Philosophy

Created
Sun, 24/03/2024 - 19:45
As philosopher and broadcaster Scott Stephens suggests in his introduction to Justice and Hope, Raimond Gaita’s principal contribution to the practice of moral philosophy is to have opened it up to readers and audiences that wouldn’t usually encounter it. Most notably in his memoir Romulus, My Father (1998), but also in A Common Humanity (2000) […]
Created
Sun, 24/03/2024 - 19:52
A month or so out from Christopher Nolan’s much-anticipated biopic Oppenheimer, the Artificial Intelligence (AI) community is having its own Oppenheimer moment. Like the director of the Manhattan Project and Los Alamos Laboratory, who famously came to regret his part in the development of the atomic bomb, the Big Tech Titans are falling over each […]
Created
Sun, 24/03/2024 - 19:56
In Fully Automated Luxury Communism (2018), the British writer Aaron Bastani puts a leftist spin on the Promethean view of technological development. While noting the revolutionary potential of recent genetic innovations, he insists that the latter are no different in kind from the selective breeding practices of the past: they are simply another great leap […]
Created
Wed, 21/02/2024 - 19:13
So Cosma Shalizi and I have an article (messy pre-print) coming out Real Soon in Communications of the ACM on democracy, polarization and social media. And Nate Matias, who I’m friends with, has forceful objections. I’ve promised him a response – which is below – but am doing it as a blogpost, since I think […]
Created
Thu, 04/01/2024 - 22:43
In a recent post about unfair epistemic authority, Macarena Marey suggests that In political philosophy, the centre is composed of the Anglophone world and three European countries… One can think of “the center” in terms of people or of topics. Although Marey’s post is clearly about philosophers not philosophies, and I agree with her, one […]