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Reading group: Turing’s “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” (1950)
Turing's paper appeared in Mind in 1950, and it is far more playful and far less dated than its reputation suggests. He replaces the question "can machines think?" with the imitation game, then works through nine objections: the theological objection, the "heads…
Started by Pieter van DijkhuizenReply first (no replies yet) -
Mill’s harm principle: where does it actually draw the line?
Mill's On Liberty (1859) proposes one simple principle: the only purpose for which power can rightfully be exercised over any member of a civilised community, against their will, is to prevent harm to others. A person's own good is not a sufficient…
Started by Deepa KarthaReply first (no replies yet) -
Is human dignity a religious idea that secular law borrowed?
Article 1 of the German Basic Law (1949) declares human dignity inviolable. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) begins by recognising the inherent dignity of all members of the human family. Many constitutions since then have done the same. Kant gave…
Started by Hamza Qureshi1 reply -
Reading group: Thomas Nagel, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” (1974)
A short classic, first published in The Philosophical Review. Nagel argues that an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something it is like to be that organism. Bats perceive by echolocation, a sense so different from ours…
Started by Priya Raghavan1 reply -
Are possible worlds real, or just a bookkeeping device?
David Lewis, in On the Plurality of Worlds (1986), argued that other possible worlds are just as real as ours. "Actual" is indexical, like "here". Our world is actual only in the sense that we are in it. Almost nobody follows him…
Started by Tomasz Szewczak1 reply -
I keep reading summaries of philosophers instead of the books. Is that so bad?
Confession: in the year since I burnt out and started reading philosophy, I've read maybe three actual books and hundreds of summaries, threads, videos and ‘ten ideas from Stoicism’ posts. I can tell you what Kant, Nietzsche and the Gita say in…
Started by Rohan DesaiAnswer first (no replies yet) -
Was plate tectonics a Kuhnian revolution? Geology as a test case
In discussions of Kuhn, the examples are nearly always from physics and astronomy. I wanted to test his picture on an earth-science revolution I know something about. Alfred Wegener proposed continental drift in the 1910s. He had real evidence: the fit of…
Started by Anand KurupReply first (no replies yet) -
Moral dumbfounding at a debate tournament: Haidt’s elephant and its rider
Most weekends I watch teenagers at debate tournaments decide what they believe in the first ten seconds and then spend forty minutes building reasons for it. Jonathan Haidt would not be surprised. His social intuitionist model, first set out in "The Emotional…
Started by Sam ElleryReply first (no replies yet) -
Davidson said there are no untranslatable conceptual schemes. A working translator is not so sure
A colleague recently sent me Donald Davidson's essay “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme” (1974), with the note: “He proves your job is always possible.” As I understand it, Davidson attacks the idea that different languages or cultures might organise…
Started by Claire DuboisReply first (no replies yet) -
Diogenes was doing stand-up: the Cynic method as performance
I've just read the Diogenes stories in Diogenes Laertius, and I'm convinced the man was doing comedy, in the serious sense. Look at the famous ones. Plato defines a human as a featherless biped; Diogenes plucks a chicken, brings it to the…
Started by Gemma PritchardReply first (no replies yet) -
The grounding revival brought metaphysics back without bringing back a method
For much of the twentieth century, substantive metaphysics was out of fashion. Carnap argued that many ontological questions were either trivial within a framework or merely practical choices about which framework to use. Quine brought ontology back, but in a tightly regimented…
Started by Oskar NybergReply first (no replies yet) -
How can you talk about non-being without turning it into a something?
Every morning I practise taiji in the park and every evening I read a few lines of the Laozi with my grandson's dictionary. Chapter 40 says, roughly, that the things of the world are born from being, and being is born from…
Started by Liu MingqiaoAnswer first (no replies yet) -
Reading group: Hobbes, Leviathan, chapters 13–17
These five chapters of Leviathan (1651) contain the core of Hobbes's political argument. Ch. 13: the natural condition of mankind. Rough equality, competition, distrust and glory lead to a war of every man against every man, in which life is famously solitary,…
Started by Javier Ferrandis1 reply -
What’s the difference between deduction, induction and abduction?
My students know "deduction" and "induction" from school, though they often mix them up. I recently read that Charles Sanders Peirce added a third type of reasoning, abduction. Could someone explain all three clearly, with examples, and why Peirce thought abduction mattered…
Started by Vikram Sethi1 reply -
Compassion fatigue: does the duty to care have limits?
After a hard month at work I've been thinking about this. People in care work talk about "compassion fatigue": after enough exposure to suffering, you start to feel less. You become efficient and a little cold, and you hate yourself for it.…
Started by Elin Hedqvist1 reply -
Privacy as a virtue, not just a right
We usually talk about privacy as a right: something others shouldn't violate. But in my work I see people giving away their data voluntarily all the time, for convenience or a discount. The right isn't violated; it's waived, again and again. I've…
Started by Nur Aisyah Rahman1 reply -
What’s the difference between a valid argument and a sound one?
In a debate thread here someone said an argument was "valid but not sound" and I realised, being completely new to logic, that I didn't understand the difference. To me both words just sounded like "good". Could someone explain simply, with examples…
Started by Kavya Menon3 replies -
Reading group: Kant’s “An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?” (1784)
This short essay appeared in the Berlinische Monatsschrift in December 1784. It can be read in an evening, but it repays a week. Kant defines enlightenment as leaving behind a self-incurred immaturity, the inability to use one's own understanding without someone else's…
Started by Henrike Vogel3 replies -
My kitchen friendships end when people change jobs. Were they only friendships of utility?
For fifteen years in kitchens the pattern has been the same. You work ten-hour services side by side with someone, you cover for each other, you eat together at midnight, you know about their kids and their visa problems. Then they move…
Started by Joel D'SouzaReply first (no replies yet) -
If only the transformed can know, how could a mystic ever be shown to be wrong?
Since I campaign against superstition, let me say first that I'm not asking this to sneer. I read Sufi poetry with real pleasure, and I've learned from discussions here that the Sufi claim is subtler than "feelings beat reason". The claim, as…
Started by Arvind PoojaryAnswer first (no replies yet) -
“Chinese philosophy had no epistemology” is wrong, and the Mohists are the proof
Every comparative table I see gives the Chinese row the same apologetic note: less interest in formal proof, more in precedent and the classics, no real epistemology, but that's not a deficiency. The intention is kind, but the claim underneath is wrong.…
Started by Lin Pei-shanReply first (no replies yet) -
Reading group: Nagel and Newman, Gödel’s Proof
I've noticed that half the physicists and engineers I work with cite Gödel and the other half wince when they do. I would like to understand the theorem properly, and I suspect I'm not alone. Ernest Nagel and James R. Newman's Gödel's…
Started by Lars EriksenReply first (no replies yet) -
Reading group: the ren passages of the Analects in five English translations
Following the recent arguments here about whether ren means "benevolence", I'd like to propose something slower: reading the key ren passages of the Analects side by side in five translations, with the Chinese for those who read it, and noticing exactly where…
Started by Kenneth Lam Chi-hoReply first (no replies yet) -
Reading group: Philippa Foot, Natural Goodness (2001), from plants and wolves to people
I coached rugby for thirty years, and every season there was one boy who never tackled. He was fast, he scored, and the team was worse for having him. I never had the words for what was wrong with him beyond “he's…
Started by Gerrit VenterReply first (no replies yet) -
My agent called me an idealist. Which of the three idealisms was that?
Last week my agent told me I was "too much of an idealist" for turning down a corporate gig. Naturally I went home and looked the word up instead of reconsidering my finances. It turns out "idealist" has at least three meanings…
Started by Gemma PritchardReply first (no replies yet) -
Reading group: Saadia Gaon’s Book of Beliefs and Opinions, starting with the roots of knowledge
I teach Jewish thought to adults in Jerusalem, and many of my students arrive convinced that philosophy and religion are enemies. My favourite answer is a tenth-century one. Saadia Gaon (882–942) was born in Egypt and became head of the academy at…
Started by Miriam AdlerReply first (no replies yet) -
Did non-Euclidean geometry sink Kant’s view of space?
I am a retired teacher in Freiburg, finally reading the Critique of Pure Reason properly, and I am stuck on the Transcendental Aesthetic. Kant says space is not a thing in itself and not a set of relations among things in themselves.…
Started by Henrike VogelAnswer first (no replies yet) -
Could the constants have been different? Spinoza says no; the Ashʿarites say God could change them tomorrow
I model oil reservoirs. Every model has parameters, and every morning I change some of them to see what would have happened. So the question "could the physical constants have been different?" feels very concrete to me, and I've found two answers…
Started by Abdulrahman Al-BassamAnswer first (no replies yet) -
Is “Islamic philosophy” a useful label?
Some colleagues prefer "Arabic philosophy". Others say "philosophy in the Islamic world". Each has problems. "Islamic philosophy" suggests that it's all religious, or that all of it was done by Muslims. But Christians like Yahya ibn 'Adi and Jews like Maimonides wrote…
Started by Layla Sfeir2 replies -
Sartre’s “look” and Fanon on being fixed by another’s gaze
In Being and Nothingness (1943), Sartre describes the moment of being caught looking through a keyhole: suddenly I am an object for someone else, and I feel shame. The look of the other gives me an outside I can't control. Fanon's Black…
Started by Claire Dubois2 replies