Daily Nous Features

Created
Wed, 28/12/2022 - 00:02
The latest additions to the heap… “I have a no-laptop, no phone policy in all my classes, and have yet to hear good reasons to give that up. Maybe you can give me some” — Harry Brighouse (Wisconsin) explains “How does the death spiral of one or more social media platforms impact philosophy?” — reflections from Helen de Cruz (SLU) “ChatGPT has no interest in you whatsoever. It isn’t curious about your goals or motivated to help you meet them. It lacks the good faith to tell you when your goals are misplaced” — today’s AI doesn’t care about you, and that limits its utility, argues Evan Selinger (RIT) “In one way or another, you are moved to imitate and share the things that speak to you, that seem, in one way or another, to be alive with beauty in a way that makes you feel alive” — Nick Riggle (San Diego) on beauty “The use of AI in science presents novel opportunities and challenges. One principle challenge has been how to determine when a given AI model is trustworthy” — Eamon Duede (Chicago) on why scientific trust in AI is different from its trust in experts, instruments, or methods “It’s not the pace of life I mind.
Created
Tue, 27/12/2022 - 01:52
The weekly report on new and revised entries at online philosophy resources and new reviews of philosophy books… SEP New:       Many-Sorted Logic by María Manzano and Víctor Aranda. Revised: Jacques Lacan by Adrian Johnston. Reasons for Action: Agent-Neutral vs. Agent-Relative by Michael Ridge. Logics for Analyzing Games by Johan van Benthem and Dominik Klein. Heinrich Scholz by Volker Peckhaus. The Normativity of Meaning and Content by Kathrin Glüer, Åsa Wikforss, and Marianna Ganapini. Collective Responsibility by Marion Smiley. IEP           ∅ NDPR         Paradoxes and Inconsistent Mathematics by Zach Weber is reviewed by Jc Beall. 1000-Word Philosophy         ∅    Project Vox     ∅ Recent Philosophy Book Reviews in Non-Academic Media         ∅   Compiled by Michael Glawson BONUS: If idiocy was actually part of the plan
Created
Sat, 10/12/2022 - 00:23
Recent additions to the Heap of Links… “While I’m still on the fence about eyes, I don’t think legs, strictly speaking, exist” — the question of whether there are more eyes or legs in the world “has profound implications for our understanding of certain fundamental matters at the heart of our ongoing debates about scientific realism,” says Justin E.H.
Created
Mon, 12/12/2022 - 19:00
After a bit of a delay, we’re resuming the Article Spotlight series, in which the authors of recent journal articles are invited to write brief posts here about them. As noted at the time of the first installment, the articles featured will tend to be ones judged to be of interest to a wide range of philosophers. An article’s inclusion in this series should not be construed as an endorsement of its argument or agreement with its conclusions, but rather as a way of saying, “this might be interesting to discuss.” In this month’s post, Joshua Glasgow, professor of philosophy at Sonoma State University, discusses his recent article, “The Ordinary Meaningful Life,” which appeared earlier this year in The Journal of the American Philosophical Association—the official version should be publicly available; if you can’t access it, there is a link to a preprint here. [Originally posted on December 8, 2022] The Ordinary Meaningful Life by Joshua Glasgow We celebrate being important. Why? In particular, why should you care about whether you are especially important, or great, or significant?
Created
Mon, 12/12/2022 - 20:00
The weekly report on new and revised entries at online philosophy resources and new reviews of philosophy books… SEP New:       Saint Thomas Aquinas by Robert Pasnau. Revised:         Divine Providence by Hugh J. McCann and Daniel M. Johnson. Margaret Lucas Cavendish by David Cunning. Risk by Sven Ove Hansson. Nonexistent Objects by Maria Reicher. Relative Identity by Harry Deutsch and Pawel Garbacz. Epistemology in Latin America by Diego Machuca. IEP           ∅ NDPR         ∅ 1000-Word Philosophy         ∅    Project Vox     ∅ Recent Philosophy Book Reviews in Non-Academic Media   John Venn: A Life in Logic by Lukas M. Verburgt is reviewed by Cheryl Misak at Times Literary Supplement. Dream, Death, and the Self by J.J. Valberg is reviewed by Scot English at Patheos. The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century by Amia Srinivasan is reviewed by Jane Haile at The New York Journal of Books. On the Emergence of an Ecological Class: A Memo by Bruno Latour and After Lockdown: A Metamorphosis by Bruno Latour are reviewed by Jeremy Harding at London Review of Books. Not Thinking Like a Liberal by Raymond Geuss is reviewed by Richard Eldridge at Los Angeles Review of Books.
Created
Sat, 17/12/2022 - 00:40
The heap grows… “By making nature the arbiter of our way of life, the Cynics ushered in a moral revolution… But critical theorists today… are understandably suspicious of appeals to nature’s moral authority” — “The Cynics would applaud their criticism, but they’d also warn them not to throw out the baby with the bathwater” “We may sometimes want our AI assistants, just like humans, to temper their truthfulness: to protect privacy, to avoid insulting others, or to keep someone safe, among innumerable other hard-to-articulate situations” — on the complexity of aligning artificial intelligences with human values “Intellectual history is not so much an enriching source of data and instruction as a prerequisite to know what I am talking about” — “everyone needs something that is, for them, playing the role of grounding one’s modal reasoning,” says Liam Kofi Bright (LSE) “Tellingly, no-one announcing the discovery of the new Hegel manuscripts seems excited that they’re going to make us realise something we didn’t know before about art” — Tom Whyman on whether more Hegel is good news “A one-size-fits-all approach to sex [comes] a
Created
Mon, 19/12/2022 - 23:45
The weekly report on new and revised entries at online philosophy resources and new reviews of philosophy books… SEP New:       Many-Sorted Logic by María Manzano and Víctor Aranda. Revised: Quantifiers and Quantification by Gabriel Uzquiano. Plato’s Shorter Ethical Works by Paul Woodruff. Intuitionistic Logic by Joan Moschovakis. Paul Ricoeur by David Pellauer and Bernard Dauenhauer. Fatalism by Hugh Rice. Robert Boyle by J. J. MacIntosh and Peter Anstey. Brentano’s Theory of Judgement by Johannes L. Brandl and Mark Textor. IEP           ∅ NDPR         Averroes on Intellect: From Aristotelian Origins to Aquinas’ Critique by Stephen R. Ogden  is reviewed by Kendall A. Fisher. The Art of Abduction by Igor Douven is reviewed by Stephen Biggs. God, Knowledge, and the Good by Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski is reviewed by Derek Christian Haderlie. 1000-Word Philosophy         ∅    Project Vox     ∅ Recent Philosophy Book Reviews in Non-Academic Media        Life is Hard: How Philosophy Can Help Us Find Our Way by Kieran Setiya is reviewed by Jonathan Derbyshire at the Financial Times. Compiled by Michael Glawson BONUS: Work