The Philosopher & The News

Chat GPT, an AI powered chat-bot, has become the world’s fastest growing application, with over 100 million users in the first month of its launch. Even its harshest critics concede that when interacting with Chat GPT, it can seem as if one is talking to an intelligent machine. But, the standard critique goes, that’s just an illusion. Chat GPT isn’t in fact intelligent. It doesn’t understand the questions it’s asked, or the answers it gives. 

But, what if this critique is wrong? What if our elevation of human understanding to something that machines like Chat GPT can’t reach is mere narcissism, or worse, a philosophical mistake? What if, what current AI can do isn’t really possible without some robust level of understanding? 

Reuben Cohn- Gordon is an AI researcher at the Iniversity of British Columbia and UC Berkeley, and recently wrote an article entitled GPT’s very Inhuman Mind for Noema magazine, in which he argues against the standard critique of large language models like Chat GPT, namely that they lack any form of intelligence and understanding. Reuben uses a number of ideas from 20th century philosophy in approaching this, as well as intriguing metaphors from Classic Roman literature. 

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This podcast is created in partnership with The Philosopher, the UK’s longest running public philosophy journalm founded in 1923. Check out the latest issue of The Philosopher and its online events series: https://www.thephilosopher1923.org

Artwork by Nick Halliday

Music by Rowan Mcilvride

On March 22nd, the Future of Life Institute,  a nonprofit organization focussed on reducing existential risks facing humanity, and in particular existential risk from advanced artificial intelligence (AI), published an open letter entitled Pause Giant AI Experiments. Its signatories included tech luminaries such as Elon Musk, and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. Its opening sentences read:

“AI systems with human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks to society and humanity, as shown by extensive research and acknowledged by top AI labs… Advanced AI could represent a profound change in the history of life on Earth, and should be planned for and managed with commensurate care and resources.”

But given the kind of AI available today, are these kinds of concern justified? Is Chat GPT, for example, really a kind of intelligence? And if so, are governments capable of taming it and channelling its capabilities for the benefit of humanity, rather than its destruction?

John Naughton is a Senior Research Fellow at Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), University of Cambridge and Emeritus Professor of the Public Understanding of Technology at the Open University. He is also the technology columnist of the Observer newspaper.


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This podcast is created in partnership with The Philosopher, the UK’s longest running public philosophy journal. Check out the spring issue of the philosopher, and its spring online lecture series: https://www.thephilosopher1923.org

Artwork by Nick Halliday

Music by Rowan Mcilvride

February 24th marked the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Some still blame the expansion of NATO in Russia’s neighbourhood as the deeper cause of this war.  Others see it as Putin’s mad personal plan to go down in the history books. But some are pointing the finger to something much deeper than any of that: the Russian soul. 

A concept that originated in Russia’s literary tradition of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and other great authors, is seen as animating today’s national exceptionalism, fuelling Putin’s speeches. 

But how straightforward is it draw a causal link between a country’s cultural past, and the politics of today? Is it really ideas than animate history, or should we look to material conditions for a better explanation of events?

Josephine von Zitzewitz is a Lecturer in Russian at the University of Oxford, and recently wrote an article entitled The Uses and Abuses of the Russian Soul: The weaponization of Russian Identity, in which she explores the limits of the idea that Russian culture and literature have a role to play in the war against Ukraine.


Pease leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts.

This podcast is created in partnership with The Philosopher, the UK’s longest running public philosophy journal. Check out the spring issue of the philosopher, and its spring online lecture series: https://www.thephilosopher1923.org

Artwork by Nick Halliday

Music by Rowan Mcilvride

On January 21, 11 people were killed in a mass shooting in Monterey Park, near Los Angeles, California. Two days later, 7 people were killed in another shooting in Half Moon Bay, a small city on the coast south of San Francisco. It was the 37th mass shooting in the United States in 2023, only 24 days since the year began. 

So why is it that despite these repeated incidents, gun laws in the United States are becoming less rather than more restrictive? What is the ideology that is driving America’s love of guns? Is it a love of liberty, and the constitution, along with an instinctive suspicion of any state attempt to limit access to guns? Or is something deeper, more disturbing, behind the supreme court’s recent decisions to undo laws that regulated access to guns, coupled with a huge recent increase in gun ownership?

Suzanne Schneider, Is Deputy Director and Core Faculty at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, specializing in political theory and history of the modern Middle East. She is the author of , most recently, The Apocalypse and the End of History: Modern Jihad and the Crisis of Liberalism, and her comment pieces in places like The New Republic and The Washington Post have tackled this issue of gun ownership in the United States, and bring a perspective that goes beyond the usual clichés about liberty and the constitution.

Pease leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts.

This podcast is created in partnership with The Philosopher, the UK’s longest running public philosophy journal. Check out the spring issue of the philosopher, and its spring online lecture series: https://www.thephilosopher1923.org

Artwork by Nick Halliday

Music by Rowan Mcilvride

On June 24, the US Supreme court overruled a landmark decision: Roe v Wade. For nearly 50 years, abortion was a constitutional right in the Unites States. No more. “The constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision.” Read the decision. 

But quite apart from the legal argument, everyone knew this was at heart deeply political decision. Three of the judges in the majority opinion were appointed by the previous president, Donald Trump, who had explicitly promised his voters he would appoint pro-life judges when given the chance. 

So how should we understand this political decision? Why is the right, always brandishing liberty as its central value, so happy to restrict the freedoms of millions of women? Why does the party who wants a small state, and is averse to government regulation, so happy for the state to intervene in the private lives of citizens, and regulate one of the most personal choices one can make: whether to have a child or not? Is the Republican party simply riddled with internal contradictions when it comes to freedom? Or do they simply understand freedom in an altogether different way?

Toby Buckle is the producer and host of The Political Philosophy Podcast, and the editor of a new collection of essays entitled What is Freedom? Conversations with Historians, Philosophers, and Activists, from Oxford University Press. 

Pease leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts.

This podcast is created in partnership with The Philosopher, the UK’s longest running public philosophy journal. Check out the spring issue of the philosopher, and its spring online lecture series: https://www.thephilosopher1923.org

Artwork by Nick Halliday

Music by Rowan Mcilvride

On May 2nd, Politico leaked a draft opinion of the US Supreme Court that suggested the court had voted to overrule Roe v Wade, the previous high court decision from 1973 that guaranteed the right to early term abortion in all of the US. This ruling by the Supreme Court seemingly passes the power to decide on the legality of abortion to individual States, though this essentially amounts to an immediate ban on abortions in several states. 

So was the Supreme Court right in allowing individual States to decide on the legality of abortion, given the strong moral disagreement on the issue? Should the law on abortion reflect the morality of the matter? And what does the moral status of abortion depend on? 

If so many parents direct love and care towards young foetuses, does that mean they matter morally, and therefore it would be wrong to kill them? Does the foetus have a moral status merely in virtue of it being a potential person? Or is the matter a lot more complicated than that? 

Elizabeth Harman is the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Philosophy at the Philosophy department and the University Center for Human Values, at the University of Princeton. One of her many longstanding research projects is about moral status, harm, and the ethics of procreation.

Pease leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts.

This podcast is created in partnership with The Philosopher, the UK’s longest running public philosophy journal. Check out the spring issue of the philosopher, and its spring online lecture series: https://www.thephilosopher1923.org

Artwork by Nick Halliday

Music by Rowan Mcilvride

We don’t often think of animals as war casualties, but animals die in large numbers in every war. Sometimes as specific targets, to deprive the enemy of a food source, sometimes trapped in zoos and shelters, and other times as wildlife. But their deaths are never officially counted, and the senseless killing animals, unlike the killing of innocent civilians, is not considered a war crime. 

So do we have special moral duties towards animals in war, given that they have no conception of what war is, and it is something imposed on them by humans? 

 To what extent does our treatment of animals during war reflect our treatment of animals, particularly those raised for industrial farming, during peace time?  

And why, despite the clarity of the moral arguments against the mistreatment of animals in industrial farming and the mass consumption of their meat, do so many of us keep eating animals?

Lori Gruen is William Griffin Professor of Philosophy at Wesleyan University, and a leading scholar in Animal studies and feminist philosophy. She is the author and editor of over a dozen books, including Ethics and Animals: An Introduction, Entangled Empathy (Lantern, 2015) and the forthcoming Animal Crisis (Polity, 2022) co-authored with the philosopher Alice Crary.

Pease leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts.

This podcast is created in partnership with The Philosopher, the UK’s longest running public philosophy journal. Check out the spring issue of the philosopher, and its spring online lecture series: https://www.thephilosopher1923.org

Artwork by Nick Halliday

Music by Rowan Mcilvride

On March 16th the UN’s International Court of Justice asked Russia to halt its invasion of Ukraine. It had found no evidence to support Russia’s claim that Ukraine was conducting genocide against Russia Speakers in the East of the country, which has been Russia’s justification for the war. A day later Russia rejected the ruling. 

So, is international law completely impotent in preventing countries from going to war?  And why has the law been more effective in constraining the way that countries fight even illegal wars? 

Has the way that the US and other great powers defied international law undermined its effectiveness, and allowed countries like Russia to ignore it? And was Leo Tolstoy right in thinking that making war less brutal, and more humane, would in fact end up in causing more suffering and destruction, by perpetuating war into the future?

Samuel Moyn is the Henry R. Luce Professor of Jurisprudence at the Yale Law School and a Professor of History at Yale University. He has written several books on European intellectual history and human rights history, including Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World (2018). His latest book is Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War.

Pease leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts.

This podcast is created in partnership with The Philosopher, the UK’s longest running public philosophy journal. Check out the spring issue of the philosopher, and its spring online lecture series: https://www.thephilosopher1923.org

Artwork by Nick Halliday

Music by Rowan Mcilvride

On February 24th, Russia invaded the country of Ukraine, in an unexpected escalation of a conflict that began in 2014. It is the largest conventional military attack in Europe since World War II.

According to an influential analysis of Russia’s aggression towards Ukraine, this is all down to NATO’s overreach in the region, and Russia is simply defending itself from being encircled by Western power. But, pay closer attention to what Putin is actually saying, and a very different explanation emerges. Putin believes it’s his destiny to restore Russia to its former glory. 

So how should we interpret the actions of states like Russia? Are they merely driver by power and security concerns, like the realist school of thought claims? Or are the beliefs and worldviews of political leaders, like Putin, as well as the national identities of people like those of Ukraine, the real driving force of events? 

Is necessity and structural issues the motor of history, or is it contingency and uncertainty at the steering wheel? 

Stathis Kalyvas  is the Gladstone Professor of Government at the University of Oxford, and a fellow of All Souls College. He is a political scientist who’s written extensively on civil wars, ethnicity, and political violence. and is the author of, among other books,  The Logic of Violence in Civil War. 

Our conversation was based on an article Kalyvas wrote for the Institute of Art and Ideas, entitled “How we got Putin so wrong”. 

Pease leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts.

This podcast is created in partnership with The Philosopher, the UK’s longest running public philosophy journal. Check out the spring issue of the philosopher, and order a copy: https://www.thephilosopher1923.org

Artwork by Nick Halliday

Music by Rowan Mcilvride