Mini-Heap
Friday Mini-Heap…
- “I didn’t come here to propose a return to illiteracy in order to recover the knowledge of Paleolithic tribes. I regret all we may have lost, but I never forget that the gains are greater than the losses” — a transcription of part of a 1983 lecture by Italo Calvino on the written word and the unwritten world
- Epictetus and Epicurus are “resurrected” using AI language, imaging, and video tools to debate the nature of happiness — created by Caleb Ontiveros
- The subtitle of her first book was “A Little Treatise on the Weakness, Frivolity, and Inconstancy, That Is Wrongly Attributed to Women” — philosopher Gabrielle Suchon wrote it—in 1693—to help women “protect themselves against servile constraint, stupid ignorance, and base and degrading dependence.” Julie Walsh (Wellesley) gives us a tour of her ideas
- “What is Black existentialism? To me, Black existentialism means a lot of things, but if I were to use one sentence: it’s hard to be human in the world that dehumanizes you” — a conversation between Nathalie Etoke (CUNY) and Lewis Gordon (Connecticut)
- Is “a quantifiable difference in the complexity of molecules that can be created by living processes compared to non-living ones” a clue to defining “life”? — and would it help us recognize alien life?
- “It is not possible to determine the true identities of Alice and Bob based on the information provided” — Ned Hall (Harvard) attempts to help ChatGPT solve a logic problem (via Leiter Reports)
- “There is a limit to the happiness we can find in maintaining what is generally accepted as a healthy or beautiful body: If you are fortunate enough to live a long life, your body will break down” — Nick Riggle (San Diego) on “radical aesthetic openness to our bodies… as time and chance inevitably transform us”
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!
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