Top News, Articles, and Interviews in Philosophy

Thoughts on Joe & America

20. January 2021 Philosophy News News
Joe Biden was sworn in today as President despite the efforts of Trump and his supporters to overturn the results of the election with lies and insurrection. While Trump and some Republicans persist in the dangerous lie of widespread voter fraud, there have been calls for unity. These generally amount to calls for the Democrats [More]
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Fantasies of Entitlement

20. January 2021 Philosophy News News
There’s an old civil rights slogan: We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. The slogan of the Trump base might be: He is the one we were waiting for. And they will continue to wait, now even after he has left office, even after a second impeachment, and even if the Senate votes to … Continue reading Fantasies of [More]
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What is “representation” in the human brain and AI systems?

19. January 2021 Philosophy News News
Neuroscience is beginning to make sense of what’s going on inside the human brain—a seemingly inscrutable organ of even great complexity. We can now see what some patterns of activity are, and we have an inkling of what they are doing, of how they track the environment, and subserve behaviour. The post What is “representation” in the human brain and AI systems? appeared first on OUPblog.         Related StoriesPlaying to lose: transhumanism, autonomy, and liberal democracy [long read]Essenes in Judaean Society: the sectarians of the Dead Sea ScrollsUnderstanding black holes: young star clusters filling up [More]
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Eco-fascism and Overpopulation

18. January 2021 Philosophy News News
 A post by Jacopo Simonetta  "Eco-fascist" is the usual insult directed at anyone who dares to mention overpopulation. This is funny to me because, as far as I know, fascists are usually concerned with denatality, race purity and similar morbid fantasies, but not with overpopulation who is just about the number of persons and not about skin color and so on.Here, I will not go back over the purely demographic aspects of the issue to which several posts have already been devoted (on "Effetto Cassandra" and on "Apocalottimismo", both in Italian).  Instead, I would like to talk about this singular cultural taboo, characteristic (though not exclusive) of industrial civilization.To begin with.To understand what we are talking about, let us consider that today there are almost 8 billion of us with a growth rate of about 80 million per year, it means 220,000 per day, over 9000 per hour, 75 per second.  This means an estimated human mass of about 400 million tons.  The world's average human population density is 55 people per square kilometer (excluding Antarctica), which means a square of not much over one hundred steps per side per head.  In Italy we are about 200 per square kilometer, which means half a hectare per person, but if we consider only the agricultural surface the square becomes only 40 steps per side (about 2000 square meters).However, the number of people is only one of the factors involved because we use livestock, fields, industrial [More]
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Eco-fascism: an insult against those who propose that overpopulation is a major problem

18. January 2021 Philosophy News News
 A post by Jacopo Simonetta  "Eco-fascist" is the usual insult directed at anyone who dares to mention overpopulation. This is funny to me because, as far as I know, fascists are usually concerned with denatality, race purity and similar morbid fantasies, but not with overpopulation who is just about the number of persons and not about skin color and so on.Here, I will not go back over the purely demographic aspects of the issue to which several posts have already been devoted (on "Effetto Cassandra" and on "Apocalottimismo", both in Italian).  Instead, I would like to talk about this singular cultural taboo, characteristic (though not exclusive) of industrial civilization.To begin with.To understand what we are talking about, let us consider that today there are almost 8 billion of us with a growth rate of about 80 million per year, it means 220,000 per day, over 9000 per hour, 75 per second.  This means an estimated human mass of about 400 million tons.  The world's average human population density is 55 people per square kilometer (excluding Antarctica), which means a square of not much over one hundred steps per side per head.  In Italy we are about 200 per square kilometer, which means half a hectare per person, but if we consider only the agricultural surface the square becomes only 40 steps per side (about 2000 square meters).However, the number of people is only one of the factors involved because we use livestock, fields, industrial [More]
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