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The Myth of Thinking Machines

Philosophy News ·

2025/03/02

The concept of thinking machines remains entirely a psychological construct. Artificial intelligence applications cannot fundamentally shape human existence; they cannot model, transform, or design our experiences in truly novel ways. This means that individual and interpersonal experiences inhabit a world that is categorically different from the realm of artificial minds. Large language models and other types of generative AI cannot reach the depth and complexity of our daily activities because

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Archytas

Philosophy News ·

2025/03/01

[Revised entry by Carl Huffman on March 1, 2025. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography] Archytas of Tarentum was a Greek mathematician, political leader and philosopher, active in the first half of the fourth century BC (i.e., during Plato’s lifetime). He was the last prominent figure in the early Pythagorean tradition and the dominant political figure […]The post Archytas appeared first on Philosophy News.

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Truth Values

Philosophy News ·

2025/03/01

[Revised entry by Yaroslav Shramko and Heinrich Wansing on March 1, 2025. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, slingshot-argument.html, suszko-thesis.html] Truth values have been put to quite different uses in philosophy and logic, being characterized, for example, as: primitive abstract objects denoted by sentences in natural and formal languages,… The post Truth Values appeared first on Philosophy News.

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Thomas Hobbes

Philosophy News ·

2025/03/01

[Revised entry by Stewart Duncan on March 1, 2025. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, notes.html] Thomas Hobbes (1588 – 1679), whose current reputation rests largely on his political philosophy, was a thinker with wide-ranging interests. In philosophy, he defended a range of materialist, nominalist, and empiricist views against Cartesian and Aristotelian alternatives. In physics, his […] The post Thomas Hobbes appeared first on Philosophy News.

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Abner of Burgos

Philosophy News ·

2025/02/28

[Revised entry by Shalom Sadik on February 28, 2025. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, notes.html] Abner of Burgos (Alfonso de Valladolid; c. 1260 – 1347) was perhaps the most important philosopher in the stream of Jewish Spanish rabbi-apostates in the 14th and 15th centuries. In the first part of his life, Abner was an Aristotelian […] The post Abner of Burgos appeared first on Philosophy News.

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Friedrich Hayek

Philosophy News ·

2025/02/28

[Revised entry by David Schmidtz and Peter Boettke on February 28, 2025. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography, notes.html] Friedrich Hayek was born in Vienna in 1899 into a family steeped in academic life and scientific research. He worked as a statistician from 1927 – 31, became a Lecturer in Economics at the University of Vienna […] The post Friedrich Hayek appeared first on Philosophy News.

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Recently Published Book Spotlight: Three American Hegels

Philosophy News ·

2025/02/28

Ryan Johnson is Associate Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Elon University. Ryan’s books include Deleuze, A Stoic, Phenomenology of Black Spirit (co-written with Biko Mandela Gray), and Contemporary Encounters with Ancient Practice. He is currently writing a pair of books that improvise John Coltrane—The John Brown Suite, and A Love Spinoza. All his classes occur outside, and he loves trains. […] The post Recently Published Book Spotlight: Three American Hegels first appeared on

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New from IAI: AI can uncover humanity’s unknown unknowns

Philosophy News ·

2025/02/27

Summary: The AI system AlphaGo discovered strategies in the game of Go that human beings didn’t even know that they didn’t know. AI then is capable of discovering both known unknowns and unknown unknowns in fields from games to protein folding. Hall and Vold here argue we should therefore not only see AI as a […] The post New from IAI: AI can uncover humanity’s unknown unknowns appeared first on Philosophy News.

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Intimate Democracy

Philosophy News ·

2025/02/27

How do we arrive at some sense of being at home in the world without aspiring to own it? The post Intimate Democracy first appeared on Blog of the APA. The post Intimate Democracy appeared first on Philosophy News.

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Rebelling or Revelling?: Humor as a Sisyphean Task in...

Philosophy News ·

2025/02/27

The now classic movie-riffing series Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K), and its spinoffs such as Rifftrax, can tell us something about how to deal with existential absurdity. Although MST3K more directly targets the “aesthetic absurdity” of flawed filmmaking, the strategies used for coping with bad movies can also be applied to the absurdities of life. […] The post Rebelling or Revelling?: Humor as a Sisyphean Task in Mystery Science Theater 3000, Part 1 first appeared on Blog of the APA. The

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Logical Pluralism and Logical Consequence

Philosophy News ·

2025/02/15

2025.02.10 : View this Review Online | View Recent NDPR Reviews Erik Stei, Logical Pluralism and Logical Consequence, Cambridge University Press, 2023, 219 pp., $110.00 (hbk), ISBN 9781108494663. Reviewed by Roy T Cook, University of Minnesota–Twin Cities In the philosophy of logic, the traditional view is monism—the idea that there is a single, univocal, everywhere-correct formal logic […]The post Logical Pluralism and Logical Consequence appeared first on Philosophy News.

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Women on Philosophy of Art: Britain 1770–1900

Philosophy News ·

2025/02/15

2025.02.9 : View this Review Online | View Recent NDPR Reviews Alison Stone, Women on Philosophy of Art: Britain 1770–1900, Oxford University Press, 2024, 304pp., $105.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780198917977. Reviewed by Renee M. Conroy, American Society for Aesthetics Alison Stone’s Women on Philosophy of Art: Britain 1770–1900 is an edifying reconsideration of seven female British writers […] The post Women on Philosophy of Art: Britain 1770–1900 appeared first on Philosophy News.

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Nietzsche’s Aesthetics

Philosophy News ·

2025/02/14

[New Entry by Timothy Stoll on February 14, 2025.] Nietzsche’s first book was entitled The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music (1872), and one of his very last works was called The Case of Wagner: A Musician’s Problem (1888). As this simple fact indicates, reflection on art (and especially, on music and […] The post Nietzsche’s Aesthetics appeared first on Philosophy News.

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APA Member Interview: Matthew Brewer

Philosophy News ·

2025/02/14

Matthew Brewer is a PhD candidate at Boston University, and his primary research interests are in the philosophy of the geosciences, including geoscientific methodology, explanation, measurement, and theory pursuit. He also teaches ethics and ancient philosophy. What excites you about philosophy? Being a philosopher is so exciting because I get to think seriously about so […] The post APA Member Interview: Matthew Brewer first appeared on Blog of the APA. The post APA Member Interview: Matthew

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Falling in Love with Machines – Do AI Systems Deserve...

Philosophy News ·

2025/02/13

This essay originally appeared in Time in March of 2024 “Do you think people will ever fall in love with machines?” I asked the 12-year-old son of one of my friends. “Yes!” he said, instantly and with conviction. He and his sister had recently visited the Las Vegas Sphere and its newly installed Aura robot—an AI […] The post Falling in Love with Machines – Do AI Systems Deserve Rights? first appeared on Blog of the APA. The post Falling in Love with Machines – Do AI Systems Deserve Rights? appeared

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From Human to Cyborg: Art, Technology, and the...

Philosophy News ·

2025/02/13

Throughout the past century, technology’s integration into the human body has redefined our understanding of identity, autonomy, and what it means to be human. This essay explores three fundamental paradigm shifts that highlight how technological advancements have altered society’s aesthetic perception of the body. Art plays a critical role in imagining and normalizing these transformations, […] The post From Human to Cyborg: Art, Technology, and the Redefinition of Human Identity first appeared on

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Madeleine de Scudéry

Philosophy News ·

2025/02/12

[Revised entry by John Conley on February 12, 2025. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography] A prominent novelist, Madeleine de Scudery (1607 – 1701) composed a series of dialogues dealing with philosophical issues. Primarily ethical in focus, her dialogues examine the virtues and vices proper to the aristocratic society of the period. They also explore questions […] The post Madeleine de Scudéry appeared first on Philosophy News.

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Democracy and Future Generations: A Philosophical...

Philosophy News ·

2025/02/12

Democracy and future generations have a thorny relationship. On the one hand, democratic countries provide better for the well-being of future generations than autocracies do in policy domains such as forest preservation, fiscal sustainability, and early childhood education. Indeed, according to the Intergenerational Solidarity Index, democracy and intergenerational solidarity strongly correlate. On the other hand, […] The post Democracy and Future Generations: A Philosophical Minefield first

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Philosophy of Language, Landon D. C.Elkind

Philosophy News ·

2025/02/12

This syllabus is designed for a course that introduces students to some issues in the philosophy of language. There are seven-ish units to the course: There are many other readings within these topics or themes that I could pick and many other topics or themes that one could pick (suggestions welcomed at my inbox). Whatever […] The post Philosophy of Language, Landon D. C.Elkind first appeared on Blog of the APA. The post Philosophy of Language, Landon D. C.Elkind appeared first on Philosophy

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