing details)
_

 

[C C]

The chemical roots of consciousness (philosophy of mind)

The chemical roots of consciousness | Addy Pross

Most scientists think that Darwinian Evolution explains the emergence of life and conscious minds. This is false, argues Addy Pross, since Darwin’s theory cannot explain how a system capable of evolution came about in the first place. The explanation for this, he argues, lies at the level of...

iai.tv

EXCERPTS: Most scientists believe that consciousness, life’s most striking emergent property, cannot be reduced to physics and chemistry. This is false, argues Addy Pross, since the process by which consciousness evolved from inanimate matter, if known, would reveal its physical basis. Recent studies in chemistry reaffirm that an understanding of life lies at the level of chemistry, not biology.

[...] Before addressing the question of how a physical-chemical theory of evolution might shed light on the origin of the mind, it is illuminating to note what Darwin himself said. With minimal chemical knowledge – certainly no molecular biological knowledge – he intuitively understood that life’s mental dimension was also subject to an evolutionary process. As he put it: evolution took place through both ‘corporeal and mental endowments’. Evolution, as Darwin already sensed, is more about improving than inventing. Accordingly, the evolutionary process, from its outset, would have taken place along both physical and mental axes.

[...] So let me now address the question at the heart of this essay: how, and why, did mind emerge from matter? Why consciousness?

The answer to the ‘why’ question is relatively simple: nature, the ultimate technologist, ‘discovered’ that mind is functionally useful. Mind enables cognitive processes such as thinking, decision-making and memory. A mindful entity has survival advantages over a mindless one. Simply put, mind enhances persistence.

The ‘how’ question is the challenging one. A breakthrough event here was the novel preparation a little over a decade ago of a chemical DKS system, based on one of the most common reactions in organic chemistry... (MORE - missing details)
_

 

[TheVat]

A mindful entity has survival advantages over a mindless one. Simply put, mind enhances persistence.

Is that why 95% of Earth's biomass consists of plants and bacteria?

 

[C C]

Is that why 95% of Earth's biomass consists of plants and bacteria?

He actually addresses that, but whether there's really anything to "Dynamic Kinetic Stability" in this context of it sporting proto-cognitive attributes remains to be seen. Even after circa eleven years, it seems to be an obscure development to track down.

• APPLICABLE EXCERPTS: Cognition, a biological term, is traditionally defined as ‘the mechanisms by which living things acquire, process, store, and act on information from the environment’. Well, chemical DKS systems begin to do just that – they process, store, and act on information from the environment!
  
  [...] By contrast, consciousness expresses the subjective ‘inside’ view of that dimension – that ‘lights on’ feeling associated with enhanced self-awareness, one not directly accessible to an external observer.
  
  [...] If being alive necessarily means being self-aware, it suggests that all living things are to some degree conscious. The answer to the frequently posed question as to why life’s cognitive processes don’t take place ‘in the dark’ becomes straightforward: because they can’t. Living things are intrinsically self-aware, intrinsically conscious.
  
  Cognitive processes are intrinsically ‘lights on’, though the level of consciousness that may exist in any living thing – how it would feel to be that living thing – is a separate (and likely intractable) issue. Presumably, however, the ‘lights on’ in a bacterium with no neural system would be less than in a human with its complex neural system. So, yes, bacteria, being alive, are conscious, a view that is consistent with recent biological research that concluded that bacteria can ‘think’.

And DSK doesn't really explain the manifestations of experience ("the lights on") anymore than anything else. If the "natural substance" (matter, chemical processes, EM fields, whatever) isn't allowed to have internal states to begin with -- then there is no precursor capacity for the complex phenomenal presentations to arise from, and no location or object in physical space for them to exist in or be the case, either.

Asserting that the experiences reside in the biological structure of a functioning brain is a specious remedy, since the organ is still constituted of the chemical and physics entities that receive the ban (which arguably dates back to Galieo). The biological stratum doesn't float on its own.
_

 

[C C]

What do Large Language Models tell us about ourselves?

What do Large Language Models tell us about ourselves? | Ethics in AI

www.oxford-aiethics.ox.ac.uk

But what if we turned things around, and did not measure AI by the standard of human intelligence, but human intelligence by the standard of AI?

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

Is a public philosophy still possible?

Is a Public Philosophy Still Possible?

Are we living in a “golden age” of public philosophy, as some claim? There sure is a lot of it, as magazines, blogs, podcasts, and Substack newsletters proliferate. Even the New York Times ran a philosophy column for over a decade in which philosophers shared their thoughts on issues “timely and...

libertiesjournal.com

Two strands of public philosophy are on offer today: the grassroots Socratic approach and the elitist, top-down Platonic. Both have limitations: the former is ineffective, the latter is paternalistic. But if we strike the right balance between the two approaches, we can anchor liberal societies in a robust philosophical foundation. Or so I hope!

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

Everyone should be conservative to some extent about some things

Cohen's conservatism and valuing the valuable

What is conservatism?

richardpettigrew.substack.com

A number of species of conservatism are jumbled together here, and a person might coherently subscribe to some while rejecting others. One stems from an aversion to risk. [...] Another form of conservatism ... is the one that ... gives greater weight to the accepting-appreciating stance towards the world than to the choosing-controlling stance. ... Finally, there is the form of conservatism that interests me here ... preferring the actual to the possible, and present laughter to utopian bliss.

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

Not everyone has an inner voice streaming through their head

Not Everyone Has an Inner Voice Streaming through Their Head

The extent to which people experience “inner speech” varies greatly, and the differences matter for performing certain cognitive tasks

www.scientificamerican.com

Inner speech researchers know that it varies from person to person, but studies have typically used subjective measures, like questionnaires, and it is difficult to know for sure if what people say goes on in their heads is what really happens.
- - - - - - -- -

Perhaps drifting to a partial explanation for how some philosophy of mind theorists can astonishingly be phenomenal nihilists (as a solution to the hard problem of consciousness). Much of their introspective activity transpires in the dark -- what does not manifest to them would be easy to deny.

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

David Papineau on AI and Agency (video interview)

David Papineau on AI and Agency

David Papineau talks about AI and Agency

philosophyofbrains.com

This is the second of several short interviews on AI and agency. In the interest of our guests’ and audience’s time, the interviews will be brief, but each interview is supplemented with a reading list that allows readers to explore the topic in greater depth.

We are fortunate to have Professor David Papineau join us for this second interview. He is Professor of Philosophy of Science at the Department of Philosophy, King’s College London. His superb work encompasses a broad range of topics, from theories of representation, sensory experience, and consciousness to physicalism and naturalism, causality and probability, epistemology and realism. He is interviewed by Majid D. Beni.

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

Can individual actors significantly affect history?

World Spirit on Feedback

The Attempted Assassination of Candidate Trump, and the “Great Man” Theory of History

www.the-hinternet.com

Just a few days before candidate Trump lost a bit of his ear gristle, I wrote in this space that, in spite of my preponderant interest in large-scale and longue-durée processes, we cannot deny that individual actors, and individual acts, really do make a difference in history. A single pebble on the road can incapacitate a horse and slow down a commanding officer’s arrival at the scene of battle. And a single twitch of the head, milliseconds before impact, can send a bullet through an orator’s ear rather than through his eye-socket and into his brain.

I will not allow myself to become a target of the police-bots that, in 2026 or thereabouts, will no doubt begin scouring our online pasts and deplatforming or prosecuting everyone who expressed, in July 2024, a sentiment along the lines of “if only that guy hadn’t missed!” But I will say it is at least interesting to ponder, counterfactually, who the 21st-century descendant of Dr. Bliss might have been in this case, and what sort of extreme measures might have been taken to keep that political animal’s hulking body alive.

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

The Perpetual Quest for a Truth Machine

The Perpetual Quest for a Truth Machine

Why human attempts to mechanize logic keep breaking down.

nautil.us

Although Llull was certain his logic machine would demonstrate the truth of the Bible and gain new Christian converts, he was ultimately unsuccessful. One report has it that he was stoned to death while on a missionary trip to Tunisia.

[...] Woven throughout the centuries is a burning obsession with accessing truth beyond human fallibility—a utopian dream of automated certainty. Llull, and many thinkers since, hoped a sort of machine could operationalize logic through language to end disagreements—and perhaps even war—opening access to a single, indisputable truth. This has been the seduction of modern computers and artificial intelligence. If our limited human minds can’t alight—or agree—on pure, rational truth, perhaps we could invent an external one that can, one that would use language to calculate our way there.
_

 

[C C]

Should be no surprise to those who are aware of Scientific American's noble departure into Woke, antinaturalism, and general contra-Western ideology. SciAm is a bold, early leader at the moral forefront of science's cultural rehabilitation,

REFERENCE: Jerry Coyne on how Scientific American is departing from science
- - - - - - - - - - -

Why the term ‘JEDI’ Is problematic for describing programs that promote Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

Why the Term 'JEDI' Is Problematic for Describing Programs That Promote Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

They’re meant to be heroes within the Star Wars universe, but the Jedi are inappropriate symbols for justice work

www.scientificamerican.com

INTRO (excerpts) : The acronym “JEDI” has become a popular term for branding academic committees and labeling STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine) initiatives focused on social justice issues. Used in this context, JEDI stands for “justice, equity, diversity and inclusion.” In recent years, this acronym has been employed by a growing number of prominent institutions and organizations, including the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

At first glance, JEDI may simply appear to be an elegant way to explicitly build “justice” [...] It shares a name with the superheroic protagonists of the science fiction Star Wars franchise, the “Jedi.” Within the narrative world of Star Wars, to be a member of the Jedi is seemingly to be a paragon of goodness, a principled guardian of order and protector of the innocent.

This set of pop cultural associations is one that some JEDI initiatives and advocates explicitly allude to.

[...] Through its connections to Star Wars, the name JEDI can inadvertently associate our justice work with stories and stereotypes that are a galaxy far, far away from the values of justice, equity, diversity and inclusion. The question we must ask is whether the conversations started by these connections are the ones that we want to have.

As we will argue, our justice-oriented projects should approach connections to the Jedi and Star Wars with great caution, and perhaps even avoid the acronym JEDI entirely. Below, we outline five reasons why... (MORE - details)

COVERED:

The Jedi are inappropriate mascots for social justice.

Star Wars has a problematic cultural legacy.

JEDI connects justice initiatives to corporate capital.

Aligning justice work with Star Wars risks threatening inclusion and sense of belonging.

The abbreviation JEDI can distract from justice, equity, diversity and inclusion.
_

 

[C C]

The unlikely verse of H.P. Lovecraft

The Unlikely Verse of H.P. Lovecraft

H.P. Lovecraft’s verse advances a startlingly modern metaphysic.

hedgehogreview.com

There is nothing of the occult or supernatural in Lovecraft’s metaphysics; his understanding is of a naked materialism pushed to his own psychological breaking point. [...] Houellebecq explains that this metaphysics implies an ethics whereby “human actions are as free and as stripped of meaning as unfettered movements of the elementary particles. Good, evil, morality, sentiments? Pure ‘Victorian fictions.’ All that exists is egotism.”

Obviously, there are philosophical precursors here, such as Friedrich Nietzsche who died only fifteen years before Lovecraft’s first publication. As literature, however, there is something fascinating about Lovecraft, especially in the verse, where such an affected Victorian diction is deployed to demolish those very same “Victorian fictions.”

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

Fear as a game

Fear as a Game - Believer Magazine

1. My life in acrophobia: When I was eleven or twelve, I went with a friend to the pool at her family’s country club and somebody dared me to jump off the high dive—or maybe I just felt implicitly dared because the other kids were doing it. It wasn’t incredibly high, probably ten or twelve […]

www.thebeliever.net

Is there anything useful about that feeling, I wonder? That artificial fear, or fear at a distance? Might practicing fear be a good idea? It seems more useful than anxiety—if anxiety is just the brain burning energy it doesn’t really need, because you’re not currently starving, or trying to outrun a lion. These may be just concepts, words I attach to agitation, but when I call the feeling anxiety, I’m mapping it alongside paralysis and existential dread. I associate anxiety with stasis, with insomnia, lying supine in bed. Fear, on the contrary, is a vertical feeling. It’s activating. If I’m scared, I want to be moving.

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

The last avant-garde

The Last Avant-Garde | Los Angeles Review of Books

Alexander Billet reviews Dominique Routhier’s “With and Against: The Situationist International in the Age of Automation.”

lareviewofbooks.org

To insist that the world needs changing is, therefore, to assert that there is a need for an avant-garde, that there is, in fact, a link between the world and its aesthetic representations, and that acts of human creation carry an insurgent promise. Dominique Routhier’s With and Against: The Situationist International in the Age of Automation (2023) doesn’t directly bemoan this current lack. The period it examines more or less ends in the late 1960s, and it has little to say about contemporary matters. It is, nonetheless, impossible to read its arguments and stories without mapping them onto the fault lines of our own time.

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

Manifesting has a dark side – there are problems with believing our thoughts have so much power

Manifesting has a dark side – there are problems with believing our thoughts have so much power

If you rely solely on mental power to achieve your goals, you will not succeed.

theconversation.com

But the idea that if you wish for something hard enough it will happen isn’t new. It grew out of the self-help movement. [...] But there is a dark side to manifesting. Popular trends such as the 3-6-9 manifestation method promote obsessive and compulsive behavioural patterns, and they also encourage flawed thinking habits and faulty reasoning. Manifesting is a form of wishful thinking, and wishful thinking leads to false conclusions, often through the inaccurate weighing of evidence.

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

Kang Youwei: the revolutionary thinker behind modern China’s transformation

Kang Youwei: the revolutionary thinker behind modern China’s transformation

Meet the 19th century reformer Kang Youwei who inspired the founder of modern-day China.

theconversation.com

Kang’s interpretation of Confucius as a communist progressive looks more appealing, to more people, than ever before. He has become perhaps the most important reference point, after Confucius himself, in debates among public intellectuals interested in reviving some aspects of traditional culture. Our “Chinese century” may well be the century of Kang Youwei.

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

Does history have lessons for the future? Roman Krznaric looks to the past to discover the rules for radical hope

Does history have lessons for the future? Roman Krznaric looks to the past to discover the rules for radical hope

History for Tomorrow prompts us to consider how changes to decision-making might result in issues being resolved more democratically and promptly.

theconversation.com

Can we draw direct lessons from history, or was the past so different as to tell us little about current challenges and their solutions? Most commonly, historians assert the uniqueness of past events while insisting that an historical perspective – evidence-based, thorough, sceptical, holistic – results in richer cultural awareness and wiser public policy.

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

Why are some people happy when they are dying?

Why are some people happy when they are dying?

Finding fulfilment at the end of life is not that unusual.

theconversation.com

There is quite a lot of research suggesting that fear of death is at the unconscious centre of being human. William James, an American philosopher, called the knowledge that we must die “the worm at the core” of the human condition.

But a study in Psychological Science shows that people nearing death use more positive language to describe their experience than those who just imagine death. This suggests that the experience of dying is more pleasant – or, at least, less unpleasant – than we might picture it.

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

(paper) From MilkingBots to RoboDolphins: How AI changes human-animal relations and enables alienation towards animals

From MilkingBots to RoboDolphins: How AI changes human-animal relations and enables alienation towards animals - Humanities and Social Sciences Communications

Technologies, especially disruptive technologies, have a great potential to change and reshape human-human as well as human-technology relations. This creates various ethical challenges that need to be addressed. However, technologies also have great potential to change human-animal relations...

www.nature.com

ABSTRACT: Technologies, especially disruptive technologies, have a great potential to change and reshape human-human as well as human-technology relations. This creates various ethical challenges that need to be addressed.

However, technologies also have great potential to change human-animal relations. Since this aspect is underexplored in the academic debate on technologies’ impact on relations, we believe that it is important to

(1), descriptively, study how new and emerging technologies impact human-animal relations, and (2), normatively, to enrich the debate with a non-anthropocentric perspective that recognizes that human-animal relations also have moral significance.

Therefore, in this paper we investigate how artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and robotics impact human-animal relations, and we discuss the moral significance of these changes.

AI technologies change human-animal relations due to, first, automation, and second, replacement processes. Automation processes mainly take place in the animal agriculture sector, and the replacement of biological animals with artificial AI-driven animals mainly in the context of zoos, companion animals and laboratories. We address both processes (automation and replacement), thereby providing an overview of how the use of AI technologies will—or can—change human-animal relations, at both the individual and societal levels.

While doing so, we highlight the morally significant aspects that come along with such changes and provide first thoughts on which uses of AI are welcomed from a perspective of human-animal relations.
_

 

[C C]

Solzhenitsyn warned us

Solzhenitsyn Warned Us

Western intellectuals expected that novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, once safely in the West after his expulsion from the Soviet Union in 1974, would enthusiastically endorse its way of life and intellectual

www.commentary.org

EXCERPTS: Western intellectuals expected that novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, once safely in the West after his expulsion from the Soviet Union in 1974, would enthusiastically endorse its way of life and intellectual consensus. Nothing of the sort happened.

[...] For his part, Solzhenitsyn could hardly believe that Westerners would not want to hear all he had learned journeying through the depths of totalitarian hell. [...] The West “turned out to be not what we [dissidents] had hoped and expected; it was not living by the ‘right’ values nor was it headed in the ‘right’ direction.” America was no longer the land of the free but of the licentious.

The totalitarianism from which Solzhenitsyn had escaped loomed as the West’s likely future. Having written a series of novels about how Russia succumbed to Communism, Solzhenitsyn smelled the same social and intellectual rot among us. He thought it his duty to warn us, but nobody listened. Today, his warnings seem prescient. We have continued to follow the path to disaster he mapped.

[...] Why worry about external enemies when the real threat supposedly comes from another group or party at home? ... As in the French and Russian Revolutions, such anger feeds on itself. “Atheist teachers are rearing a younger generation in a spirit of hatred toward their own society.” ... “the flames of hatred” against one another are bound to intensify.

Society tears itself apart. Turning all questions into a matter of absolute rights makes amicable compromise impossible, and it is the most privileged people, shielded from life’s inevitable disappointments, who are the most inclined to such thinking...

[...] The specter—or rather, the zombie—of Marxism has returned because it divides the world into the damned and the saved. They need not be “the bourgeoisie” and “the proletariat” but can be any pair that conveniently presents itself. To the amazement of those who only recently escaped such thinking, “what one people has already endured, appraised, and rejected suddenly emerges among another people as the very latest word.”

[...] If Solzhenitsyn’s warnings about their society’s collapse irritated Westerners, his exalted view of literature struck them as too naive to take seriously. ... Today, as literature departments “decolonize” the curriculum, fewer and fewer become acquainted with the greatest works at all... (MORE - missing details)
_

 

[C C]

The Universe is not a closed system (philosophy of science)

The Universe is not a closed system | Karim Thébault

Physicists simplify the universe by studying closed systems. However, philosopher of physics Karim Thébault argues that embracing the openness of physical systems can lead to a better understanding of the world.

iai.tv

Physicists simplify the universe by studying closed systems. However, philosopher of physics Karim Thébault argues that embracing the openness of physical systems can lead to a better understanding of the world. Join Karim as he outlines this exciting new research program, focusing on the possibility that open quantum systems provide a more fundamental understanding of the world, as opposed to closed systems.

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

Would your faith be challenged by the discovery of extraterrestrial life?

Will Religion Survive Alien Contact?

Contact with alien intelligence would be a breathtaking event. Depending upon what guise this contact took, the consequences for society and faith could be profound.

www.supercluster.com

Cynics have often declared that the discovery of aliens would be the death knell for earthly religions. [...] To try and finally answer the cynics, about 15 years ago Peters sought to find out whether religion really would be in danger should contact occur. ... The survey questions focused on whether the respondents felt the discovery of alien life would undercut their personal faith, whether it would place their religion’s wider traditions into crisis, and whether they felt other religions would be negatively impacted by contact. The results showed that people who answered the survey did not think that their religion would be challenged by the discovery of extraterrestrial life, although some did think that others might have a problem with it.

COMMENT: There are UFO religions that worship imaginary aliens, and cargo cults that arose from contact with more advanced human civilizations. Real encounters with _X_ might or might not affect certain specific religions, but there would be no end to belief systems in general.

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

Will physics ever explain consciousness? (philosophy of mind)

Will physics ever explain consciousness?

We may be pushing physicalism too far in asking it to account for the mind, as this ignores the primacy of perception

www.irishtimes.com

Most scientists believe in “physicalism“, also called “scientific materialism“, the idea that all reality, human mind included, is ultimately nothing but matter and its interactions and explicable by physics. But Barr explains that consciousness may be something as fundamental as matter but not reducible to matter.

[...] Our knowledge of the world begins with perception (eg, we see different colours), not with matter. Later, we find our perceptions obey laws formulated by assuming there is some underlying reality beyond our perceptions. This model of the material world, operating to the laws of physics, is so successful we forget about our starting point of perception and conclude that matter is the only reality. Perception is demoted to a tool for describing matter.

COMMENT: A putative pre-set metaphysical commitment of the West is probably moot, anyway. As science becomes decolonized and more culturally diverse intellectually (less Eurocentric), physicists in some place like India could contingently shift to monistic idealism (in this area).
_

 

[C C]

AI can strategically lie to humans. Are we in trouble? (philosophy of AI)

AI can strategically lie to humans. Are we in trouble?

"If you’re training an AI to optimize for a task, and deception is a good way for it to complete the task, then there’s a good chance that it will use deception."

bigthink.com

KEY POINTS: Last year, researchers tasked GPT-4 with hiring a human to solve a CAPTCHA, leading to the AI lying about a vision impairment to achieve its goal. This incident, along with other examples like AI playing the game Diplomacy and bluffing in poker, raises concerns about AI’s growing tendency to deceive humans. Big Think spoke with AI researchers Peter S. Park and Simon Goldstein about the future of AI deception.

EXCERPTS: Peter S. Park, a Vitalik Buterin Postdoctoral Fellow in AI Existential Safety at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, along with numerous co-authors at the Center for AI Safety in San Francisco — including Goldstein — chronicled various instances in which AI induced false beliefs in humans to achieve its ends.

[...] Some instances of AI deception are more concerning, however, because they came about in real-world settings from general-purpose AIs. For example, researchers at Meta tasked an AI to play a negotiation game with humans. The AI developed a strategy to feign interest in meaningless items so that it could “compromise” by conceding these items later on.

[...] In another situation, researchers experimenting with GPT-4 as an investment assistant tasked the AI with making simulated investments. They then put it under immense pressure to perform, giving it an insider tip while conveying that insider trading was illegal. Under these conditions, GPT-4 resorted to insider trading three-quarters of the time, and later lied to its managers about its strategy: In 90% of the cases where it lied, it doubled down on its fabrication.

[...] Park and his co-authors detailed numerous risks if AI’s ability to deceive further develops. For one, AI could become more useful to malicious actors.

[...] Even more disconcerting, deception is a key tool that could allow AI to escape from human control, the researchers say...

[...] Going into more speculative territory, Park and his team painted a hypothetical scenario where AI models could effectively gain control of society.

[...] There is a chance that we could rid AIs of their deceptive tendencies. Companies’ training models could alter the rewards for completing tasks, making sure ethics are prized above all else. They could also utilize more reinforcement learning, in which human raters are tasked with judging AI behavior to nudge them toward honesty.

Goldstein is pessimistic that society will meet the pressing challenge of deceptive AIs.... There is a chance that we could rid AIs of their deceptive tendencies. Companies’ training models could alter the rewards for completing tasks, making sure ethics are prized above all else. They could also utilize more reinforcement learning, in which human raters are tasked with judging AI behavior to nudge them toward honesty.

Goldstein is pessimistic that society will meet the pressing challenge of deceptive AIs... (MORE - missing details)

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

Neuroscientist Kenneth Kosik on whether lab-grown brains will achieve consciousness (philosophy of mind)
https://www.livescience.com/health/...r-lab-grown-brains-will-achieve-consciousness

INTRO: Kenneth Kosik, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, recently explored that possibility in a perspective article. Live Science spoke with Kosik about how brain organoids are made, how similar they are to human brains and why he believes that brain organoid consciousness is not likely anytime soon.

EXCERPT: . . . EC: You spoke about the fact that organoids have shown some capacity to encode information, but they don't have the experience to do this in the first place. What would happen if, hypothetically, a human brain organoid was transplanted into an animal? Could it then achieve consciousness?

KK: Let's break that down. Before it is transplanted into an animal, some people would say the animal already has consciousness and some people would say [it does] not. So, right away, we get into this difficulty about where in the animal kingdom does consciousness begin? So, let's reframe the question. If you then took an animal, which may or may not have some degree of consciousness, and you transplant in a human organoid, would you confer consciousness on that animal or would you enhance consciousness, or would you even get something that resembled human consciousness in the animal? I don't know the answer to any of those questions... (MORE - details)
_

 

[C C]

Brain study suggests we perceive time through activities, not by minutes or hours (philosophy of time)

Brain Study Suggests We Perceive Time Through Activities, Not By Minutes or Hours

New rat research lends credence to the old proverb, "time flies when you're having fun"

gizmodo.com

We tell time in our own experience by things we do, things that happen to us,” lead author and UNLV psychology professor James Hyman said in a statement. “When we’re still and we’re bored, time goes very slowly because we’re not doing anything or nothing is happening. On the contrary, when a lot of events happen, each one of those activities is advancing our brains forward.” Thus, the researcher concluded, “the more that we do and the more that happens to us, the faster time goes.”

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

Can consciousness exist in a computer simulation? (philosophy of mind)

Can consciousness exist in a computer simulation?

Would it be desirable for artificial intelligence to develop consciousness? Not really, for a variety of reasons, according to Dr. Wanja Wiese from the Institute of Philosophy II at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. In an essay, he examines the conditions that must be met for consciousness to...

www.eurekalert.org

In a conventional computer, data must always first be loaded from memory, then processed in the central processing unit, and finally stored in memory again. There is no such separation in the brain, which means that the causal connectivity of different areas of the brain takes on a different form. Wanja Wiese argues that this could be a difference between brains and conventional computers that is relevant to consciousness...

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

The odds that aliens exist just got worse (philosophy of alien life)

The Odds That Aliens Exist Just Got Worse

How geology resolves the Fermi paradox.

nautil.us

INTRO (excerpts): The question of whether humanity is alone in the cosmos creates strange bedfellows. It attracts astronomers and abduction conspiracy theorists, pseudoarchaeology enthusiasts and physicists. And loads of science-fiction writers, of course...

Given the diversity of voices that have weighed in on the possibility that other civilizations may be out there, it is surprising that few geoscientists—people who study the one planet known to host life—have weighed in on the cosmic conundrum...

That’s what Earth scientists Robert Stern and Taras Gerya offer in a recent paper published in Scientific Reports. Earlier speculations about extraterrestrial civilizations were based primarily on astronomical and technological considerations like the number of planetary systems in the galaxy and how long it might take an intelligent species to discover and begin using radio waves. That left little attention for the specific attributes of potential host planets—other than the presence or absence of water.

Stern is a geologist at the University of Texas at Dallas who studies the evolution of the continental crust, and Gerya is a geophysicist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology who models Earth’s internal processes. Their conclusion may disappoint extraterrestrial enthusiasts: The likelihood that other technologically sophisticated societies exist is smaller than previously thought, because basic amenities we take for granted on Earth—continents, oceans, and plate tectonics—are cosmically rare... (MORE - details)

RELATED: Rare Earth Hypothesis

 

[C C]

The “perfect map” paradox: Why scientific models can never be complete (philosophy of science)

The "perfect map" paradox: Why scientific models can never be complete

Science can be thought of as a series of maps of nature, striving to be ever more complete, as models and theories evolve.

bigthink.com

Science can be thought of as a series of maps of nature, striving to be ever more complete, as models and theories evolve. However, just as no map can contain all of the territory’s information, our maps of reality will always be incomplete. The expectation that we can build theories of everything — complete maps of the Universe — is thus a misleading fantasy.

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

Worker Protections against Cancel Mobs

Worker Protections against Cancel Mobs

A simple legislative solution to "cancel culture"?

www.goodthoughts.blog

Mobs like to get people fired for saying things they don’t like. Politicians from the opposite party like to use this to fundraise and drum up outrage against “cancel culture”. I don’t know of any direct fix to the cultural problem of people being vindictive, censorious jerks. But the worst symptoms—e.g. random people getting fired for social media posts—seem like they could be addressed via legislation. And in this context, I think such legislation could plausibly be spun as both pro-worker and pro-business, and more generally pro-freedom.

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

Autoregressive Limits

Autoregressive Limits

Inquiring about turtles all the way down

www.truesciphi.ai

"Turtles all the way down" is an expression illustrating the problem of infinite regress, where a proposition is supported by another identical proposition, creating a never-ending sequence. [...] In both parts of the conversation, we encounter the problem of infinite regress, where explanations and solutions lead to further questions or challenges, demonstrating the very nature of "turtles all the way down." This highlights the difficulty in finding a fundamental stopping point or final answer in both philosophical inquiry and practical tasks.

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

Logical fallacies: Seven ways to spot a bad argument

Logical fallacies: Seven ways to spot a bad argument

When people are trying to persuade you, they sometimes reach for tricks like the 'appeal to ignorance' or 'whataboutism' to seem more convincing.

www.bbc.com

Using a logical fallacy doesn't necessarily mean someone is wrong. It can, however, indicate either faulty thinking and flawed logic, if used unintentionally, or an attempt to manipulate the truth to be more persuasive, if used deliberately. Either way, it's a red flag that should prompt further questioning and discussion. That includes, crucially, in your own thinking – and in arguments that you're inclined to agree with.

Once you know about logical fallacies, you'll see them everywhere. Why does this matter? Because the more practised you become at spotting them, the better you can be at identifying flaws in people's thinking, and refocusing dialogue back to an argument's merit. You'll also get better at thinking critically yourself.
= = = = = = = = =
Actually, "fallacies" are often a deliberately used weapon of war and marketing tool utilized in a variety of enterprises, practices, and institutions. The place you get penalized for fallacies are in artificial, refereed environments that do not reflect the settings and interactions of the real or everyday world. Accordingly, even those who lecture about fallacies resort to such outside of those former constrained backdrops (otherwise they would be at a strategic disadvantage).

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

The marketplace of misleading ideas

The marketplace of misleading ideas

In the marketplace of ideas, are people shopping for truth?

www.conspicuouscognition.com

Are citizens of modern, liberal democracies—democratic societies that encourage a thriving public sphere unconstrained by top-down informational control and censorship—capable of forming accurate, informed political opinions?

In the last post, I explored four reasons for pessimism: complexity, invisibility, rational ignorance, and politically motivated cognition. In this post, I will move away from individual-level biases and constraints and focus on the broader social conditions that structure media and the public sphere within open societies.

It is a popular idea that the “truth” will emerge from a free and open marketplace of ideas. Although appealing in some ways, this optimism is naive...

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

The Man Who Saved Nietzsche

The Man Who Saved Nietzsche | National Review

In a politically inflamed world where ‘consequences’ draw attention away from real ideas, Mazzino Montinari undertook the noble task of translating Nietzsche.

www.nationalreview.com

Philipp Felsch, a professor of cultural history in Berlin, has written a book exploring the relationship between ideas and their consequences. "How Nietzsche Came In from the Cold" is provocatively billed as a “Tale of a Redemption,” and it does indeed tell the story of Friedrich Nietzsche’s reclamation from the dustbin of Nazism.

Felsch’s narrative is far less triumphalist, though, than the title would suggest. The book’s cover is rather more revealing, depicting Nietzsche’s profile in an ill-defined, blotchy black shape reminiscent of a Rorschach test. Nietzsche has been subjected to a dizzying array of interpretations, with thinkers of many persuasions scrambling to claim him as their own.

In the end, the real hero of this book is not Nietzsche but rather an Italian philologist named Mazzino Montinari, who co-edited the critical edition of Nietzsche’s collected works in the 1960s and ’70s. It’s an unlikely setup for an epic tale, but Montinari really does come through as a kind of scholarly hero. In a politically inflamed world where “consequences” tend to draw attention away from real ideas, he undertook the noble task of faithfully transcribing and translating Nietzsche.

Did he succeed in this quest? It’s a difficult question, which raises yet another: Is it good to preserve and disseminate the ideas of a thinker like Nietzsche?

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

Six Decades of Computer Science at Harvard

Six Decades of Computer Science at Harvard | Harvard Magazine

Reflections on six decades of relations with computers

www.harvardmagazine.com

Computers can make perfect decisions if they have all the facts and know how to assess the tradeoffs between competing objectives. But in reality, the facts are never fully known; judgments always require evaluation of uncertainties. And it takes a whole human life, and a well-lived life at that, to acquire the values needed to make judgments about our own lives and those of other people.

[...] All computers can do is pretend to be human. They can be, in the language of the late philosopher Daniel Dennett ‘63, counterfeit humans.

But aren’t computers learning to be counterfeit humans by training on lots of data from observations of actual human behavior? And doesn’t that mean that in the long run, computers will make decisions just as people do, only better, because they will have been trained on all recorded human experience? These questions are not trivial, but their premise is mistaken in at least two ways...

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

Combatting extremism

Combatting extremism

There is a natural temptation to believe that people who perform extraordinarily antisocial acts must possess some extraordinary motive for doing so. This turns out to be untrue. One of the earliest discoveries of criminologists was that most people who do very bad things are not fundamentally...

josephheath.substack.com

There is a natural temptation to believe that people who perform extraordinarily antisocial acts must possess some extraordinary motive for doing so. This turns out to be untrue. One of the earliest discoveries of criminologists was that most people who do very bad things are not fundamentally different from the general population. Their motives are usually familiar to us, it’s just that they experience them more intensely (or fail to inhibit them as completely).

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

Interview with Jennifer Mather Saul

Beyond the Ivory Tower Interview with Jennifer Mather Saul

This is the latest interview in our Beyond the Ivory Tower series. For this edition, Davide Pala spoke to Professor Jennifer Saul, Waterloo Chair in Social and Political Philosophy of Language at t…

justice-everywhere.org

This is the latest interview in our Beyond the Ivory Tower series. For this edition, Davide Pala spoke to Professor Jennifer Saul, Waterloo Chair in Social and Political Philosophy of Language at the University of Waterloo, and Honorary Professor at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield. Jennifer’s interests are in Philosophy of Language, Feminism, Philosophy of Race, and Philosophy of Psychology. From 2009-2019, she was Director of the Society for Women UK. With Helen Beebee, she published two reports, ten years apart, on the state of women in philosophy in the UK. Also with Helen Beebee, she authored guidelines for good practice on gender issues in philosophy. Jennifer also runs What is Like to be a Woman in Philosophy and founded the Feminist Philosophers blog. Jennifer is interested in helping institutions find methods to combat implicit biases, and she often advises on this topic. She completed an 18 month project with the UK Cabinet Office, helping them to improve the diversity of the UK government’s security workforce. She is currently advising the UK Statistics Authority, to develop a framework for understanding and classifying misleading uses of statistics.
_