Friday Mini-Heap…

• “That the analytic philosophy we have ended up with exists as a ‘sociological’ phenomenon is a very important fact about where academic philosophy has been since, and still is today” — Christoph Schuringa (New College of the Humanities) on the various “deaths” analytic philosophy has undergone
• Some non-human animals can do math — Erik Nelson (Dalhousie) on what implications this may have for our understanding and treatment of them
• They “can distort as much as they illuminate” — James Wilson (UCL) offers a thoughtful set of critiques of thought experiments in moral philosophy
• A series of interviews with Swedish philosophers about the pandemic and how it relates to philosophy — interviewees include Torbjörn Tännsjö, Åsa Wikforss, and (soon) others
• “All the things I learned in school were crap. Some of it might have been true some of it false but who could tell? You just have to start from scratch.” — Descartes’ Meditations and many other philosophical works described with one-syllable words only
• Meet the cousin of security theater: “public health theater,” or the deployment of “props for perpetuating the illusion that hazardous conditions are under control” — and beware of violations of the “prime pandemic policy rule,” argues Evan Selinger (RIT)
• The uniformity illusion — “a visual illusion that shows that detailed peripheral visual experience is partially based on a reconstruction of reality” (via Tom Breed)

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. Discussion welcome.

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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