Happy Friday Mini-Heap…

1. “I’m sure Socrates would have been widely blocked on social media” — Kwame Anthony Appiah (NYU) is interviewed in the NYT about Socrates, in light of the new play about him
2. “To write and rewrite with a roving eye on philosophical politics… in such a way that philosophical possibilities are constantly revived and re-opened” — lessons from Eileen O’Neill on how to write the history of philosophy, as interpreted by Eric Schliesser (Amsterdam)
3. “The common claim that the brain is a computer is not, at the moment, a concrete, precise, well-understood scientific hypothesis” — “Still, the claim is almost certainly true,” argues Kevin Lande (Antwerp)
4. “Nobody goes home from Twitter” — thoughts on what makes the platform problematic, and an interesting suggestion
5. Chinese scientists have created “transgenic macaque monkeys with extra copies of a human gene suspected of playing a role in shaping human intelligence” — I, for one, welcome our new macaque overlords. Or overladies (they’re matriarchal).
6. “Diametrically opposed assessments of the worth of Aristotle and his philosophy tend to derive from same source, namely a failure to read what he actually wrote” — Christopher Shields (Notre Dame) talks about Aristotle in an interview with Richard Marshall at 3:16
7. Stories that have “the germ of philosophical argument without quite articulating it” — the object of study of Hans Blumenberg

Mini-Heap posts appear when 7 or so new items accumulate in the Heap of Links, the ever-growing collection of items from around the web that may be of interest to philosophers.

The Heap of Links consists partly of suggestions from readers; if you find something online that you think would be of interest to the philosophical community, please send it in for consideration for the Heap. Thanks!

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