Archive for May, 2026
Sunday, May 31st, 2026
It is often asked why we should read; more specifically, why we should read the classics or ‘fine literature,’ by which is meant generally poetry, plays, and prose narratives of various kinds – these days especially, ‘serious’ novels. The question is motivated by the fact that reading this literature is ...
Posted in Art, Cognitive Science, Philosophy | No Comments »
Thursday, May 28th, 2026
1. Are there any truths that are just inaccessible to the human mind – that just could not be thought by the human mind?
I’m not wondering about truths that are incomprehensible because of some gross physical limit, like the names of every person on Earth (or choose your own ...
Posted in Cognitive Science, Philosophy | No Comments »
Sunday, May 24th, 2026
One of my criteria for attributing understanding to a system is that the internal states of the system must be capable of deriving or corresponding to a partial model of that which they understand (to the degree that it is understood anyway.) LLMs are simply incapable of passing such a ...
Posted in Cognitive Science | No Comments »
Sunday, May 24th, 2026
You might think that such a widely cited and referenced work had something significant to say about the nature and significance of reproduction, but I find that what is said is mostly trivial or just wrong-headed. In particular, I note that Benjamin is aware that mechanical production is not the ...
Posted in Art, Philosophy | No Comments »
Sunday, May 24th, 2026
There was recent kerfuffle online when a blogger posted an image of a real Monet and said that he had generated it using AI.
Could his readers tell him, he asked, why it was inferior to this other image that was of a real Monet?
Of course, his replies were filled with ...
Posted in Art, Cognitive Science, Philosophy | No Comments »
Saturday, May 23rd, 2026
In Plato’s Symposium, Aristophanes presents a theory of love fitting a comic poet. Ignoring the details included to explain/excuse homosexuality, the story is roughly that humans were originally spherical beings with no distinction of sexes, then the gods divided us, forming a male and a female out of each divided ...
Posted in History, Philosophy, Religion | No Comments »