February Flashcards
The Machine Stops Author and date
E.M. Forster 1928
Derrida main idea
Deconstructivism - the meaning of a text is not fixed by authorial intent. In fact, the meaning of the words can be deconstructed to suggest multiple competing and even contradictory interpretations. The implications for the possibility of knowledge and truth based on media are severe.
The Machine Stops quote: “Man is the measure…”
“Man is the measure. That was my first lesson. Man’s feet are the measure for distance, his hands are the measure for ownership, his body is the measure for all that is lovable and desirable and strong.”
Meaning: Man makes meaning and value in the world.
The Machine Stops quote: “We created…”
“We created the machine to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will now.”
Meaning: Dangers of superintelligence.
The Machine Stops quote: “And behind all the uproar…”
“And behind all the uproar was silence - the silence which is the voice of the earth and of the generations who have gone.”
Meaning: Reminiscent of Heidegger Nothingness and Dread.
Nietzsche ‘God is dead’ meaning
God is dead - the fictional mythological basis for our values has been undermined by enlightenment philosophy and scientific progress.
Nietzsche Ubermench meaning
Powerful individuals who are radically free and make their own meaning for themselves above all else will be the ones who create values for humanity.
Memory and torture thought experiment. Philosopher and year
Bernard Williams 1970
Memory and torture thought experiment process
Will be tortured tomorrow. 1) you have no memory of being told 2) you have no memories at all 3) you have someone else's memories Do you feel any less apprehension?
Tomorrow you (body a) and another person (body b) get either a reward or torture. Your thoughts and memories are swapped. Who do you reward? Body A or body B
Deconstructivism philosopher
Derrida
Gaia hypothesis
That the earth is a self-regulating system whose natural chemical processes perform specific functions within the context of the entire system.
Percentage of oxygen in air
21% if much higher, wildfires would ravage forested land and make life on earth impossible.
Nietzsche main ideas
Slave morality Ressentiment Eternal recurrence Will to power God is dead Ubermench Moral perspectivalism
Statue outside Register House on Princes Street
Duke of Wellington. In remembrance of his victory over Napoleon at Waterloo
Amartya Sen main idea
Capabilities approach ethics
Adaptive preferences
Human preferences adapt to situations even an unhealthy person may limit their expectations to such an extent that they do not consider themselves unhealthy.
Idea exploited by Amartya Sen to argue against utilitarianism and any ethics based on subjective states.
Capabilities Approach
Amartya Sen.
1) the freedom to achieve well-being is of primary moral importance
2) freedom to achieve well-being is to be understood in terms of people’s capabilities, that is, their real opportunities to do and be what they have reason to value
Slave morality
“new” morality that focuses on inhibiting the powerful’s ability, especially their ability to harm or oppress, and on promoting the ‘good’ of the powerless, being meek, mild, forgiving etc.
Ressentiment
The resentful hatred felt by a group of the long-standing oppressed that leads to moralistic condemnation.
Eternal recurrence
The question to be asked when deciding whether one is living to the full: would you be happy to know that you will live out this same life infinitely? Nietzsche arguably believed that this will literally happen.
Will to power
All life aims at the enhancement of its power. Quasi-Darwinian idea. More power for the individual is better for that individual.
There is debate over whether this entails might makes right, or whether there is a distinction to be made between the external will to power (tyranny or mastery) and the internal will to power (self-control).
Moral perspectivalism
No objective Good or Evil except from some given perspective.
How did Alan Turing die?
Suicide by cyanide
Alan Turing dates
1912-1954 (41)
Simone de Beauvoir major works
The Ethics of Ambiguity 1947
The Second Sex 1949
Simone dear Beauvoir Ethics of Ambiguity 5 types of man
The sub man The serious man The surrealist The adventurer The passionate man
de Beauvoir ethical principle
To promote your own freedom AND this requires promoting the freedom of others
de Beauvoir arguments for promoting others’ freedom
1 self not sustainable without others
2 process of disclosing allows us to be free
3 projects live on into indefinite future. “echo into eternity”
Facticity
Existentialist noun for the collective conditions that make you an object. The material and societal factors that limit your freedom.
Simone de Beauvoir dates
1908-1986
Jean-Paul Sartre dates
1905-1980
Sartre main ideas
Existence precedes essence - no purpose, we make our own meaning and purpose (Greek idea of essence being teleological).
Radical freedom - We are all able to do or be whatever we want.
Objectification - treating something/someone as an object rather than as an end in themselves.
Facticity - the objective facts about your history and existence. These impose limits on your freedom.
Bad faith - living in accordance with the limits on oneself.
‘Never were we freer than under the German occupation’ - Oppression can enable a realisation of radical freedom.
Sartre major works
Nausea 1938
Existentialism is a Humanism 1946
No Exit 1944
Justification internalism Vs externalism
Justification internalism (weak) is the claim that we have access to some of the mental states (experiences, memories) that justify our beliefs.
Externalism is the denial of internalism.
Hobbes quote about AI
For reason is nothing but reckoning, that is adding and subtracting, of the consequences of general names agreed upon for the marking and signifying of our thoughts.
The Dartmouth proposal
Every aspect of learning or of any other feature of intelligence can be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it.
Chatbot that pretended to be a psychotherapist. Turing test results and year.
Eliza
50%
1991
Chatbot that pretended to be a 13 year old Ukrainian. Turing test results and year.
Eugene Goostman
33%
2014
Socratic irony
Assuming a position of ignorance in order to draw out interlocutor’s point and thinking.
Kierkegaard’s fiancee
Regina Olsen
Kierkegaard dates
1813-1855
Plato charioteer analogy. Reference and explanation
Phaedrus.
Human mind like a chariot - Charioteer is the intellect, trying to guide the two horses. One horse is the moral, positive passions, the other is the negative passions and appetites.
Kierkegaard responding to…
Hegel and his idea that everything can be rationalised and known. Kierkegaard styled as a new Socrates, propounding the idea that philosophy should lead us to doubt rather than know.
Kierkegaard notion of The Aesthete
The Aesthete - a hedonist. One following their base desires and motivations, slave to inputs from the world around them - suggestion and coercion. Leads to despair due to a failure live one’s own true life.
Kierkegaard The Ethical Man
The Ethical Man - Feels responsibility for others and identity is defined in terms of those societal and familial roles and expectations.
Kierkegaard The Religious Man
The Religious Man - Takes a leap of faith beyond their role in society, and beyond their own desires to embrace something else higher than themselves and higher than society.
Cognitivism
Moral judgements take the form of propositions. Most realistic theories are cognitivist. Error theory is an antirealist cognitivist theory.
Non cognitivism
Moral judgemenrs do not take the form of propositions. E.g. realist: intuitionism, antirealist: emotivism. Frege geach problem challenges non cognitivism.
Albert Camus philosophical tradition
Absurdism
Albert Camus dates
1913-1960
Camus notable works
The stranger 1942
The myth of Sisyphus 1942
The Absurd and embracing the absurd
The coexistence of the tendency to seek meaning in life and also the patent nonexistence of any such meaning.
Camus: Continue to seek meaning despite the realisation of nihilism.
Franz Kafka dates
1883-1924 (40)
Kafka main works
The judgement 1913
The metamorphosis 1915
In the penal colony 1919
