Latest links… “He wants scholars to get real and acknowledge the field’s genuine strengths, which don’t necessarily lie in direct response to today’s political issues” — the “he” is John Guillory (NYU) and “the field” is literature, but he’s addressing problems relevant to philosophy, too “There is a popular picture of Socrates as someone inviting us to think for ourselves… [That] popular picture is severely incomplete” — Alex Pruss (Baylor) on Socrates’ conservatism What to say to a friend whose book you haven’t read — some suggestions “[The spider] tenses the threads of the web so that she can filter information that is coming to her brain… This is almost the same thing as if she was filtering things in her own brain” — extended cognition in the animal world How do ChatGPT and other large language models work? — philosopher Ben Levinstein (Illinois) provides a “conceptual guide” to them. Here’s Part 1. “Free Will?” — a documentary featuring philosophers and others, released this month — watch the trailer here A reflexive puzzle — (via The Browser) Discussion welcome.
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Recent additions to the Heap of Links… “Art is artifice plus, one hopes, a hint of genius… Such hints can shine through… in the most unlikely, indeed the silliest places. There is of course no reason why AI should not also be such a place” — Justin E.H. Smith (University of Paris 7) defends AI art, sort of “I do not think a degenerated scholasticism is the right historical metaphor for our time and era. I think late antiquity Hellenistic philosophy is where we should see ourselves” — “We are in a syncretic age. And I believe that is why we will soon be forgot,” says Liam Kofi Bright (LSE) “Ethics are mostly an afterthought for… profit-driven organisations, a compliance hoop they must jump through.
