Philosophy News of 2022

Created
Wed, 04/01/2023 - 04:32
Updated
Wed, 04/01/2023 - 04:32
A brief look back… The biggest philosophical news item of 2022, by far, as indicated by Daily Nous statistics, was the discovery of five crates of long-forgotten transcriptions of Hegel lectures in the archives of the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising. A bit lower on the list, though still in the top 50, was the placing online of a large selection of Quine’s correspondence. But lest you think it is just the past that philosophers get excited about, one of the other big topics in 2022 concerned large language models like GPT-3 and their use by students and researchers, as well as other developments in AI.  “Philosophers On GPT-3,” published two and a half years ago, continued to see a lot of traffic, and was joined by other posts published this year: “Talking Philosophy with ChatGPT“, “Conversation Starter: Teaching Philosophy in an Age of Large Language Models“, “If You Can’t Beat Them, Join Them: GPT-3 Edition“, “Two Cultures of Philosophy: AI Edition“, “We’re Not Ready for the AI on the Horizon, But People Are Trying,” and “Philosophy, AI, and Society Listserv“. We published a group post on Russia’s attack on Ukraine, with several philosophers contributing, along with other posts about helping philosophers dislocated by the war, gathering statements of support from philosophers, and considering an academic boycott of Russia. The dissolution of crypto-currency firm FTX was another current event of particular interest to the philosophical community, owing to its CEO’s connection to philosophers involved in the “effective altruism” movement and the substantial funding he provided for it, and we hosted a lengthy discussion about the lessons of that debacle. And many philosophers wrote about abortion, in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.  Events at the intersection of academic freedom and philosophy about controversial subjects saw plenty of attention, too. Chief among these stories were Philosophia‘s publication of an exchange on “Jewish influence and power” and a conservative social media account’s attempt to ruin the career of SUNY Fredonia philosopher Stephen Kershnar, by publicizing excerpts of a discussion he had regarding the basis of prohibitions regarding sex between adults and children. Also, objections were raised to the decision by Oxford University Press to..