Top News, Articles, and Interviews in Philosophy

IFL2: Three chapters on natural deduction (for propositional logic)

11. February 2019 Philosophy News News
I won’t bore you by reviewing the crooked path by which we got here. But I’m steadily working on the draft second edition of my intro logic book, with a cheerier feeling about the project. And I can now offer you … Continue reading → The post IFL2: Three chapters on natural deduction (for propositional logic) appeared first on Logic [More]
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The Philosophical Case for Robot Friendship

9. February 2019 Philosophy News News
Here's another new paper of mine. This one makes the case for robot friends. This actually started life as one of my more popular blog posts. The paper is obviously more fully developed than the blog post. You can also listen to me give a short precis of the argument in the video above from about 20:48-31:00 (if you press play the video should start at the right time).Full details of the paper and links to preprint versions are below.Title: The Philosophical Case for Robot FriendshipJournal: The Journal of Posthuman Studies (forthcoming)Links: Philpapers, Academia, ResearchgateAbstract: Friendship is an important part of the good life. While many roboticists are eager to create friend-like robots, many philosophers and ethicists are concerned. They argue that robots cannot really be our friends. Robots can only fake the emotional and behavioural cues we associate with friendship. Consequently, we should resist the drive to create robot friends. In this article, I argue that the philosophical critics are wrong. Using the classic virtue-ideal of friendship, I argue that robots can plausibly be considered our virtue friends - that to do so is philosophically reasonable. Furthermore, I argue that even if you do not think that robots can be our virtue friends, they can fulfil other important friendship roles, and can complement and enhance the virtue friendships between human beings.  #mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; [More]
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Preventing miscommunication: lessons from cross-cultural couples

9. February 2019 Philosophy News News
We might expect that people will have trouble understanding one another when they are using a foreign language, but several studies have found that overt misunderstandings are relatively uncommon in such situations. The reason for this is that when people can anticipate that some problems of understanding may occur, they adapt the way they speak. The post Preventing miscommunication: lessons from cross-cultural couples appeared first on [More]
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How Men and Women Think

9. February 2019 Philosophy News News
Londa Schiebinger’s book, The Mind Has No Sex?, is an excellent survey of women’s role in the origins of modern science and the reasons for its decline. The title is drawn from a statement by a 17th century philosopher, François Poullain de la Barre. Based on his studies of the ‘new’ science of anatomy, he claimed that there was no evidence that women’s undoubtedly inferior position was due to some biological deficit, or lack of natural ability, and that, given appropriate opportunities, women would be as capable as men of high achievements in all spheres. “L’esprit n’a point de sexe” he declared. It appears to have been downhill all the way since that optimistic statement. In parallel with the exclusion and disappearance of women from the realms of scientific enterprise and discovery, there is evidence of a powerful drive among (male) scientists towards applying the sexual differentiation associated with reproduction to all other aspects of the body, including the brain and hence the [More]
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Quotation

8. February 2019 Philosophy News News
[Revised entry by Herman Cappelen, Ernest Lepore, and Matthew McKeever on February 8, 2019. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography] Starting with Frege, the semantics (and pragmatics) of quotation has received a steady flow of attention over the last one hundred or so years. It has not, however, been subject to the same kind of intense debate and scrutiny as, for example, the semantics of definite descriptions or of propositional attitude verbs. Many philosophers probably share Davidson's experience: 'When I was initiated into the mysteries of logic and semantics, quotation [More]
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Third Parties: Schultz 2020?

8. February 2019 Philosophy News News
While history has seen numerous political parties in the United States, the Democrats and Republicans have effectively locked down control of the system. This is not to say that third-party candidates have not run (Jill Stein and Ralph Nader) or even won (Bernie Sanders). While the 2020 field has yet to be fully occupied, Starbucks [More]
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