The heap grows…

1. “By making nature the arbiter of our way of life, the Cynics ushered in a moral revolution… But critical theorists today… are understandably suspicious of appeals to nature’s moral authority” — “The Cynics would applaud their criticism, but they’d also warn them not to throw out the baby with the bathwater”
2. “We may sometimes want our AI assistants, just like humans, to temper their truthfulness: to protect privacy, to avoid insulting others, or to keep someone safe, among innumerable other hard-to-articulate situations” — on the complexity of aligning artificial intelligences with human values
3. “Intellectual history is not so much an enriching source of data and instruction as a prerequisite to know what I am talking about” — “everyone needs something that is, for them, playing the role of grounding one’s modal reasoning,” says Liam Kofi Bright (LSE)
4. “Tellingly, no-one announcing the discovery of the new Hegel manuscripts seems excited that they’re going to make us realise something we didn’t know before about art” — Tom Whyman on whether more Hegel is good news
5. “A one-size-fits-all approach to sex [comes] at the expense of the rigor and precision at which precision medicine aims” — philosophers argue for “sex contextualism” in medical research
6. “Philosophers cannot work only on problems that interest them; we must work on all the problems that we need to resolve” — Leslie Green (Oxford) with a moving remembrance of Joseph Raz
7. Three studies showed that “self-reported physical attractiveness” is “positively correlated with meaning in life” — “existential significance, or the feeling that one’s life matters, was the facet of meaning that primarily explained the link between attractiveness and meaning in life” (via MR)

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!