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PHILOSOPHERS NEWSContemporary philosophers · ideas · books
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What the world of philosophy is talking about today.
At the end of August the American Philosophical Association gathered philosophy teachers for a two-day forum called 'The Examined Algorithm'. The question beneath the discussion is not cheating: in philosophy, is writing the record of thought, or is it thought itself?
The Scottish department marked for closure this summer has forced a retreat after a campaign. But the victory is conditional: the programme survives only in reduced form. This is the first time the wave of closures has been turned back, and it shows which argument can defend a philosophy department.
The journal that deliberately published a largely machine-written article at the start of August reversed itself within a fortnight and prohibited AI authorship. The argument has now moved to a harder question: how can it be proved that a text is the work of a machine?
Anthony Kenny, Cain Todd, David Charles, Tom Rockmore and Gabriele Taylor all died within a single month. Between them they stood for lines of work running from Aristotelian scholarship to German idealism, and from moral psychology to aesthetics.
Dan Kaufman set out four objections to his colleagues' enthusiasm for artificial intelligence: philosophy does not accumulate truths, its subject matter is human, it is closer to literature, and it is a social practice. His post at Leiter Reports drew more than ten replies in a day.
A professor was stopped from teaching Plato's Symposium, a course on 'Ethics and Public Policy' was cancelled and the Women's and Gender Studies programme was closed. Faculty members and the ACLU have taken the university to court.
Marking a century in print, the journal returns to an article it published a quarter of a century ago: Bernard Williams's 'Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline'.
The text of the article in Philosophy & Public Affairs was written by Claude; the thesis came from Simon Goldstein of the University of Hong Kong, who edited the piece. The decision has opened a debate about what authorship means in the field.
'The Basics of Philosophy', directed by Taxi Driver screenwriter Paul Schrader, screens out of competition at the Venice Film Festival on 4 September. At its centre is a philosophy professor living with the guilt of a decision made long ago.
