Socrates Would’ve Absolutely Adored ChatGPT
Go on, admit it—you use ChatGPT (or something like it) more than you are willing to admit. You use it for all sorts of...
Foraging Thoughts
Few joys in my childhood memory rival the picking of blackberries under the scorching Greek sun. The rising dust, the dry and hot wind,...
When Society Stops Knowing How to Know
Over the past two decades, we have watched the pillars of public knowledge gradually weaken. John Stuart Mill is probably turning in his grave...
Immanence All the Way Down (and Across): Horizontal Transcendence in First Reformed
Paul Schrader crafted his 2018 film First Reformed to be, among other things, an extended phenomenological argument that transcendence requires moving beyond the physical...
Occupational Choice, Liberal Freedom, and Social Necessity
Occupational choice is for many an existential and deeply personal matter. An avowed goal of liberal societies has always been to permit citizens to...
Sinking From Submarines: The Rules of Naval Warfare
We don’t often spend a lot of time thinking about the morality of submarine warfare. It’s a small and secretive world that rarely seeks attention. It...
Speaking Through Action: Open Rescue as Moral Assertion
Ridglan Farms in Blue Mounds, Wisconsin is a breeder of beagles for scientific research. It’s been a target of animal activism for about a...
The Police Can Lie to You
The police can either lie to Jane or they can be honest with her. If the police lie to Jane, it is probable that...
Words Without Knowledge: Augustine and the Use of Language in the Age of LLMs
In 2022, when Blake Lemoine shared his experience with LaMDA 2, he took the AI's responses seriously and claimed that artificial intelligence (AI) consciousness...
Who Controls the Future? On Capitalism, Democracy, and Social Alienation
Who controls the future? The answer to this question concerns the role and politics of financial investment under capitalism. Through its mode of investment,...