Innehållsförteckning för Issue 33 - September/November 2021 från New Philosopher

“Even if we did have reliable deepfake detection technology, past experience with fake news suggests that corrections rarely travel as far as initial fakes and are often not as readily believed.”— Regina Rini They say the camera doesn’t lie – but that is itself a lie. Cameras have been lying right from the start, from faked ‘spirit’ photographs in the mid-19th century to Hollywood special effects magic. Now we have ‘deepfakes’, a new technology that uses artificial intelligence to generate video of people doing and saying things they never actually did. The face of one person can be superimposed on another, or someone’s lips can be manipulated to make them appear to say things they never said. Even voices can now be synthesised. There are obvious moral worries about this…

“We moved from what cultural historians call a culture of character to a culture of personality. During the culture of character, what was important was the good deeds that you performed when nobody was looking.”— Susan Cain Suppose you are being held captive by a philosophical ethicist. Let’s call him Bernard Williams, or BW for short. Now, suppose BW is particularly interested in uncovering our intuitions about identity. What kind of experiment will he design to uncover those intuitions? Why, how about a bit of torture? After all, there’s nothing like inflicting a bit of hypothetical suffering to get a philosophical ethicist out of bed in the morning. BW says to you: I am going to torture you tomorrow. Naturally, that makes you rather anxious. To reassure you, BW then…

The diagram below shows how, for two hypothetical people, the various elements which make up their identities can shift in emphasis, depending on where they are and who they are interacting with. As a particular aspect of identity becomes more important, the line moves outwards, while less important identities are nearer the centre. Four different contexts are shown for each person, exploring how identities alter in emphasis according to the context. The figure shows for each persona a number of different aspects of their identities and plots for illustrative purposes how their identities shift in importance according to changing circumstances. Esther’s religion and ethnicity are not important parts of who she is in the four contexts shown, while she finds her community and friendship group and hobbies are very important…

My phone is listening to me. It’s a common refrain from the world’s 3.8 billion – and counting – smartphone users, prompted by eerie ‘coincidences’: perhaps you have just mentioned needing to buy a present for your nephew, and all of a sudden you’re seeing ads for the latest schoolyard must-have; or you’ve been wondering out loud whether to see someone about the pain in your lower back and now every second web page seems to feature grimacing faces and promises to make the pain go away. The good news is that your phone is (probably) not listening to you (after Edward Snowden’s revelations about the extent to which western governments spy on their own citizens, you can never say never when it comes to digital surveillance). The bad news…

I was born in the year 18 – to a large fortune, endowed besides with excellent parts, inclined by nature to industry, fond of the respect of the wise and good among my fellowmen, and thus, as might have been supposed, with every guarantee of an honourable and distinguished future. And indeed the worst of my faults was a certain impatient gaiety of disposition, such as has made the happiness of many, but such as I found it hard to reconcile with my imperious desire to carry my head high, and wear a more than commonly grave countenance before the public. Hence it came about that I concealed my pleasures; and that when I reached years of reflection, and began to look round me and take stock of my progress…

There are some philosophers who imagine we are every moment intimately conscious of what we call our SELF; that we feel its existence and its continuance in existence; and are certain, beyond the evidence of a demonstration, both of its perfect identity and simplicity. The strongest sensation, the most violent passion, say they, instead of distracting us from this view, only fix it the more intensely, and make us consider their influence on self either by their pain or pleasure. To attempt a farther proof of this were to weaken its evidence; since no proof can be derived from any fact, of which we are so intimately conscious; nor is there any thing, of which we can be certain, if we doubt of this. Unluckily all these positive assertions are…

newphilosopher.com It began with fire Alone among species, we have learned to tap into sources of energy that vastly exceed our own bodies’ resources. https://newphilosopher.com/articles/it-began-with-fire/ An eternal delight I think many of us have, for some decades, been aware of the challenges that climate change presents to us, potentially as a civilisation. https://newphilosopher.com/articles/an-eternal-delight/ New Philosopher online store Visit the online store for previous issues of New Philosopher magazine, subscriptions as well as gift ideas. https://newphilosopher.com/shop/ Making the hamster love its wheel In one sense, “do what you love” takes the idea of vocation and maps it onto the idea of career. And that’s inherently risky. https://newphilosopher.com/articles/making-the-hamster-love-its-wheel/ New Philosopher Writers’ Award Entries are open for the New Philosopher Prize for Philosophical Writing. Enter now to win $1,000 and have your work…

In the first century Buddhist text the Milinda Pañha, the Indo-Greek king Menander I meets a Buddhist sage and asks his name. The monk replies that his name is Nāgasena, but quickly adds that this is just “a convenient designation, a mere name, this Nāgasena, for there is no self here to be found”. Menander is bewildered, yet this is in fact a core Buddhist teaching: the doctrine of anatta, ‘no-self ’. The idea here is that selves are, at best, a sort of mere convention. We call each other by the names we’ve been given or chosen, but these names don’t refer to anything substantial. Nāgasena gives the example of the chariot Menander has ridden to the meeting. You can certainly point to, name, and ride a chariot, yet…

“An increasing sense of identity is experienced preconsciously as a sense of psychosocial wellbeing. Its most obvious concomitants are a feeling of being at home in one’s body, a sense of ‘knowing where one is going’, and an inner assuredness of anticipated recognition from those who count. Such a sense of identity, however, is never gained nor maintained once and for all. Like a ‘good conscience’, it is constantly lost and regained, although more lasting and more economical methods of maintenance and restoration are evolved and fortified in late adolescence.”- Erik Erikson “Forget your soul. I want your data.” “Love is an egotism of two.”Antoine de Salle…

According to The Government Office For Science in the UK, there are three overlapping types of identities that can be broadly distinguished: social, biographical, and biometric: • SOCIAL IDENTITIES are generated through roles and relationships between people, and the wider social and cultural context. These include identities which are socially mediated, such as family relationships, friendships, membership of communities, and attachment to particular places. • BIOGRAPHICAL IDENTITIES are more ‘standalone’ identities which individuals might use to describe themselves to another or how they perceive themselves. These might include national identity, as well as ethnicity and religion – although these also have a strong social role. Identities such as a professional role or financial status might also be considered biographical identities. • BIOMETRIC IDENTITIES are those aspects of identity related to the body, including…

“Late night for Doctor Jerry Ehman, 6EQ and it’s bigger than it came in.” SETI vs the Wow! Signal, The Dandy Warhols, 2012. The Wow! Signal referenced here by Millennial Alt Rockers the Dandy Warhols is considered by many to be the strongest contender yet detected for a message beamed to Earth from an extraterrestrial civilisation. Looking through his printouts of data one evening, analyst Jerry Ehman saw something remarkable – a strong and coherent signal that had all the hallmarks of originating from an artificially engineered source in deep space. Dandy Warhols front man Courtney Taylor-Taylor only captures half of the signal in his 2012 lyrics – but in his defence “6EQUJ5” doesn’t scan so well in 4/4 time. What those letters and numbers describe is the changing signal…

The narrative self Personal identity is one of the first and most fundamental questions of philosophy: Who am I? These questions are inherently compelling and they’re bound up with practical matters that each of us must decide for ourselves. But when philosophers turn to the question, their answers often feel disappointingly abstract. They typically approach personal identity as a special case of a more general topic in metaphysics. Memory and identity What is it that makes me, ‘me’, even though now I’m not much like the child I once was? The simple answer is that I’m an animal, with a genetic inheritance from my parents and ancestors, and I’ve been shaped by the things that have happened to me. And, of course, by what I’ve chosen to do. But plenty…

Idil Gaziulusoy is a Professor of Sustainable Design in Finland. What is your demon? Self-doubt and anxiety. What is the most important part of your education? That my education is not mine; it is an investment into me of society and so it is a commons and should be used to serve society. What do you doubt most? Overconfident claims about anything. What is happiness? Sharing intellectual enrichment and emotional connection with kins from any species. What does it mean to be human? It means having been both gifted and cursed by the Promethean fire. What illusion do you suffer from? That I can play a significant role in my own life. What would you never do, no matter the price? Any answer to this would be untrue; as a…

Everyone has the right to an identity, which means that every child has the right to have their birth recorded in a continuous, permanent, and universal register. Birth registration is simple but fundamental: it establishes the existence of a legal person under law. It is also closely linked to realising many other rights, especially the rights to health and education. Despite its simplicity and fundamental importance, birth registration is out of reach for many – in fact, at least 70,000 children are born stateless each year due to a lack of registration. But the right to an identity doesn’t end with a birth certificate. For one thing, there’s an array of other official documents that are required to enable full participation in social and civic life: citizenship documents, driver’s licences,…

Times are changing fast enough that it’s hard to know where to start unspooling the question of modern identity. Questions to answer are breeding on the way to that question. But then one evening, as is typical when our filters tune to particular riddles, a colleague across a table from me tossed the end of the topic’s thread.This colleague – we’ll call him Dmitri – explained over a drink that he’d been up late the night before as he spent all his spare time living a second life in an online multiplayer role-playing game. He lived that parallel life as an avatar identity, one who owned a cache of military-grade virtual weapons – bought for real cash – as well as a tugboat in which he went fishing. But it…

One of the most popular thought experiments employed when discussing personal identity is the Ship of Theseus. Introduced by first-century philosopher and historian Plutarch, the paradox presents to us a ship that was so successful in battle that the Athenians kept it as a memorial. As years went by though, the wooden parts rotted, and the Athenians replaced them. After a century, every part had been swapped with new ones. The experiment raises the following question: is the restored ship the original? There have been remixed versions of the thought experiment throughout the years. 17th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes would ask: if the swapped old pieces were used to create another ship, would the ship be new or the original? Both versions are metaphysical ones that examine if a person…

“I know that I am mortal by nature, and ephemeral; but when I trace at my pleasure the windings to and fro of the heavenly bodies, I no longer touch the earth with my feet: I stand in the presence of Zeus himself and take my fill of ambrosia,” exclaimed Ptolemy in the second century CE. Although few of us would have expressed this experience as poetically as the ancient astronomer, many will share the elation that comes with glancing skyward and recognising the movement of celestial bodies. When pondering the stars, we sometimes even experience a sudden feeling of lightness, as if our bodies were suspended in nothingness, floating in space. Of course, we have ceased to attribute gods when the vast expanse of space strikes us with a…

Counterfeit art scam In 1995, the past threatened to catch up to Wolfgang Beltracchi. As subsequently reported in the German news magazine Der Spiegel, a scientific investigation initiated in Munich by the buyer of a purported Molzahn called Erigone und Maira had determined that that painting, and two others, were counterfeit; one, called Linear Color Composition, supposedly painted in the early 1920s, contained a pigment invented only in 1957. Police suspected that Beltracchi and Schulte-Kellinghaus had been involved in selling those fraudulent works. vanityfair.com/culture/2012/10/ wolfgang-beltracchi-helene-art-scam Devil’s dictionary EGOTIST, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me. Identity theft In 2019, 14.4 million consumers became victims of identity theft in the US, the most problematic consequence of data breaches for consumers. Indeed, one-third of all Americans…