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TikTok: The Surveillance State and Your Role
Lately, you cannot walk down a busy street, go to work, eat at a restaurant, workout at the gym, or go grocery shopping without seeing either a Ring light and its accompanying dancer, monologist, storyteller, or a gaggle of influencers—or want-to-be-influencers.
As a result, you become a nonconsensual unpaid background...
How Not to Excuse Far-Right Women
“I am still in utter disbelief by Thursday’s verdict. Never in my life did I imagine my own government would charge me as a criminal for exercising my religious liberties and rights to free speech, which are guaranteed by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. They are trying...
Should We Continue to Read and Honor Immoral Historical Philosophers?
In 2020, the University of Edinburgh renamed what was then called Hume Tower, removing the name of the eighteenth-century Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume on the grounds that Hume supported slavery and was a racist. Recently, David Ashton and Peter Hutton have written two pieces (here and here, and...
LuFlot: The first philosopher-powered chatbot
Portraits by Mara Lavitt; Image courtesy of Yale University
Students now have a new tool at their disposal. The Luciano Floridi Bot, also known as LuFlot, is an AI-powered online tool designed to democratize access to philosophical material and foster engagement with the works of philosopher and Director of Yale’s...
Two Principles of Academic Ethics
Some time ago, while I was advising a doctoral student regarding her search for an academic position, she showed me her graduate school transcript. I noted that she had been awarded an A in every course but one; in that single instance, she had received a B. When I...
APA announces new AI2050 Prizes
The American Philosophical Association (APA) is pleased to announce the establishment of the APA AI2050 Prizes, supported by Schmidt Sciences. The APA AI2050 Prizes are awarded in recognition of outstanding philosophical scholarship (including interdisciplinary scholarship that engages philosophical issues) addressing any of the AI2050 Hard Problems. There are two...
An Alternative to Argumentation: Persuasion via Questions
In my last post, I introduced Julia Galef’s way of thinking about motivated reasoning, what she calls soldier mindset: people take ideas personally, and then respond with defensiveness when “their” ideas are attacked. Among other things, soldier mindset leads people to evaluate evidence in a different way, depending on...
Philosophical Mastery and Conceptual Competence
I roughly sort pedagogical issues into two broad categories: engagement and mastery. By “engagement” I mean roughly discussion and reflection on teaching methods that increase students’ motivation to learn the course material. By “mastery” I mean roughly discussion and reflection on teaching methods that improve students’ ability with respect...
The Power of Pan-Africanism: A Dialogue with Dr. LaRose Parris
Dr. LaRose T. Parris, originally from Jamaica in the West Indies, and shaped by the diverse cultural landscape of New York City, is Associate Professor and Chair of Africana Studies at Lehman College in the Bronx. Holding degrees from New York University (NYU), City College of New York, and...
The Supreme Court’s Symbolic Code of Conduct
Two things seem true about modern professional life. One, most professional activities nowadays (legal ones, anyway) are backed by a code of conduct—roughly, a set of written guidelines instructing participants how to behave to realize certain values their professional institution accepts. Professional societies like the American Philosophical Association have a Code...