234. WHAT IF THEY WERE RIGHT? - On Kids These Days
Read More“What if what our parents warned us about did cause us harm but we were too harmed to see?“
225. NIGHT TERRORS - On the Possibility of Impossible Hauntings
Read More“But seeing no good evidence is not a total dismissal of the possibility. Perhaps “paranormal” occurrences have a natural explanation, but that explanation still goes beyond our current understanding of the nature of reality? “
189. THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE - Still Haunting AI
Read More"if these AI machines were conscious then we would effectively be using them as our slaves; they do not have a choice in the matter and are also not getting paid. This raises important questions on the morality of the use of AI" A student writes on AI and slavery...
143. ARTIFICIALLY PRODUCED - Is using ChatGPT To Do Your Work Cheating?
Read More“The following essay for Philosophy Unleashed was produced by AI. ChatGPT to be precise. I asked it to attempt to write a Philosophy Unleashed post on the topic of the ethics of using ChatGPT to cheat in school work, and do it in the style of me as author. I will present the essay to you first, then show you how it came to be. As you read, ask yourself the question: if I hadn’t told you it was artificially generated, would you know that a human being didn’t write this? And if you know my work specifically, would you know that I hadn’t written it?“
133. THE HARD PROBLEM OF BLACK CONSCIOUSNESS - On The Difficulty and Need For Waking From Dogmatic Slumbers
Read More“I’ve been thinking a lot about consciousness this week. Not the traditional philosophical questions about mind and body, but political consciousness. Specifically Black Consciousness.“
124. WHEN DOING PHILOSOPHY ISN'T DOING PHILOSOPHY - Exams Aren't Everything
Read More“I wrote that phrase on the board: “Metaphysics of Mind”. I then made a lame philosophy joke: “let’s see if the innatists are right. You haven’t been taught any of next year’s content yet but do you already know what philosophy of mind is?”
The task they are then set is to simply “do philosophy” to try and work out what they think next year’s course will cover, simply from the phrase “Metaphysics of Mind”. I give them a blank sheet of A3 paper and ask them to fill it with all the questions, issues and answers they think they will be studying from September.“
116. NOTHING IS REAL AND YET EVERYTHING IS REAL - On Constructing A Better Reality
Read More“Consider: it cannot both be true that advertising has no influence on our thinking and that people spend over £23bn a year on advertising. At worst, people are spending their twenty three billion pounds to influence us in a range of ways we are barely aware of. At best, the only advertising that has ever worked is the advertising for advertising itself which has convinced so many people to spend billions on a product which is utterly useless. Which means advertising does still work.“
34. DID I SLEEP OR NOT? - An Insomniac's Epistemological Struggle
Read More“When we are, and when we are not, conscious seems to be a fairly fundamental piece of self-knowledge every human being should have access to. The more I worry about my insomnia, however, the more I realise how little about our own unconsciousness we actually know.”
16. THE CHINESE ROOM THEORY OF LEARNING - Can We Avoid An Educational Imitation Game?
Read More“I think of the Chinese Room often as a teacher, especially around exam season, and wonder how much our obsession with testing has led to a Chinese Room approach to learning?”
14. WHEN BAD MOVIES GO GOOD - Mind vs Celluloid.
Read More“although we did watch the same movie on the screen, in our heads, we perceived two very different things. The cause of these alternative experiences being the mental environment into which the sense-data was ultimately processed, our mental experiences of the movie being more than merely passive acceptance of the sights and sounds projected inside the cinema.”
13. WHO AM I MEDITATING FOR? - A Brief Consideration of the Mindfulness Industrial Complex
Read More“As someone interested in critical thinking and intellectual analysis I have significant objections to the idea of a completely mindful life, and rather suspect the ascendency of mindfulness as a practice to cure all ailments in the modern day has a lot to do with its overall lack of threat to the status quo.”
7. YOU THINK YOU KNOW ME? - Re-evaluating Representation & Identity Politics
Read More“If each of our experiences of the world are isolated within a personal island of subjective qualia, then no two people can know for sure whether they experience the world in the same way. What this means for identity politics, is that the underlying notion that Muslims can talk about Islamophobia, the LGBT community about homophobia, non-white ethnic groups about racism, and women about sexism (etc.) with an authority that is lacking from a “non-member” of each group falls apart. Every woman will experience living as a woman in a patriarchal world uniquely; every person who has been discriminated against because of their race, sexuality or religion has felt that hurt without peer.”