Mini-Heap
The heap grows…
- “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”
- “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
- “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)
- “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
- “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
- “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
- 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!
The heap must flow.Report