John Symons
@johnfsymons
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#Philosophyofscience #computing #technology #ethics Director: Center for Cyber Social Dynamics
Lawrence, KS
Joined January 2014
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Devastating cuts to our department. We're in shock. Hits current grad students hardest. Not clear whether there's any way back for us. We were doing everything right according to the metrics. Grieving for what we built here at KU.
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Philosopher Helen De Cruz was permanently suspended from this platform for absolutely no good reason. Either some automated glitch or a malicious actor. No recourse or explanation
@x
. She had 33K followers. If the platform really wants to become a reliable part of our social
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We're going to have to change our courses/assignments immediately to deal with the effects of AI on higher Ed. This coming school year faculty in writing intensive courses will notice a dramatic improvement in the quality of student written work.
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Brilliant philosopher visiting us who rejected the publish/tt game entirely. He lives a simple life in a cheap city, adjuncts for fun, reads a ton, has immersive hobbies, doesn't compromise his principles in any way. Living proof that another way is possible folks.
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I need to replace my yang sign yet again.
#YangGang2020
our local opponents are obviously very upset about our reappearing signs
@BuiceTweets
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Heidegger in Ruins is proving a handy overview and synthesis of the past 10 years of dirt for those of us who haven't been paying attention to that mess. Arendt recognized that his "intricate and childish dishonesty has crept into his philosophizing"
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The qualia discourse on this platform is depressing as hell. If there are any kids watching, this is not good philosophy. It's warmed up leftovers from 30 or even 40 years ago with very little sense for the background assumptions shaping these older debates. I devoted a decade of
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Student emailed to ask about their grade but I'm not teaching at the moment. Turns out their prof (at another school) uses my crappy old youtube videos in their online logic class & student was under the impression I'm their teacher. In a way, I am. Flattering & disconcerting
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Phenomenologist wife with no interest in analytic metaphysics suspects that what I'm telling her about Lewis' view of possible worlds is one of my elaborate jokes. Incredulous stare meets Romanian skepticism.
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A philosophy paper is ready to go when that initial mad obsession/infatuation with the argument has completely passed leaving a kind of bored familiarity and the recognition that it won't please everyone.
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@cyberprzemoc
In fairness, my polish license says my name is Ceadúnas Tiomána and they've never questioned it
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The reward for staying for the end of the APA. The book exhibit is giving all the books away. Here's the six I couldn't resist.
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It's*much* easier to get up to speed on the technical background in ethics of AI than it is to seriously study and understand ethics. For example, philosophers can learn everything necessary to understand ChatGPT here thanks to Wolfram's excellent little book. Don't be cowed by
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This was a lovely response by Dennett to a question about the nature of philosophy.
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We don't have a word in English for mispronouncing a word that one has read but never heard. When a student does this I immediately like them more. It's a moment of inadvertent biographical self-revelation and I resonate.
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@xphilosopher
Elite cultural references or class markers like Euro travel etc are less relevant to the folks who make it through the various filters to grad school at Yale. What gets old is the unquestioned assumptions of PMC politics and related attitudes to religion, gender, race, etc being
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I am a philosopher and affiliate faculty of computer science.
Here is my take and opinion on the shipping accident in Baltimore this morning:
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More in-class assignments? More sophisticated writing projects? Multiple drafts? Teach them to work with these tools? Definitely time to reassess our writing intensive courses.
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So has philosophy Twitter completely dried up and blown away?
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The way of thinking about philosophy, represented in the US by
@BrianLeiter
& other distinguished opinion leaders at top US departments is firmly stuck in the late 90s. That's ok & I loved the 90s, but it's a big world & there's lots of good work going on elsewhere. If our
I share this for the benefit of jobseekers. But I must note that philosophy of data science is not a field, but trendy nonsense. It is sad that serious universities are advertising jobs in this non-area.
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Students suggested skipping the rest of functionalism and qualia so that we could get to embodiment, plant cognition, and machine learning. '80s '90s style phil mind was fun while it lasted & easy to teach but clearly isn't the crowd pleaser it used to be.
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Short sighted move by the leaders at
@UniKent
. Mark my words, administrators will be scrambling to rebuild philosophy departments within five years. Seriously. In the age of AI, dumping formal epistemologists, philosophers of science, and excellent moral philosophers is
Sadly,
@UniKent
has announced plans to axe a number of smaller departments, including philosophy. We perform well on all measures, including student recruitment. But smaller subjects have less clout and are easiest to cut. Help us shout out our value to the uni! They need to hear
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Wonderful to have Susan Wolf at KU. One of my favorite philosophers
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I'd love to have a philosopher here as director of the Hall Center for the Humanities. Please consider applying! If you're a serious candidate, I'd happily help you, answering any questions you have etc. Great opportunity for a senior philosopher who has an interest in the
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Been teaching logic & critical thinking for 20 years & v. rarely encounter students who cannot engage in basic reasoning using the conditional. Such people exist. These v. rare cases are shocking & there's not a lot to be done. I teach hundreds of students and the ones who really
The majority of human beings cannot fully comprehend a statement that has a conditional as a key part of its meaning.
This sounds incredible to those who can, but I'm pretty sure it's true.
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We're hiring in Kansas. Great colleagues, bourgeois college town, decent cost of living, underrated metro nearby (40 mins to downtown Kansas city, 40 mins to MCI), better job than most and we're not prestige fetishists.
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@TobyMeadows
@X
I'll grant you, Helen is far too wholesome and reasonable for this venue for sure.
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Gentlemen, I advise you to let your wife pick your back-to-school outfit.
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Dear younger philosophers, notice how the scolds relish coming after slightly non-conformist women. Watch how they're behaving w
@AgnesCallard
She's tough & can take it, but it's useful to see this vice on display so clearly. Large proportion of our colleagues are like this.
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About KU philosophy getting booted from the PGR survey this year. Here's what I posted to FB.
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Analytic philosophy is doing just fine, philosophy Twitter on the other hand is in deep deep crisis. Is it making progress? Is it relevant? Does anyone really care?
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How about a large journal with a very inclusive spirit in analytic philosophy that publishes the publishable but doesn't insist on *perfection* or on satisfying the referees completely? ...a thread 1/n
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I only wrestle grad students, the TA can wrestle the undergrads.
When you challenge your college professor to a wrestling match in class 🤼♂️
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If you'd like a free copy of my textbook Formal Reasoning: A Guide to Critical Thinking, you can have a PDF of it here for free (thank you
@KendallHuntHE
) A corrected and updated second edition is on its way soon.
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This is my 20th year of teaching. This message from last night is from a student who took my first ever metaphysics class 20! years ago
@UTEP
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Reminder to early career colleagues & students. Philosophy Twitter is not philosophy. Unless you're one of a handful of high- profile accounts, your time on this website will have little positive or negative effect on your career other than distorting your sense of what matters
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A student in my logic class gave me a dozen eggs from her hens this morning. Made my semester.
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Good news! Found the sign down the street. Now we've doubled the yang.
#YangGang
#Yang2020
@BuiceTweets
@AndrewYang
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This latest rejection this afternoon stings. I recognize that it's good to be humbled a bit, but it's definitely the case that philosophy requires a thick skin.
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@AmericanGwyn
This is the kind of thing a gifted and talented kid says after listening to four Tyler Cowen podcasts
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Back at it again. We always have a spare Yang sign ready in case of a visit from the opposition
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Logic is clean as the driven snow and it's an unmixed pleasure to teach it to students. In cultural & political moments like this I'm glad we're at the part of the course where we're doing proofs instead of talking about evidence, confirmation bias, heuristics, & fallacies.
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Someone just passed her naturalization test & interview and has been recommended for citizenship of the United States. It was stressful, but she was well prepared and is soon to be a brand new American. We're very relieved and happy
@IrinaSymons
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Sparks joy! Piaget would not have bothered tidying his office for zoom meetings I'm guessing.
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An 🌻
#OpenAccess
💥
#criticalthinking
/
#logic
text with a dose of the psych of reasoning (
#bias
/
#heuristics
/etc.), some
#probability
, and a basic introduction to formal reasoning. Enjoy!
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Wolin shows that Heidegger was an enthusiastic nazi. Not just an opportunist/careerist. And his philosophy, eg. his philosophy of tech, is saturated with blood & soil nazi romanticism & pathological anti-semitism.
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Very proud of my student
@Alsharif_HS
who defended his dissertation "A philosophical analysis of open-mindedness as an educational ideal" beautifully this afternoon. Congratulations Hassan! Wonderful work!
تهانينا!
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Crushed to learn of Paul Humphreys' death. I was very fond of him & was inspired by his research & teaching. He was a pioneer in discussions in philosophy of computation and emergence. I'll miss him deeply. Condolences to his family.
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This will be due to the widespread adoption of software like Jasper AI/ formerly Jarvis, which is marketing its service heavily this summer.
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Jasper produces very good (b+/a-) level essays that are not caught by plagiarism detecting software.
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Four (!) hires at Purdue at the asst prof level in phil. In this market they could build an incredible dept in a single season. Good for them
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I tried some standard topics in intro to ethics style courses and the results were disturbingly good. W
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On my nervous way to Lisbon for the big philosophy of science conference organized by the center for the history & philosophy of science at University of Lisbon.
Honored to keynote, but scared about presenting fresh new work on machine learning & inquiry
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Writing assignments will need to be rethought. I tried some quirky/idiosyncratic assignments for a philosophy of mind-style course. The system was also good. So it's not just a matter of avoiding standard topics
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Writing and thinking in the age of large language models. Take a look at what I wrote for Return magazine
@returndotlife
on AI in writing-intensive classes.
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By October, you'll likely see student "work" generated by Jasper or similar. This isn't dramatically new tech, but the marketing push means we'll see it in class in the coming school year.
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First-born is heading off to college. Difficult mix of emotions. I'm proud of her for her independence and smarts. She's a great young woman. But the tears flowed. Sentimental Irishman is sentimental.
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Pain is morally neutral, suffering is what matters. Pain and suffering should be distinguished
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What moral philosophy is about. (From Michael Smith's stunning Lindley lecture that you'll all be reading and teaching your students about one day soon)
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Lawrence KS is being beautiful. This village has its hooks in me
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Thanks for all the support folks, we're focused on ways of taking care of grad student support. That's job one. We want to honor our responsibilities to them and are trying lots of creative solutions. We have a great chair
@dd0031
who'll take the lead on releasing details.
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Jill. caged and uncaged. She is an 11 week old kitten and she says "hello" to you people.
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The very first Saudi journal of philosophy is born. Peter Adamson, Peter Singer, and Tim Williamson, are part of the editorial board. Congratulations to
@BaderAlHomoud
and his team, on this very important achievement.
يسرّ منصة معنى أن تُعلن عن تدشين «المجلة السعوديّة للدراسات الفلسفيّة» (SJPS)، كأول مجلة محكمّة في الفلسفة تصدر من المملكة العربية السعودية.
تستقبل المجلة الأبحاث بعدّة لغات، وستحظى بعناية نخبة من الفلاسفة وأساتذة الفلسفة من حول العالم.
#منصة_معنى
#SJPS
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Happy to report that I'm now fully inoculated against any kind of academic administrative ambition - it took three jabs (chair at UTEP philosophy, KU philosophy, KU Econ). But I'm a very slow learner and it is a highly contagious disorder.
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I’m lovingly scooping out generous servings of the college experience: Sunny spring day, out on the lawn, no PowerPoint. It feels like the 90s.
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I'll be giving five lectures on Computation and Science in the History and Logic of Science Summer School (remotely). There's a growing and deeply talented community of philosophers in China. Honored to be invited.
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I suspect we journal editors are neglecting a large constituency of competent referees for various reasons. Looking at my own stats I definitely don't invite as widely as I should. Are any of you not refereeing because you're never asked and would really like to? I need help!
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Clarifying to see where people stand at moments like this. My timeline is filled with cretinous American leftists and Marxists hallucinating that these savages are heroic anti-apartheid activists bravely resisting colonialism. Despicable.
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Very proud to serve as Syed's
@smusab
advisor. This is us from yesterday, where he won the Genova Award for outstanding graduate student at University of Kansas. A well-deserved honor. Check out his work at
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Something strikingly moronic about Heidegger's fixation on the idea of philosophers and leaders whose names begin with 'H' and his fanboy excitement that Hitler and he were born in the same year.
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Good to see this in 'print' finally.
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Glad I'm no longer a dept chair and don't have to face being unable to match the competing offer from Panda Express during hiring season.
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New paper: "How deep is AI's love? Understanding relational AI." Msg me if you'd like a copy. Happy to share.
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I'm unexpectedly slated to teach PHIL 380 Moral Issues in Computing Technology. Starts next week. Sign up if you're a KU student interested in AI ethics. Now time for me to make a syllabus!
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A man and his cat posing during dark times. Happy Independence Day America.
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Possible freeze over the next few nights means gathering all the green tomatoes for pickling. It's been an incredibly productive year for our little garden.
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American philosophy 1950-1995: Outsource ontology to the physicists and pretend to be reconciling "science" and "common sense". Meanwhile in physics:
Naturalist philosophers who defer to science for their metaphysics need to read more physics twitter. Check out the physicists fighting over what’s physical.
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At the Eastern APA. Running into old friends and realizing that I learn much more in person than watching zoom talks.
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Google is not in the business of helping you understand or critically assess its actions. If we undermine universities we will be flying blind against big-tech. Remember this when tech bros talk of disrupting higher ed.
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Thoughts on being left out of the PGR: Sad... but the PGR is a vestige of the 90s, a time when well-funded non-ivy PhD programs in philosophy were jostling for recognition. PGR definitely served some purpose for students in low-info environments. Incl me as an undergrad.
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American academic philosophers have mostly fled this site. But it looks to me like Brits and Europeans are still busily tweeting away. Am I wrong?
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I'll be serving as chair of the department of economics starting in July.
@KU_Economics
is a world-class dept with eminent faculty and a strong grad program. Lots to learn, but eager to take the reins.
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The good thing about basic critical thinking is that you can tell when something is bullshit, whether it's uttered by a scientist or not.
The good thing about Science is that it’s true, whether or not you believe in it.
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We're hiring two VAPs at KU, decent salary, relatively high quality of life in Lawrence. You won't be able to replace Corey or Sarah, but still: AOS philosophy of mind or philosophy of science (to include, e.g., philosophy of psychology, cognitive science, computation, social
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@GiadaPistilli
@AaronMoren0
I agree with the spirit of your post. The myth of superintelligent AI is a useful philosophical fable at best. See
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Kansas students arrived safely in Paris a wholesome and smart group of philosophy majors, a little tired, but ready for Irina's course on violence and politics
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Sorry for subtweeting again but some of the things that people are saying about autism in philosophy Twitter (post Kripke) are awful. Not inclined to engage but want to tell autistic students that KU is a great place for you for & I'd be glad to be your advisor
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Are you excited about conceptual engineering? My cheeky paper in response to Èdouard Machery's recent book "Experimental philosophy within its proper bounds" is now in Inquiry, Volume 65 Issue 5. 50 free online copies
Èdouard's sensible response follows.
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