Recent additions to the Heap…

1. One might think that much AI art isn’t just bad, but that it’s not art — but “AI art is art as much as readymades, minimalist art, or photography” argues G. M. “Boomer” Trujillo, Jr. (Texas – El Paso)
2. The philosopher who helped kill the king — on the “mess of paradoxes” in Lucy Hutchinson’s “war against the disorder of England’s craven nobility”
3. “Constructionism was never a matter of ‘just saying whatever’, and science can never be simply a matter of reading the dictates of the natural world off of our instruments” — Justin E. H. Smith with an appreciation of Bruno Latour and of what it means to “have a choice as to how read the world.”
4. “When asked to select Dennett’s answer to a philosophical question from a set of five possible answers, with the other four being [GPT-3] digi-Dan outputs, Dennett experts got only about half right” — Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside) et al on what happens when large language models are trained on philosophical texts
5. “Unlike most scientific thinkers of the period… Cavendish insisted that humans are part of nature—not above it—and thus that we lack the perspectival leverage to see and understand its operations” — on Margaret Cavendish’s combination of fantastical imagination, thoroughgoing materialism, and desire for immortality
6. “As we bridge the gulf between now and then to sympathize with ourselves at other times, we sympathize, too, with the suffering of others” — Kieran Setiya (MIT) on his chronic pain and its philosophical lessons
7. A philosopher is invited to take part in a Netflix television show with a magician, the premise of which is that free will is an illusion — the magician thinks he has cornered the philosopher, but Christopher Kaczor (Loyola Marymount) is the one with a card up his sleeve

Discussion welcome.

Mini-Heap posts usually appear when 7 or so new items accumulate in the Heap of Links, a 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!