On Philosophy and Neuroscience

“Many of the best philosophers of mind, like Andy Clark, are immersed in the world of philosophy and that of neuroscience. There are plenty of philosophers who don’t carve up their way of thinking about the mind into ‘philosophy’ and ‘neuroscience’; we just want a picture of what the mind is like, and any sources of information about that are relevant. There are big questions about where consciousness comes from, how it evolved, what it is, and how we experience the world. There’s a cluster of unresolved issues, and plenty of them still have a philosophical flavour. The neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell just published a book about the nature of free will: Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will. It’s impossible to write intelligently about that as a neuroscientist, I think, without touching on the long philosophical history around that topic. And even if you want to be a hardcore neuroscientist saying, well, philosophy has nothing for me, moral issues don’t go away just by looking at the brain. Or, if they seem to, you end up with a very strange moral philosophy.”

Nigel Warburton, “The Best Philosophy Books of 2023 recommended by Nigel Warburton” - https://fivebooks.com/best-books/best-philosophy-books-2023-nigel-warburton/

On Surveillance at Scale

“In San Francisco there’s always another video. New York and London are known for being blanketed with government-run CCTV coverage, but surveillance here is different: It is as privatized as it is pervasive, a culture of Hitchcock’s Rear Window, at scale... A camera offers the illusion of a private sentry, serving you and your castle. Control your tiny corner of a flailing city. Yet once you capture something you didn’t expect, say, a neighborhood vigilante mystery unfurling on your doorstep, the control is breached. Your cam blasts up and away into the stratosphere of attention. The cops get it, the footage gets passed to the prosecutor, who hands it to the defense attorney, who tosses it like chum to the ravenous media, and before you know it, your house cam is on CNN, it’s playing on All In With Chris Hayes, it’s making rhetorical points against Tucker Carlson, it’s basically a live birth on a San Francisco sidewalk, boomeranging the eyes right back on you, threatening to put you on the witness stand, sending a WIRED reporter marching up to your garage on a Friday afternoon, hoping to talk. You wanted to surveil. You end up surveilled. ”

Lauren Smiley, “How Citizen Surveillance Ate San Francisco,” - https://www.wired.com/story/san-francisco-doom-loop-citizen-surveillance/.

On Australian Citizens' Assemblies

“Is it at all possible to have a sensible conversation about political reform in Australia?... In order to discuss various matters, in 2012 the Irish Parliament convened a Citizens’ Convention which then led to a series of Citizens’ Assemblies on specific topics, several of which became forerunners to successful referenda... Surprisingly, Australia was, until recently, a leader in citizen juries, having undertaken more than any other country, except Germany. But the political firmament hasn’t changed. To be fair, politics is much the same the world over. Most people still equate robust debate with political one-upmanship. The unseemly debate that bogged down the referendum didn’t need to happen. A patently better approach would’ve been to convene a Citizens’ Assembly to deliberate on the question — to act as the focus of a national conversation, rather than the slanging match that is Canberra.”

Luca Belgiorno-Nettis, “Could the Voice Referendum Process Have Benefitted from an Irish-style Citizens’ Assembly?” - https://www.abc.net.au/religion/would-the-voice-referendum-benefit-from-a-citizens-assembly/103147650. Given my work on citizens assemblies in deliberative democracy over the years, I'd wholeheartedly agree.

On the Fragility of Grand Hotels

“In all their fragility, grand hotels were liberal institutions par excellence. They depended on the free movement of goods and people as well as the self-regulatory capacity of guests and staff. And yet, at the heart of the thing lay a dark irony. The grand hotel as a liberal institution, much like the era’s liberal constitutions, disenfranchised the majority for the benefit and prestige of the minority... this story of the failure of liberal hoteliers is in microcosm the story of the failure of German liberalism, a catastrophe that expanded from the Kaiserhof to the chancellery to the rest of Europe and then the world. The decisions of liberal businessmen mattered. Faced with their nemesis in flesh and blood, they turned to liberal argumentation for support. It didn’t work. Their dilemma has become a perennial one. What should a corporate board of directors do when the interests of democracy and the interests of their business don’t seem to align? Favor the latter was the answer in 1932. Is it still?”

Adam Bisno, “Hitler, the Hotel Guest,” - http://www.cambridgeblog.org/2023/11/hitler-the-hotel-guest/. This post on Bisno’s open access new book Big Business and the Crisis of German Democracy: Liberalism and the Grand Hotels of Berlin 1875-1933, provides a terrifying insight into the paradox of tolerance noted in Popper’s The Open Society. The hoteliers of Weimar Republic Berlin failed to respond to this paradox and ended up complicit in the rise of Nazism. As the chairman of Hotel Kaiserhof argued, “we must remain neutral on matters of religion and politics. Our houses must remain open to all.” The all under consideration was the Nazi hotel guest Adolf Hitler. The loss of Jewish guests and business was, of course, excluded by Meinhardt’s ‘all.’ As Bisno astutely notes: “Meinhardt’s… liberalism was of no help against the Nazis, who were adept at using the precepts of free speech, free political association, and equal access to gain entry to liberal institutions only for the purpose of destroying them.” The paradox of tolerance is its opposition to intolerance. In order to protect a tolerant space for people to speak freely, people must actively oppose those who seek to destroy the freedom of others. On the one hand, it fosters spaces where people are free to disagree with each other on a wide array of topics, such as religion and politics. On the other, it opposes racism which undermines the equality of all human beings. In sum, Hotel Kaiserhof should have been clear-minded about why it should have excluded Hitler for the sake of protecting a tolerant space of free access by Jewish patrons. Or said another way, it’s the historical context through which to appreciate the tensions in Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, which I wrote about some years ago and the absurdities explored in Ruben Östland’s The Square.

On Brains on Books

“De Hamel’s book [The Manuscripts Club] is a group biography, reaching back to the Middle Ages and forward to the 20th century, of the old and affable brotherhood (and sisterhood) of manuscript lovers... Another new book out this season, Adrian Johns’s The Science of Reading, pairs curiously well as a bookend with de Hamel’s to the act of reading. Johns seeks to explain how we read; de Hamel seeks to explain why... Reading shapes the thinking of book lovers in ways that go beyond merely what they read. I remember sitting, in college, in a lecture that the professor was giving extemporaneously, without notes. At one point, he said, ‘As I said above…’ He was writing the words in his head as he spoke, or at least he was moving through his ideas spatially as one would down a page. Was this oral culture, written culture, or a mix of the two? If we can’t separate the dancer from the dance, what hope do we have of separating reading from the reader?”

Elyse Graham, “This Is Your Brain on Books,” - https://www.publicbooks.org/this-is-your-brain-on-books/. I relied on De Hamel and Johns both in my last monograph as there is much to be admired in their approaches to book history.

On Language-Centrism

“If future AI systems are anything like current AI systems, they will not have neurons, but they will closely resemble us in terms of linguistic behaviour. Today, even as scientists approach the question of consciousness by examining neural correlates, we are wondering about nonbiological consciousness in AI systems. The question of AI consciousness sits uneasily next to the neurocentrism of current science. It may be that the anthropocentrism drives opinions about what is conscious more than the neurocentrism. Neurocentrism is a consequence of the anthropocentric reasoning that drives consciousness research, with mammalian-like nervous systems being identified as the key feature. If Chat-GPT encourages researchers to move away from neurocentrism, we may end up back with the language-centrism that Griffin worked to undermine. That would not be productive science.”

Kristin Andrews, “What It’s Like to Be a Crab,” - https://aeon.co/essays/are-we-ready-to-study-consciousness-in-crabs-and-the-like. Interesting summary of recent consciousness studies of humans and animals. Begins with the twenty-five year old bet about neural correlates lost by the neuroscientist Christof Koch to the philosopher David Chalmers. The broader issue concerns how consciousness studies should proceed and the degree to which anthropomorphic assumptions about neural complexity and language use should dominate. What goes unnoticed, it seems to me, is that simple organisms can have linguistic capacities. Biosemiotics and bio-deconstruction aim to lean into this aspect of biology. How should we understand a single-celled organism that ‘remembers’ being poked and avoids it in future? Does the interpretation of the stimulus amount to signals and, therefore, a kind of writing? These questions are pursued by others, but I hope to explore them further in the coming years. In any case, the essay helpfully highlights how presumptions about linguistic or neural capacity inform scientific testing of consciousness in crabs and AI.

On Medieval Time

“The thinking man’s timepiece was the astrolabe, first developed in Greece but significantly improved by Arab astronomers and mathematicians in the tenth and eleventh centuries. The instrument comprised a stack of concentric brass plates, carved with the celestial sphere. By rotating the top plate, simulating the motion of the heavens, it was possible to take readings that could reveal the positions of stars, the distances between astral bodies and the phase of the moon. It could also be used to tell the time of day at a certain latitude, based on the altitude of the sun and the calendar date... The scholastic philosopher Nicholas Oresme, at the end of the 14th century, was the first writer to imagine the universe as a vast mechanical clock, in which ‘all the wheels move as harmoniously as possible.’ But the metaphor could be turned inside out: earthly clocks were made by fallible humans. The writer of ‘Dives and Pauper’, a 15th-century devotional treatise, was keen to point out that the apparent neutrality of mechanical movement was a façade: ‘in citees & townes men rule them[selves] by the clock, and yet properly to speke the clock ruleth not them but a man ruleth the clock.’”

Tom Johnson, “Take That, Astrolab “ - https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n20/tom-johnson/take-that-astrolabe. Interesting summary of timepieces and their implications for ways of thinking and being.

On Citizens' Assemblies

“Around the world, democracies are struggling with angry populations who are fed up with politicians who don’t seem to represent them effectively. Fortunately, there’s an alternative. Hugh Pope—a veteran reporter on the Middle East who also spent 15 years working for International Crisis Group—introduces us to the growing movement for ‘citizens’ assemblies’, where ordinary people get together to decide what’s best for the community. He argues that these assemblies have already been used effectively on important issues that are difficult for politicians to tackle and reveals how the French president, Emmanuel Macron, came to find out about them.”

“The Best Books on Citizens’ Assemblies Recommended by Hugh Pope - https://fivebooks.com/best-books/citizen-assemblies-hugh-pope/. A collection of works that resonate with my work on religion in deliberative democratic practices.

On Early Counting

“Figuring out when humans began to count systematically, with purpose, is not easy. Our first real clues are a handful of curious, carved bones dating from the final few millennia of the three-​million-​year expanse of the Old Stone Age, or Paleolithic era. Those bones are humanity’s first pocket calculators: For the prehistoric humans who carved them, they were mathematical notebooks and counting aids rolled into one. For the anthropologists who unearthed them thousands of years later, they were proof that our ability to count had manifested itself no later than 40,000 years ago... the ancient Mesopotamians must have been counting in base 60 on their fingers long before they, or, indeed, anyone else on the planet, could set out numbers in writing. The Mesopotamians’ unique counting method is thought to come from a mix of a duodecimal system that used the twelve finger joints of one hand and a quinary system that used the five fingers of the other. By pointing at one of the left hand’s twelve joints with one of the right hand’s five digits, or, perhaps, by counting to twelve with the thumb of one hand and recording multiples of twelve with the digits of the other, it is possible to represent any number from 1 to 60. However it worked, the Mesopotamians’ anatomical calculator was a thing of exceptional elegance, and the numbers they counted with it echo through history. It is no coincidence that a clock has twelve hours, an hour has sixty minutes, and a minute has sixty seconds.”

Keith Houston, “The Early History of Counting,” - https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/early-history-counting.

On AI Religion

“AI is slowly becoming part of the religious sphere. In an era marked by rapid technological advancement, we are seeing everything from artificial intelligence to robots slowly seep into our everyday lives. But now, this technology is increasingly making inroads into a realm that has long been uniquely human: religion. From the creation of ChatGPT sermons to robots performing sacred Hindu rituals, the once-clearer boundaries between faith and technology are blurring... AI Jesus provides insight on both spiritual and personal questions users ask on his channel... A unique intersection of religion and robotic technology has emerged with the introduction of robots performing Hindu rituals in South Asia... In June 2023, hundreds of Lutherans gathered in Bavaria, Germany, for a service designed and delivered by ChatGPT.”

“Navigating the Intersection between AI, Automation and Religion – 3 Essential Reads,” - https://theconversation.com/navigating-the-intersection-between-ai-automation-and-religion-3-essential-reads-211587. I’ll be teaching a new course on Virtual Religion next year that addresses some of these matters.