I don't think I would be a suitable collaborator on any of these topics, but I would be interested to read about many of them! A few thoughts:
4. IANAL, but there has to be a well-developed body of law concerning mitigation and responsibility, right? It might be useful to approach this question at least partly from a jurisprudential angle, rather than from the perspective of abstract moral philosophy alone.
9. Doesn't some sort of Wittgensteinian move get you most of what you want here? e.g. "Instead of talking about knowledge, we should talk about the (social?) conditions under which knowledge claims are advanced and/or taken as valid." The problem is that mainstream analytic epistemology seems to have mostly rejected this sort of move. Timothy Williamson, for example, sees it as a sign of progress that metaphysicians and epistemologists since the 1970s generally spend their time debating claims about X, rather than about the meaning(s) of "X". I don't understand why he thinks this is progress; it strikes me as just a retreat into dogmatism. And there is no point arguing with dogmatists: the only thing to do is to seek out alternative interlocutors.
But really, it's your "exotic" proposals that I find most intriguing:
10B. One way this might be true is that elevating canonical texts to higher authority can make them more esoteric, which opens up greater space for interpretation. Compare: "This book gets a lot right, even if it gets a few things wrong. For example, it is wrong about [...], because [...]" vs. "Our sacred book appears to say something that is obviously wrong, but since it is sacred, it can't be wrong: what it actually *means* is [...]" Once you get sufficiently comfortable with the latter move, your hermeneutic prowess can liberate you from the tyranny of the text. Is this the sort of thing you are talking about?
10D. Yes, and: The structure of narratives makes people more likely to believe in AI risk.
10E. (Until recently it had never occurred to me that debates over logical axioms might be anything other than merely verbal.)
10F. Are the practical implications that you have in mind psychological, epistemological or (morally) normative?
Agree re: anti-Williamsonianism- I am broadly attached to the Canberra plan approach to philosophy.
10B: Not quite, the paradigmatic case is treating an authoritative text as so rich with meaning and significance that every word implies an exception or extra layer of meaning or special case so eventually you can 'reread' the text into anything. Throughout the process, the infalliability of the text is never challenged- rather it's enriched so you can make it do what you like: https://philosophybear.substack.com/p/granting-textual-authority-to-overcome
10:F- Morally normative. The key example I give is around deference. A realist has more reason to defer to others moral judgements than an anti-realist.
I have the strange opinion that no one is ever right. Exactly right. That includes me. I am also, conversely, of the opinion that no is ever wrong. Completely wrong. But if, though, I don’t believe my opinion is necessarily correct, I certainly don’t ever believe my opinion is ever wrong. Obviously I would think I am right because it is my opinion.
I made the mistake of reading this cracked article by Zach Parsons I found in my mail spam folder, then going to bed while watching The Shining twice in a row.
“11 great threads nobody posted in by Pony de Sum”
So, yesterday I skimmed an article about some vote in Australia about how there’s some constitutional amendment on the ballot to create an entirely symbolic committee to represent aboriginal people in the Australian parliament, or whatever you kiwi’s call it.
“This will divide the country!”
Don’t get me wrong now, they’re great ideas, and clearly I woke up thinking of them for more time than the idea of killing my family with an axe floated around.
Look, I just tried to be funny and complain about white Christian nationalism, or the fact that academic philosophy will never touch the people it could be most helpful to because of the same heuristic decision making that causes people to deride “your philosophy” as they are quietly, yet obviously either getting ready to witness to you in the name of some skinny Jewish kid that liked to buck authority and horsewhip bankers, OR thinking of some shitty Netflix crime drama power fantasy.
Making a sympathetic gesture towards a people who your ancestors committed cold blooded genocide against.
That’s gonna divide people.
What the fuck.
There’s so much to wtf over all the time, and we see more and more as our little meaty minds bobble around on some fertile coastline, some plain filled with giant delicious herbivores... adapted to really only recognize our “monkey circle” and the problems that face it.
We’re all in a new age that our brains are going to have to adapt to, but how?
God help us all, it’s you.
Those saying that some (to my knowledge powerless) voice of a shattered people will divide a country are never going to listen to “your philosophy” when they have “their Jesus”.
I know I said I do something useful like fill potholes, but actually I’m an incredibly bored middle aged, white passing, divorced heterosexual man with no degree, ten years of college and half a dozen majors (and no academic debt so I must be kinda smart, or rich, probably never was either) who sits around collecting a check as he waits to go back to work. If you could only see me now, posting this in a dark room with two thumbs on a 4 year old phone. I actually do work with my hands putting up infrastructure for an American program known as RDOF, putting up fiber lines that cost more than I earn in a month typically, to massive individual houses that sprawl across tracts of land that are growing corn and soy. I’m paying with my taxes for these rich idiots to have better internet than I do.
Sometimes these rich idiots don’t even want the lines. Not so deep down they know it’s some part of an evil plan to provide them with Tv streaming services. Another thing I read a while back was something about how giving people in rural India televisions got men to stop beating the hell out of their wives... sooo best of luck there? At least the poor idiots often (but not always) can’t afford to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Blah blah blah, I can’t even escape these people when I’m not working. To speak to people in person is to invite more garbage that my meat box won’t let go of, like the sad and faint hope that my tax dollars are well spent in this one case.
Anyway. I think pop philosophy is vital. Sad, but beautiful. Sprinkle in some poop jokes and see if you can sell it to Dan Harmon, maybe put together that story wheel yourself even idk.. few people care about something that just tells them they’re wrong without making them laugh, those free people are not the target audience unfortunately.
On #6 it might be worth looking into explore/exploit trade-offs and algorithms. What you’re advocating seems (to me at least) somewhat similar to the upper confidence bound algorithm for the multi-armed bandit problem (https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/upper-confidence-bound-algorithm-in-reinforcement-learning/#). Though, this is meant to describe an individual agent’s actions rather than necessarily actions with respect to a group.
I don't think I would be a suitable collaborator on any of these topics, but I would be interested to read about many of them! A few thoughts:
4. IANAL, but there has to be a well-developed body of law concerning mitigation and responsibility, right? It might be useful to approach this question at least partly from a jurisprudential angle, rather than from the perspective of abstract moral philosophy alone.
9. Doesn't some sort of Wittgensteinian move get you most of what you want here? e.g. "Instead of talking about knowledge, we should talk about the (social?) conditions under which knowledge claims are advanced and/or taken as valid." The problem is that mainstream analytic epistemology seems to have mostly rejected this sort of move. Timothy Williamson, for example, sees it as a sign of progress that metaphysicians and epistemologists since the 1970s generally spend their time debating claims about X, rather than about the meaning(s) of "X". I don't understand why he thinks this is progress; it strikes me as just a retreat into dogmatism. And there is no point arguing with dogmatists: the only thing to do is to seek out alternative interlocutors.
But really, it's your "exotic" proposals that I find most intriguing:
10B. One way this might be true is that elevating canonical texts to higher authority can make them more esoteric, which opens up greater space for interpretation. Compare: "This book gets a lot right, even if it gets a few things wrong. For example, it is wrong about [...], because [...]" vs. "Our sacred book appears to say something that is obviously wrong, but since it is sacred, it can't be wrong: what it actually *means* is [...]" Once you get sufficiently comfortable with the latter move, your hermeneutic prowess can liberate you from the tyranny of the text. Is this the sort of thing you are talking about?
10D. Yes, and: The structure of narratives makes people more likely to believe in AI risk.
10E. (Until recently it had never occurred to me that debates over logical axioms might be anything other than merely verbal.)
10F. Are the practical implications that you have in mind psychological, epistemological or (morally) normative?
Agree re: anti-Williamsonianism- I am broadly attached to the Canberra plan approach to philosophy.
10B: Not quite, the paradigmatic case is treating an authoritative text as so rich with meaning and significance that every word implies an exception or extra layer of meaning or special case so eventually you can 'reread' the text into anything. Throughout the process, the infalliability of the text is never challenged- rather it's enriched so you can make it do what you like: https://philosophybear.substack.com/p/granting-textual-authority-to-overcome
10:F- Morally normative. The key example I give is around deference. A realist has more reason to defer to others moral judgements than an anti-realist.
https://philpapers.org/rec/QURTMW this paper relates to one of the points made
Thankyou
On point on, I just wrote about this, so here's my collaboration for you, if you care to use it.
https://ken9yvonne.substack.com/p/the-election-fallacy?utm_campaign=email-post&r=1t0tey&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
I have the strange opinion that no one is ever right. Exactly right. That includes me. I am also, conversely, of the opinion that no is ever wrong. Completely wrong. But if, though, I don’t believe my opinion is necessarily correct, I certainly don’t ever believe my opinion is ever wrong. Obviously I would think I am right because it is my opinion.
I made the mistake of reading this cracked article by Zach Parsons I found in my mail spam folder, then going to bed while watching The Shining twice in a row.
“11 great threads nobody posted in by Pony de Sum”
So, yesterday I skimmed an article about some vote in Australia about how there’s some constitutional amendment on the ballot to create an entirely symbolic committee to represent aboriginal people in the Australian parliament, or whatever you kiwi’s call it.
“This will divide the country!”
Don’t get me wrong now, they’re great ideas, and clearly I woke up thinking of them for more time than the idea of killing my family with an axe floated around.
Look, I just tried to be funny and complain about white Christian nationalism, or the fact that academic philosophy will never touch the people it could be most helpful to because of the same heuristic decision making that causes people to deride “your philosophy” as they are quietly, yet obviously either getting ready to witness to you in the name of some skinny Jewish kid that liked to buck authority and horsewhip bankers, OR thinking of some shitty Netflix crime drama power fantasy.
Making a sympathetic gesture towards a people who your ancestors committed cold blooded genocide against.
That’s gonna divide people.
What the fuck.
There’s so much to wtf over all the time, and we see more and more as our little meaty minds bobble around on some fertile coastline, some plain filled with giant delicious herbivores... adapted to really only recognize our “monkey circle” and the problems that face it.
We’re all in a new age that our brains are going to have to adapt to, but how?
God help us all, it’s you.
Those saying that some (to my knowledge powerless) voice of a shattered people will divide a country are never going to listen to “your philosophy” when they have “their Jesus”.
I know I said I do something useful like fill potholes, but actually I’m an incredibly bored middle aged, white passing, divorced heterosexual man with no degree, ten years of college and half a dozen majors (and no academic debt so I must be kinda smart, or rich, probably never was either) who sits around collecting a check as he waits to go back to work. If you could only see me now, posting this in a dark room with two thumbs on a 4 year old phone. I actually do work with my hands putting up infrastructure for an American program known as RDOF, putting up fiber lines that cost more than I earn in a month typically, to massive individual houses that sprawl across tracts of land that are growing corn and soy. I’m paying with my taxes for these rich idiots to have better internet than I do.
Sometimes these rich idiots don’t even want the lines. Not so deep down they know it’s some part of an evil plan to provide them with Tv streaming services. Another thing I read a while back was something about how giving people in rural India televisions got men to stop beating the hell out of their wives... sooo best of luck there? At least the poor idiots often (but not always) can’t afford to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Blah blah blah, I can’t even escape these people when I’m not working. To speak to people in person is to invite more garbage that my meat box won’t let go of, like the sad and faint hope that my tax dollars are well spent in this one case.
Anyway. I think pop philosophy is vital. Sad, but beautiful. Sprinkle in some poop jokes and see if you can sell it to Dan Harmon, maybe put together that story wheel yourself even idk.. few people care about something that just tells them they’re wrong without making them laugh, those free people are not the target audience unfortunately.
Man. Now I’m sad. This sucks. What’s on Tv?
On #6 it might be worth looking into explore/exploit trade-offs and algorithms. What you’re advocating seems (to me at least) somewhat similar to the upper confidence bound algorithm for the multi-armed bandit problem (https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/upper-confidence-bound-algorithm-in-reinforcement-learning/#). Though, this is meant to describe an individual agent’s actions rather than necessarily actions with respect to a group.
I would also recommend (https://joecarlsmith.com/2021/06/21/on-the-limits-of-idealized-values) or (https://joecarlsmith.com/2023/02/17/seeing-more-whole) for #8 and (https://joecarlsmith.com/2022/10/09/against-the-normative-realists-wager) for #10F
Cheers