Tag: use

value of philosophy

Why Is Philosophy Important?

August 8, 2018

Often times when I tell people that my major is philosophy I am met with a confused stare followed by a series of questions…

Heap of Links

Asking “How did I get here?” may help us reflect on the nature of personal identity in ways that asking “Who am I?” cannot — Marya Schechtman's 2024 Central Division Meeting Presidential Address
“Collecting is a game, but what kind of game? It is an imperfect information game of acquisition” — a theory of collecting, from Steven Hales
“A general human tendency: to overestimate how far we have come in the progress of human knowledge” — a lengthy interview with Thomas Nagel
“Many couples do not survive trauma like this” — A profile of Susan Brison—who was brutally attacked in 1990, and who wrote about it in Aftermath—and her husband, Thomas Trezise, who has now written his own book stemming from those events
“Bad AI Consciousness Takes” Bingo Card — Henry Shevlin's area of specialization is becoming a popular topic in popular discourse, and he can't stand the "cavalcade of terrible takes"
Does the principle of sufficient reason imply panpsychism? If it does, do we then ponens or tollens? — Sam Kimpton-Nye on these questions and the "demand for intelligibility"
PTSD flashbacks may be harmful, but they may also be helpfully “resupplying phenomenal experience” to those who, owing to trauma, are “grasp alienated” — Michaela McSweeney on trauma and "madness-as-strategy"
A look at the very first issue of Mind — Brett Mullins surveys its articles on the occasion of the journal's 150th anniversary
The most bizarre plagiarism-related story ever — featuring: a death, an investigator, a dissertation, a mysterious red book, and more
New data on earnings by major and university — though not all universities
“AI poses two different existential threats to [our] valuing practices” — Jordan MacKenzie offers an account of why negative judgments about AI taking over our creative and caring activities are justified
“Submission” is a humorous clicker-style game about starting a career in academic philosophy (or not) — created by Nat Hansen
“The best investment in education is to become the most human human—a challenging, fulfilling, exciting pursuit that connects us across generations” — an interview with Christa Acampora, philosopher and dean of Arts & Sciences at UVA
“What would happen if we tried to live without the mythology of agency at all?” — It's worth pondering, since "agency is just an internal command hallucination," says Alexander Douglas
“Reading List” is a free Mac app for keeping track of papers to read — philosophy PhD student Hayden Kajercline created this productivity tool for researchers, with help from Claude
How should we react to scary predictions about AI? “First: by asking questions” — "If you believe predictions uncritically, it amounts to obeying in advance," says Carissa Véliz
“I feel unbelievably lucky that I was able to make philosophy my profession” — Karen Ng reflects on her path into philosophy, at #first-genphilosophers
The ordinary concept of knowledge “doesn’t work at all the way philosophers said it does” — a round-up of studies shows how weird the philosophers' version of the concept is
1000 or so psychiatrists were asked to diagnose standardized clinical case vignettes. “Two doctors agreed on the diagnosis only 55% of the time” — What does this tell us about psychiatry? Or about other fields in which experts disagree?
Where Aristotle taught Alexander — "this newest dig may be the most revealing yet, offering insight into the specifics of Alexander the Great’s education"

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Latest Comments

Noah Gordon on AI Use in STEM and Philosophy Dissertations
Ok, so let's try this again. Is it your view that if I take a few sentences I've written in my dissertation, feed them into an AI system…
David Wallace on AI Use in STEM and Philosophy Dissertations
No, I didn't mean to include you; I thought your comments were sensible.
abolitionist on AI Use in STEM and Philosophy Dissertations
we should indeed abolish criminal punishment but that's another can of worms
Louis Vervoort on AI for Philosophy: Progress through Capital-Intensive Philosophy (guest post)
I agree on many aspects of David’s post (referring to Justin’s older post “ ‘Hey Sophi’, or How Much Philosophy Will Computers Do?”) on the use and utility…
Sam Duncan on AI Use in STEM and Philosophy Dissertations
Students whose work is tagged by Pangram will often give the following atrocious argument after I point out that the research showing it's quite accurate and, on the…
Brian Weatherson on AI Use in STEM and Philosophy Dissertations
MIT had, and still has for all I know, a system for this that I think was right. There was a private oral defense that was really substantive.…
MBW on AI Use in STEM and Philosophy Dissertations
Please don't count me in your 1) — I'm hoping beyond hope that Pangram works as advertised so that we can rely on it as we determine what…
Jeremy Davis on Putting the Pub in Public Philosophy
The philosophy department at UGA (Athens, GA has recently started hosting "Philosophy Cafes" at a local brewery. They're also a hit! https://venunite.com/events/philosophy-cafe-with-uga-philosophy-3 https://www.phil.uga.edu/news/stories/2026/philosophy-cafe-continues-strong
David Wallace on AI Use in STEM and Philosophy Dissertations
Me too; it's a rich and interesting dataset, there's probably a lot more to get from it.
MBW on AI Use in STEM and Philosophy Dissertations
Fair enough. I'd still be interested to see how many fail a higher threshold, or to learn why 2% was how they operationalized 'written by AI.'
Nick on Overwhelming Cheating
But disabled students can be (and are, because of the ADA) given accommodations for exams like this. My students who can't write use computers in a designated area.…
David Wallace on AI Use in STEM and Philosophy Dissertations
Let me step back from the specifics of various sub-threads and make a couple of broader (and related) points: 1) I am really intrigued at how many people…
David Wallace on AI Use in STEM and Philosophy Dissertations
The actual quote you embed as evidence that “ the researchers specifically marked these as false positives” explicitly says that they are *not* false positives, so I don’t…
David Wallace on AI Use in STEM and Philosophy Dissertations
I don’t think it’s “obviously true”; I think it’s true (at least if you replace “separated” with “cleanly separated’). I wouldn’t spend extended time on a blog trying…
Jenelle on AI Use in STEM and Philosophy Dissertations
> “However, suppose I say to some AI “You know, I feel like I’m doing a poor job of getting my point across in this paragraph. Something seems…

Tag: use

Why Is Philosophy Important?