mindchanging philosophy

In a series of op-ed pieces in the New York Times, documentary filmmaker Errol Morris recounts his early experiences in grad school studying with Thomas Kuhn, the imminent historian and philosopher of science who wrote The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), and virtually coined the word “incommensurability” to describe the problem of scientific paradigms shifts.

Morris gives an account of comical stories involving Prof. Kuhn throwing an ashtray at his head, as well as having him kicked out of grad school, but in particular he focuses on the development of two different epistemological approaches taken by Kuhn and others, including the famous philosopher Saul Kripke, and why the problem of relativism in these approaches has been misconceived as a result of various historical receptions of Pythagorean myths and other controversies in mathematics and the sciences.

Morris directed “The Fog of War” (2003), the story of Robert McNamara, former Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, who authored the U.S. policy of containment during the Cold War, which provided much of the rationale for the U.S. invasion of the tiny southeastern Asian nation. The documentary received critical acclaim at a time when U.S. “wars of choice” were being waged in Afghanistan and Iraq, and implicitly calls into question the purpose and conduct of such wars.

In a recent editorial the literature and law professor Stanley Fish wrote an interesting and provocative assessment of  the exciting questions raised by IBM’s supercomputer, “Watson,” winning the Jeopardy championship. Fish argues that “Watson” is basically an advanced version of his own laptop’s rather annoying auto-correct spelling software, and that logarithms searching for connections among stored data is not the same as the highly contextual and responsive thinking of human beings.

Watson's "thinking-in-progress" indicator light informs viewers the light is on, but whether anyone is home remains doubtful.

While this event is certainly an achievement for the intellectual powers and technological capabilities of human beings, and probably a financial boon for IBM, one has to agree that there is a difference between the forms of cognition capable of being performed by machines and varieties of cognition that come with the unity of human self-consciousness.

In a blog posted today in the New York Times, the famous philosopher of technology Hubert Dreyfus, who wrote some ground-breaking books called What Computers Can’t Do (1972) and Mind Over Machines (1986), follows up on Fish’s earlier editorializing. Defenders of AI claimed, contra Fish’s first editorial, that “Watson’s” capabilities in the area of cognition depend on a new paradigm of AI, and that its ability to appear to think contextually by grasping idiomatic dimensions of natural language is a significant advance. While Dreyfus and his co-author agree this is indeed an impressive achievement, their conclusion remains humorously sound:  “Nevertheless, the arrival of our new computer overlords is not exactly around the corner.”

Here is a really great article featured in the New York Times Opinionator today. It addresses the question, what’s the explanation for the intimate connection between science and nonsense in works such as Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Charles Darwin, and others.

These are some funny images of cards to be played in a fictional philosophical board game:

Check out Simon Critchley’s interesting piece “Stoned”, about the need for a more public role for philosophers to play in US culture and politics.

In this respect, I hope mindchanging.com can make such a contribution!

Welcome to the philosophy home page of Kory Schäff. If you are students, professors, or just plain interested, you will find course information, class updates, articles and news, as well as my past publications and ongoing research. This will be my sixth year teaching philosophy, and I get much personal satisfaction in sharing philosophy with other like-minded individuals who are interested in making their brains smarter, faster, stronger, and more svelt!