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Serious Contradictions
We have forgotten to take these things seriously. We lecture about how philosophers should not lecture but ask questions. We demand honours and titles for a discipline that claims to renounce honours and titles. We charge fees for something that we say is priceless. We live in contradiction with ourselves and then call ourselves logicians.
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Dirty Water
If you think you are swimming in dirty water, you get out. You don’t keep swimming, adding to the filth.
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Philosophy is Lost
Philosophy has lost its way. It is inconsistent with itself. It is not living in conformity with its nature. It believes itself to be profound and important, but what is characteristic of its daily activity is trivial and it produces trivialities.
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Artificial Intelligence and the Illusion of Understanding
‘I went down to the university yesterday to talk about Plato’s cave with the academics.’ If I say this to an AI, it would miss everything that matters in this sentence and see everything that doesn’t. But if I say this to a philosopher they would reply: ‘I see you are making a point.’ Having had this thought for a while, I thought I’d put it to the test.
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Artificial Intelligence
‘I went down to the university yesterday to talk about Plato’s cave with the academics.’ If I say this to an AI, it would miss everything that matters in this sentence and see everything that doesn’t. But if I say this to a philosopher they would reply: ‘I see you are making a point.’
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Minds over Matter
Francis Bacon, in urging the introduction of the then-new science, complained that universities produced ‘minds empty and unfraught with matter’ having not ‘gathered that which Cicero calleth sylva and supellex, stuff and variety’. Now I complain that universities produce minds fraught with matter but empty of what matters. Their heads are full of stuff but incapable of judgement.
An experiment with philosophy as a way of life
tobybetenson.com 