I heard on the wireless yesterday that the current head of Microsoft lies awake worrying that people are forming relationships with AI tools as if they were human. He used the expression 'seemingly conscious AI' and I think that is a good place to start. When , in normal circumstances do questions of consciousness arise? … Continue reading Why do we suppose AI might be conscious?
Category: MUSINGS ON . . .
occasional effusions on every subject under the sun
My philosophy paper
The politics of envy: Trump and Zelenskyy
'So excellent a king; that was, to this,Hyperion to a satyr' (Hamlet, Act I, scene 2) We know Donald J Trump to be a nasty and vindictive man, but even so his recent outburst against Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a man that most of the world holds in high regard, comes as something of a shock; yet … Continue reading The politics of envy: Trump and Zelenskyy
Where is Thomas Gradgrind when you need him?
‘Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which … Continue reading Where is Thomas Gradgrind when you need him?
This is not the system we need to reform
I am uneasy with the present clamour from all sides of the Opposition for an immediate General Election. It is based on the spurious ground that Rishi Sunak has no mandate to be Prime Minister. In fact, he has all the mandate he needs – he commands the confidence of the House. He does so … Continue reading This is not the system we need to reform
‘Let words be nice’ – reflections on Alan Garner’s ‘Treacle Walker’
[NB: this article assumes that you have read the book] All writing, it might be said, works by synecdoche: the writer supplies the part and from it we infer the whole to fill the space the writer leaves. Alan Garner is a master of omission: what makes it onto the page is spare and lean … Continue reading ‘Let words be nice’ – reflections on Alan Garner’s ‘Treacle Walker’
Coming back to Ludwig
Wittgenstein at the bar of the Folies Bergere By what James Joyce would call a vicus of recirculation, I find myself once more in agreement with Ludwig Wittgenstein after an unexpected falling-out. It was my reading of Wittgenstein’s well-known dictum that ‘the meaning of a word…is its use in the language’ along with his notion … Continue reading Coming back to Ludwig
The Shepherd Boy and the Philosopher: a fable about numbers
‘It's surreal to me that it's 2022 and there are still people out there who think 2 + 2 = 4 is an objective truth that was true before humans even existed and not just like a thing society agreed on because it's useful’ (culled from Twitter, where people say the most extraordinary things out … Continue reading The Shepherd Boy and the Philosopher: a fable about numbers
Trickster Johnson continues to expose the weakness of our ‘unwritten constitution’
If the United Kingdom survives Boris Johnson’s disastrous premiership it may yet be grateful to him. No one man has done more, and in so short a time, to expose the absurdities of our archaic political system and the weakness of its ‘unwritten constitution’ in which vagueness has too long been mistaken for flexibility. Johnson’s … Continue reading Trickster Johnson continues to expose the weakness of our ‘unwritten constitution’
“Remainers’ Brexit”? he’s right, you know!
In the realm of contemporary politics, I must confess to confusing David Davis and Lord Frost. It may be my mind’s refusal to accept that Nature could permit such a waste of space as to suffer two such grey and uninteresting men of such dismal incompetence to exist simutaneously, or my incredulity that there could … Continue reading “Remainers’ Brexit”? he’s right, you know!
COMPLEAT TROWZER 