Mini-Heap

Recent additions to the Heap of Links…

1. “As societies become more complex in the sense of the growth of hyper-specialization, then the odds should go up of philosophy (understood as a distinct discipline) arising” — is this a testable hypothesis? Eric Schliesser on the social origins of philosophy
2. Researchers “have performed a quasi-resurrection of the late experimental American composer Alvin Lucier, creating a sort of brain that continuously composes music on the fly with its errant electrical signals” — gimmicky now, but what will future versions be like? (And what questions about aesthetics, ethics, and agency does this raise?)
3. “It isn’t difficult to be winged when one has Plato’s faith; but to see the world as a lump of matter, to dwell in it as if one dwelt in a graveyard, and still, even here, not to allow our wings to wither away—this is the true art” — the beauty of the “inhuman” materialist “religion” of Lucretius, made vivid by Henryk Elzenberg (in a 1927 essay just recently translated into English)
4. “What’s your philosophy?” — comedian Ray O’Leary, who has an MA in philosophy, brings it up in his act sometimes
5. “For an analytic philosopher, life itself is extracurricular” — Justin Smith-Ruiu on, among other things, analytic philosophy’s “pretension to having successfully transcended worldly pressures”
6. “What do we even mean when we ask whether bots, bees or babies are conscious?” — Tim Bayne on what we can learn from jazz and dolphins about the meaning of “consciousness”
7. People’s trust in experts is decreasing. Why? — Steven Hales offers a perfect-if-true answer: because the people don’t know even know what expertise is

Mini-Heap posts usually appear when several 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. Thank you.
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