Mini-Heap

Items of interest elsewhere:

1. “People often treat ‘freedom of discussion’ as merely another name for freedom of speech. But I think this is a mistake” — Mark Satta on the distinctiveness of freedom of discussion, and academic freedom for students
2. The doubling-back aversion: “a reluctance to pursue more efficient means to a goal when they entail undoing progress already made” — distinct from the sunk-cost fallacy (via MR)
3. “I think there’s never been a single good argument for dualism” — an interview with Galen Strawson
4. A father-son duo, both philosophers, have released a new album of wild electronic music — immerse yourself in the textures & pulses of “Spin-Oza” by The Department of Electrophilosophy, aka Marc & Cedric Bobro (fave track so far: “Sanctuary of Ignorance”)
5. What is it like to be a crow? — a team of philosophers & psychologists look at five dimensions of corvid conscious experience
6. “Arguments don’t float in a vacuum. They grow out of the soil they’re planted in” — one lesson that GPT o3 (a “reasoning” LLM) takes from an exercise in which it is asked to respond to a set of thought experiments from different points in philosophy’s history
7. “Other men walk in darkness; the philosopher, who has the same passions, acts only after reflection; he walks through the night, but it is preceded by a torch” — Denis Diderot is “interviewed” by Richard Marshall

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. Thank you.
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