“Emotion and Society Lab” is a new “network of collaborators in philosophy across different universities that engage in collaborative learning, research, and public engagement around emotions and society.” Created and directed by Myisha Cherry at the University of California, Riverside, and involving researchers at several institutions, Emotion and Society Lab uses “use methods and theories from philosophy to help explore questions about the nature and role of emotions in everyday life. Our work is interdisciplinary; informed by cognitive science, social psychology, and political science.” The Lab’s inquiries head in five “primary directions“: One direction is concerned with examining the nature and role of emotions. The second is thinking about how people use emotions as oppressive and liberatory tools. The third is concerned with theorizing affective concepts to illuminate hidden phenomena and then examining how such theorizing can help solve real-world problems. The fourth direction is concerned with creating models of emotion regulation and emotional intelligence that are sensitive to race, gender, and class.
public philosophy
Last month, something unusual happened to an academic philosophy article. The news media reported on it. Shortly after the article was published in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, stories about it showed up in variety of venues, including: The Guardian The Telegraph The Times The Age The South China Morning Post The Independent (picked up by Yahoo News) Japan Today Radio France Internationale France 24 Barron’s Fatherly (picked up by MSN) The Swaddle Al Arabiya News Stylist Báo Hải Dương The Financial The Daily Mail The Philippine Star among others. How did this happen? It’s no mystery: Cambridge University’s Office of External Affairs and Communication wrote and distributed a press release for it. Granted, the article, “Gendered Affordance Perception and Unequal Domestic Labour” by Tom McClelland (Cambridge) and Paulina Sliwa (Vienna) seems more likely to hook a broader audience than the typical PPR output. Here’s the abstract: The inequitable distribution of domestic and caring labour in different-sex couples has been a longstanding feminist concern.
Apropos last week’s “We’re Not Ready for the AI on the Horizon, But People Are Trying,” here is economist and policy analyst Samuel Hammond on what the near future holds: You’ll be able to replace your face and voice with those of someone else in real time, allowing anyone to socially engineer their way into anything. Bots will slide into your DMs and have long, engaging conversations with you until it senses the best moment to send its phishing link… Relationships will fall apart when the AI lets you know, via microexpressions, that he didn’t really mean it when he said he loved you. Copyright will be as obsolete as sodomy law, as thousands of new Taylor Swift albums come into being with a single click. Public comments on new regulations will overflow with millions of cogent and entirely unique submissions that the regulator must, by law, individually read and respond to. Death-by-kamikaze drone will surpass mass shootings as the best way to enact a lurid revenge. The courts, meanwhile, will be flooded with lawsuits because who needs to pay attorney fees when your phone can file an airtight motion for you?
Patrick Lin, professor of philosophy at California Polytechnic State University and director of the university’s Ethics and Emerging Sciences Group, has been selected as a member of National Space Council’s Users Advisory Group (UAG). According to an announcement from the White House, the UAG “will provide the National Space Council advice and recommendations on matters related to space policy and strategy, including but not limited to, government policies, laws, regulations, treaties, international instruments, programs, and practices across the civil, commercial, international, and national security space sectors.” The National Space Council, chaired by Vice President Kamala Harris, “is charged with providing objective advice to the President on the formulation and implementation of space policy and strategy.” The UAG includes people in the aerospace and defense industries, various researchers and educators, and others. It is headed by retired U.S. Air Force General Lester Lyles. You can see the full list of UAG members here.
Wisdom’s Edge Foundation is a non-profit organization that aims to bring philosophy-based classes to people who do not have access to traditional university offerings in philosophy. Wisdom’s Edge was created by Sophia Stone, associate professor of philosophy at Lynn University. She writes: In 2022, Wisdom’s Edge Foundation served 121 people by offering free philosophy discussions and activities. Sessions include in-person philosophy events to communities in St. Cloud, Minnesota and Palm Beach County in South Florida as well as on-line sessions to communities from Hawai’i to Florida and India. These sessions included traditional philosophy courses in Applied Ethics and the Philosophy of Religion as well as the History of Philosophy from Eastern and Western traditions. As an outreach organization, Wisdom’s Edge taught free philosophy courses in self-confidence to women in transition from homelessness, incarceration, sex-trafficking and domestic violence. Wisdom’s Edge offered two reading circles online, a mathematics and philosophy circle and a social/political and existentialist philosophy reading circle.