Podcasts about normativity

Cognitive scientist Anna Riedl helps me get a sense of the emerging paradigm in cogsci and beyond dedicated to understanding how we make meaning in an uncertain and entropic world. After that, we tackle ideas Anna is working on informed by her experience with and critique of effective altruism: a framework she provisionally calls "autopoiethics," which relates to the normative decision-making processes of autopoetic systems.0:00 IntroductionI. State of the Art in Meaning Studies1:22 Meaning, Relevance, and Rationality 11:28 Synthesizing Abstract and Particular 21:56 Metarationality and the Transjective Frame30:03 A New Paradigm?40:41 Related Fields and ThinkersII. Autopoethics52:11 Normativity and Collective Welfare57:06 Autopoietic Normativity vs. Effective Altruism1:15:05 Perspectival Values1:26:50 Function vs. Process1:31:44 Conclusion To hear more, visit brendangrahamdempsey.substack.com

RU330: CRAIG VI SLEE ON CRIPKULT, COVID, ABLEISM, ANTI-NORMATIVITY, MAGIC, OCCULTURE http://www.renderingunconscious.org/philosophy/ru330-craig-slee-on-cripkult-covid-ableism-anti-normativity-magic-occulture/ Support Rendering Unconscious by becoming a paid subscriber to Patreon/ Substack, where we post exclusive content regularly. All paid subscribers receive a link to our Discord server where you can chat with us and others in our community with similar interests. So join us and join in the conversation! Vanessa & Carl's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/vanessa23carl Vanessa's Substack: https://vanessa23carl.substack.com Carl's Substack: https://thefenriswolf.substack.com Rendering Unconscious episode 330. Rendering Unconscious welcomes Craig VI Slee back to the podcast! Craig VI Slee is a writer, poet, consultant, and theorist, who lives in the North West of the UK. Born with Cerebral Palsy, and latterly a partial-foot amputee, he is a full-time wheelchair user whose work covers the intersections between disability, environment, philosophy, storytelling, magic, and myth. He blogs at https://cold-albion.net Follow him at BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/mrvi.cold-albion.net Mastodon: loci.onl/@mrvi Slee contributed the piece “Creeping Mortality: Some Thoughts on Cripkult” to Rendering Unconscious: Psychoanalytic Perspectives vol. 1 (Trapart Books, 2024) edited by Vanessa Sinclair: https://amzn.to/4eKruV5 And “The Occult Nature of Cripkult” to The Fenris Wolf 10 (Trapart Books, 2023) edited by Carl Abrahamsson: https://amzn.to/3EhJrfS This episode available at YouTube: https://youtu.be/4T80Ia-bfzw?si=WJ_lfqMrsD9wNdxo Check out this previous episode: RU12: CRAIG VI SLEE ON DISABILITY, MYTHOLOGY & PHILOSOPHY Join us for Kenneth Anger: American Cinemagician with Carl Abrahamsson, Begins February 2: https://www.morbidanatomy.org/classes/ Watch all of Carl's films at The Fenris Wolf Substack. https://thefenriswolf.substack.com Join us in London for the book launch for Meetings with Remarkable Magicians: Life in the Occult Underground by Carl Abrahamsson at Watkins Books, February 27th. https://www.watkinsbooks.com/event-details/meetings-with-remarkable-magicians-life-in-the-occult-underground-carl-abrahamsson Then on February 28th, join us at Freud Museum, London for “Be Careful What You Wish For – Female & Male Existential Malaise and Hysteric Approaches in ‘The Substance' and ‘Seconds'. https://www.freud.org.uk/event/be-careful-what-you-wish-for-female-male-existential-malaise-and-hysteric-approaches-in-the-substance-and-seconds/ Beginning March 23rd, join author Carl Abrahamsson and psychoanalyst Vanessa Sinclair for The Sentient Solar Cycle, a year long series of monthly workshops/meetings via Zoom. https://thefenriswolf.substack.com/p/the-sentient-solar-cycle Rendering Unconscious Podcast is hosted by Dr. Vanessa Sinclair, a psychoanalyst based in Sweden, who works with people internationally: http://www.drvanessasinclair.net Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/renderingunconscious/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@renderingunconscious Blusky: https://bsky.app/profile/drsinclair.bsky.social The Queerness of Psychoanalysis: From Freud and Lacan to Laplanche and Beyond (Routledge, 2025) edited by Vanessa Sinclair, Elisabeth Punzi and Myriam Sauer is now available. Be sure to check out this landmark volume! https://www.routledge.com/The-Queerness-of-Psychoanalysis-From-Freud-and-Lacan-to-Laplanche-and-Beyond/Sinclair-Punzi-Sauer/p/book/9781032603827 The song at the end of the episode is “Outer realities blend” from the album “We reign supreme” by Vanessa Sinclair and Pete Murphy. Available at Pete Murphy's Bandcamp Page: https://petemurphy.bandcamp.com Our music is also available at Spotify and other streaming services: https://open.spotify.com/artist/3xKEE2NPGatImt46OgaemY?si=jaSKCqnmSD-NsSlBLjrBXA Image: collage by Morrissette

This week on Sapphic Survival Guide, Cheyenne and Gina interview bisexual polyamorous expert, Michelle Hy! Follow her @polyamorouswhileasian!Submit your own questions by messaging us on Instagram or emailing us at sapphicsurvivalguide@gmail.com. You can also leave us a voicemail at 724-209-8877 (US. Only - You can also send a voice note via email. Unless stated otherwise, you are giving us permission to play your voicemail on the podcast.)CreditsProduced by Gina Finio and CheyenneEdited by Gina FinioCover Art by Sev & CheyenneMusic by PartnerSound Effects by Audio VampireFollow us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok and subscribe to our Patreon for extras!Follow Cheyenne on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTokFollow Gina on Instagram, TikTok, and her website

In light of the recent legislation to end Australia's live sheep trade by May 2028, Nick and Adam reflect on the history of the stop live export campaign. More specifically, the show covers: alliances between animal activists and slaughterhouse workers, “animal nationalism” and debates about the campaign within the movement. We discuss what animal activists can learn from this history, regardless of which campaign/s they're focused on.   When we discuss the history of the campaign, we primarily draw on Gonzalo Villanueva's book – A Transnational History of the Australian Animal Movement, 1970–2015: https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783319625867  Additional links: Corey Wrenn's essay – Banning Live Export in Australia: https://www.coreyleewrenn.com/banning-live-export-in-australia/ Colin Salter's talk – Normativity, Intersectionality and States of Exception: https://archive.org/details/ColinSalter Check out Adam's Spotify playlist – Animal Lib & Vegan Songs: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5hVygGomw9zax38quC6mhi?si=c14b3a19ccf74d67   Music: Animal liberation by Los Fastidios: https://www.losfastidios.net/ Pig by Weezer: https://weezer.lnk.to/music Seoul by Shoreline: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCxBdmVVlt8&pp=ygUQc2hvcmVsaW5lIHNlb3VsIA%3D%3D Dirty work by Ruby Gill: https://rubygill.bandcamp.com/track/dirty-work

Researcher Carmela Garcia Manas explains that children are followers, enforcers and creators of social norms. Carmela talks about an important finding from her research of just how highly influenced children are by the presence of the adult. To read and listen to the whole research series visit: https://thevoiceofearlychildhood.com/articles/sustainability/ Tune into next week's episode on: The essential skills for social sustainability  If you enjoyed this episode you might also like to listen to Carmela's previous episode with Zanna Clarke, Principal of Miss Daisy's Nursery Schools, on 'Life skills over academic achievement' - https://thevoiceofearlychildhood.com/life-skills-over-academic-achievement/  Episode break down: 00:00 - What do children understand of normativity and social norms? 03:00 - Children as followers, enforcers and creators of social norms 03:30 - 'Rich' or 'poor table' 09:05 - Children are highly influenced by the presence of an adult 14:19 - What does subordination mean? 16:00 - Conforming to social norms can become dangerous 19:00 - Children look for fairness 22:50 - How do we encourage children to question the adult? 27:00 - Allocating time for reflection 30:40 - A big change was seen at the end of the research 32:20 - House swap and property inflation in play! 36:00 - Value and demand 36:45 - Children's resourcefulness and adaptability: The sophistication of play 38:30 - Next episode... For more episodes visit The Voice of Early Childhood website: https://www.thevoiceofearlychildhood.com 

Co-host Kevin Hill and guest co-host Ross Von Hausen speak with Alan J. Torrance and Andrew B. Torrance about their new book,  Beyond Immanence: The Theological Vision of Kierkegaard and Barth (Eerdmans, 2023).  Alan J. Torrance is professor emeritus of systematic theology at the University of St. Andrews. He is the author of Persons in Communion: Trinitarian Description and Human Participation. He has also edited The Doctrine of God and Theological Ethics (with Michael Banner) and Scripture's Doctrine: Studies on the New Testament's Normativity for Christian Dogmatics (with Markus Bockmuehl). Andrew B. Torrance is a senior lecturer in theology at the University of St Andrews. He is the author of The Freedom to Become a Christian: A Kierkegaardian Account of Human Transformation in Relationship with God. He has also edited several volumes, including Knowing Creation and Christ and the Created Order: Perspectives from Theology, Philosophy, and Science (with Thomas H. McCall) and Soren Kierkegaard: Theologian of the Gospel (with Greg Marcar and Todd Speidell).

In this 219th in a series of live discussions with Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying (both PhDs in Biology), we talk about the state of the world through an evolutionary lens.In this episode, we discuss evolution and intelligent design, and why the failures of institutions and institutional science during Covid are causing people to question everything that science has concluded. We also discuss motonormativity—aka car brain—both steel manning it as a concept, and critiquing the research that named the phenomenon. Finally: sex chromosomes in cephalopods (octopus and their kin)—older than you think.*****Our sponsors:MUDWTR: is a coffee alternative with mushrooms and herbs (and cacao!) and is delicious, with 1/7 the caffeine as coffee. Visit www.mudwtr.com/darkhorsepod and use DARKHORSEPOD at check out for 15% off. ARMRA: Colostrum is our first food, and can help restore your health and resilience as an adult. Go to www.tryarmra.com/DARKHORSE to get 15% off your first order.MDHearing: To get our $397 when you buy a PAIR offer plus free charging case, head to shopmdhearing.com/DARKHORSE and use code DARKHORSE.*****Join us on Locals! Get access to our Discord server, exclusive live streams, live chats for all streams, and early access to many podcasts: https://darkhorse.locals.com/Heather's newsletter, Natural Selections (subscribe to get free weekly essays in your inbox): https://naturalselections.substack.comOur book, A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century, is available everywhere books are sold, including from Amazon: https://a.co/d/dunx3atCheck out our store! Epic tabby, digital book burning, saddle up the dire wolves, and more: https://darkhorsestore.org*****Mentioned in this episode:“Giving Up Darwin” - Gelernter's review of Meyers' book: https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/giving-up-darwin/Motonormativity: critical car theory (at Principled Bicycling): https://substack.com/home/post/p-142960056Walker et al 2023. Motonormativity: how social norms hide a major public health hazard: https://www.inderscienceonline.com/doi/abs/10.1504/IJENVH.2023.135446?af=ROldest known animal sex chromosome evolved in octopuses 380 million years ago: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00637-0Coffing et al 2024. Cephalopod Sex Determination and its Ancient Evolutionary Origin Revealed by Chromosome-level Assembly of the California Two-Spot Octopus: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.02.21.581452v2.full.pdfSupport the show

This episode turns to Christine Korsgaard's Tanner lectures, "The Sources of Normativity," to explore how morality might be rationally vindicated from within the nature of practical rationality. Korsgaard's project is an iteration of the Enlightenment's attempt to ground morality in human nature. Korsgaard suggests that the correct moral theory will not merely provide an explanation of our moral natures, but also be justified in the light of our status as reflective animals. Her constructivist account of normativity will conceive of obligations as integral to our sense of identity, which in turn depends on our status as deliberative agents who must act upon some principle. Is the source of normativity a product of the correct application of moral concepts to the sphere of action?  Are values the product of our self-legislating will? Can we understand unconditional obligations as derived from our shared identity as human beings? 

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: [Valence series] 2. Valence & Normativity, published by Steven Byrnes on December 8, 2023 on LessWrong. 2.1 Post summary / Table of contents Part of the Valence series. The previous post explained what I mean by the term "valence". Now in Post 2, I'll discuss the central role of valence in the "normative" domain of desires, preferences, values, and so on. In case you're wondering, there is also a relation between valence and the "positive" domain of beliefs, expectations, etc. - but we'll get to that in Post 3. The role of valence in the normative domain can scarcely be overstated: I think valence is the very substance out of which all normativity is built. To be clear, that does not mean that, once we understand how valence works, we understand absolutely everything there is to know about the whole normative universe. By analogy, "atoms are the very substance out of which all bacteria are built"; but if you want to understand bacteria, it's not enough to just understand what atoms are and how they work. You would still have a lot more work to do! On the other hand, if you don't know what atoms are, you'd have an awfully hard time understanding bacteria! So it is, I claim, with valence and normativity. The post is organized as follows: Section 2.2 discusses the misleading intuition that valence seems to be attached to real-world things, actions, plans, and so on. We say "That's a bad idea", as opposed to "When I hold that idea in my brain, it evokes a negative-valence 'badness' feeling". This is important context for everything that follows. Section 2.3 discusses situations where a valence assessment corresponds directly to a meaningful (albeit snap) normative assessment. For example, if I have a thought that corresponds to a concrete plan ("I will stand up"), then my brain is saying that this is a good plan or bad plan in accordance with whether the valence of that thought is positive or negative respectively - and if it's a good plan, I'm likely to actually do it. Likewise, if I imagine a possible future state of the world, the valence of that thought corresponds to an assessment of whether that state would be good or bad - and if it's good, my brain is liable to execute plans that bring it about, and if it's bad, my brain is liable to execute plans to avoid it. Thus, we get the expected direct connections between valence signals, felt desires, and our actions and decisions. Section 2.4 discusses a different case: the valence of concepts. For example, if I "like" communism, then a thought involving the "communism" concept is liable to be positive-valence. I argue that this cannot be directly interpreted as making a meaningful normative assessment about anything in particular, but instead we should think of these as learned normative heuristics that help inform meaningful normative assessments. I then talk about vibes-based "meaningless arguments", like arguing about whether to be "for" or "against" Israel. Section 2.5 discusses how valence gets set and adjusted, with a particular emphasis on innate drives (e.g., a drive to eat when hungry) as the ultimate grounding of valence assessments. Section 2.6 discusses the valence of metacognitive thoughts and self-reflective thoughts, including the distinction between ego-syntonic and ego-dystonic tendencies, and what people are talking about when they talk about their "values". Section 2.7 briefly covers how moral reasoning fits into this framework, first descriptively (when people are doing "moral reasoning", what are they doing?), and then musing on the implications for metaethics. Section 2.8 is a brief conclusion. 2.2 The (misleading) intuition that valence is an attribute of real-world things Recall from §1.3 of the previous post that, in my proposed model: Part of our brain "thinks a thought" which might involve thi...

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: [Valence series] 2. Valence & Normativity, published by Steven Byrnes on December 8, 2023 on LessWrong. 2.1 Post summary / Table of contents Part of the Valence series. The previous post explained what I mean by the term "valence". Now in Post 2, I'll discuss the central role of valence in the "normative" domain of desires, preferences, values, and so on. In case you're wondering, there is also a relation between valence and the "positive" domain of beliefs, expectations, etc. - but we'll get to that in Post 3. The role of valence in the normative domain can scarcely be overstated: I think valence is the very substance out of which all normativity is built. To be clear, that does not mean that, once we understand how valence works, we understand absolutely everything there is to know about the whole normative universe. By analogy, "atoms are the very substance out of which all bacteria are built"; but if you want to understand bacteria, it's not enough to just understand what atoms are and how they work. You would still have a lot more work to do! On the other hand, if you don't know what atoms are, you'd have an awfully hard time understanding bacteria! So it is, I claim, with valence and normativity. The post is organized as follows: Section 2.2 discusses the misleading intuition that valence seems to be attached to real-world things, actions, plans, and so on. We say "That's a bad idea", as opposed to "When I hold that idea in my brain, it evokes a negative-valence 'badness' feeling". This is important context for everything that follows. Section 2.3 discusses situations where a valence assessment corresponds directly to a meaningful (albeit snap) normative assessment. For example, if I have a thought that corresponds to a concrete plan ("I will stand up"), then my brain is saying that this is a good plan or bad plan in accordance with whether the valence of that thought is positive or negative respectively - and if it's a good plan, I'm likely to actually do it. Likewise, if I imagine a possible future state of the world, the valence of that thought corresponds to an assessment of whether that state would be good or bad - and if it's good, my brain is liable to execute plans that bring it about, and if it's bad, my brain is liable to execute plans to avoid it. Thus, we get the expected direct connections between valence signals, felt desires, and our actions and decisions. Section 2.4 discusses a different case: the valence of concepts. For example, if I "like" communism, then a thought involving the "communism" concept is liable to be positive-valence. I argue that this cannot be directly interpreted as making a meaningful normative assessment about anything in particular, but instead we should think of these as learned normative heuristics that help inform meaningful normative assessments. I then talk about vibes-based "meaningless arguments", like arguing about whether to be "for" or "against" Israel. Section 2.5 discusses how valence gets set and adjusted, with a particular emphasis on innate drives (e.g., a drive to eat when hungry) as the ultimate grounding of valence assessments. Section 2.6 discusses the valence of metacognitive thoughts and self-reflective thoughts, including the distinction between ego-syntonic and ego-dystonic tendencies, and what people are talking about when they talk about their "values". Section 2.7 briefly covers how moral reasoning fits into this framework, first descriptively (when people are doing "moral reasoning", what are they doing?), and then musing on the implications for metaethics. Section 2.8 is a brief conclusion. 2.2 The (misleading) intuition that valence is an attribute of real-world things Recall from §1.3 of the previous post that, in my proposed model: Part of our brain "thinks a thought" which might involve thi...

In this episode, we discuss the social theory of the Kantian critical theorist Rainer Forst in his book Normativity and Power. We work through how well his theory of the relationship between power and reason accounts for economic domination, why he thinks power and violence ought to be distinguished, and whether critical theory can escape the problem of circularity in judging the difference between better and worse reasons for acting. Do we have reasons for acting? Does it matter? Come get Kant-pilled and leave your Hegel at home!This is just a short clip from the full episode, which is available to our subscribers on  Patreon: patreon.com/leftofphilosophy References: Rainer Forst, Normativity and Power: Analyzing Social Orders of Justification, translated by Ciaran Cronin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017) Music: Vintage Memories by Schematist | schematist.bandcamp.com

In this episode of Voices with Vervaeke, Dr. John Vervaeke, Ken Lowry, and D.C. Schindler challenge conventional perspectives on God, reason, freedom, and community through the lenses of Neoplatonism and Hegelian philosophy. They deconstruct what it means to 'belong,' exploring the concept of 'home' not just as a physical space but as a philosophical construct tied to our intrinsic nature. The dialogue orbits around key principles like spirit, freedom, and the evolution of collective intelligence, or 'Geist.' They discuss Hegel's paradoxical views on Christianity, freedom's misunderstood definition in modern culture, and the transformative power of vows like marriage. Throughout the discussion, the panel navigates the nuanced terrains of reason, rationality, and individual vs. communal freedoms, offering listeners intellectual nourishment and fresh perspectives.   Resources:   D.C. Schindler: Website  Ken Lowry: YouTube | Substack | X  John Vervaeke: Website | Patreon | Facebook | X | YouTube   The Vervaeke Foundation Books   Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing, and Discursive Commitment - Robert Brandom Reason in Philosophy: Animating Ideas - Robert Brandom A Spirit of Trust: A Reading of Hegel's Phenomenology - Robert Brandom Incomprehensible Certainty: Metaphysics and Hermeneutics of the Image - Thomas Pfau Phenomenology of Spirit - G. W. F. Hegel Nihilism (Carthage Reprint) - Stanley Rosen  The Psychology of Belonging - Kelly-Ann Allen Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved - Matt Rossano  Zombies in Western Culture: A Twenty-First Century Crisis - John Vervaeke, Christopher Mastropietro, and Filip Miscevic Freedom from Reality: The Diabolical Character of Modern Liberty - D.C. Schindler Publications   The Enactment of Shared Agency in Teams Exploring Mars Through Rovers - Dan Chiappe, John Vervaeke The Experience of Presence in the Mars Exploration Rover Mission - Dan Chiappe, John Vervaeke Distributed Cognition and the Experience of Presence in the Mars Exploration Rover Mission - Dan Chiappe, John Vervaeke   Articles   Did Meditating Make Us Human? - Matt J. Rossano Genocide, Domicide and the Unnamed - Brian Walsh Timecodes:   [00:00:00] John Vervaeke introduces the episode and his guests, Ken Lowry and D. C. Schindler. [00:02:18] Vervaeke and Dan Chiappe's book project is revealed: exploring the psychology, cognitive science, and philosophy around reason and rationality. [00:04:33] The main topic of the episode is introduced: a daring reconceptualization of God, reason, freedom, and Geist. [00:07:33] D.C. Schindler delves into Hegel's nuanced relationship with Christianity, providing intellectual scaffolding for the dialogue. [00:09:52] Schindler's description of Hegel's concept of spirit underscores the social nature of consciousness. [00:16:17] Vervaeke touches on the critique of Hegel by Stanley Rosen, introducing alternative viewpoints. [00:19:40] Hegel's often-overlooked relationship with nature is put under the spotlight. [00:24:28] Vervaeke introduces 'niche construction' in biology, challenging Darwinian notions and tying back to the concept of 'home'. [00:27:51] The psychological and social implications of 'home' are unpacked by Vervaeke. [00:30:59] Schindler highlights the role of the hearth, tying it back to human development and spirituality. [00:33:15] Vervaeke delves into the hypnotic nature of fire and its evolutionary relevance. [00:37:35] D.C. Schindler posits the necessity of an 'absolute' in community formation, adding another layer to the discussion. [00:40:00] Hegel's master-slave dialectic and its connection to freedom are introduced by Schindler. [00:45:01] Ken Lowry discusses the modern definition of freedom and how it undermines the concept of community and interpersonal relationships. [00:48:00] Vervaeke dissects the flaws in associating freedom with economic choice. [00:53:20] Freedom and forgiveness are seamlessly tied together by Vervaeke. [01:00:47] Schindler's critique of Aristotle through Plotinus adds depth to the discussion on the concept of 'good'. [01:08:42] The Aristotelian notion of nature is explored by Schindler, touching upon the idea of intrinsic motion. [01:13:29] Schindler gives a poetic touch, with the essence of beauty being the 'surprise from the other'. [01:17:48] Ken Lowry highlights the importance of reflecting on concepts like freedom, rationality, and love.

#witchcraft #minorities #queer The relation between the practice of magic, witchcraft, Paganism, shamanism and minorities in society (e.g. LGBTQ, people with disabilities). Clarifications on the differences found in Paganism, Ceremonial Magic, Western Esotericism and Re-constructivists of pre-Christian traditions. CONNECT & SUPPORT

Andrew Barth Feldman and Alex Boniello are a power duo who have most recently teamed up for "Foul Play", a new online murder mystery series that's reinventing how the internet works. The two share where and when their friendship began and why Andrew thinks the two of them are an unlikely pairing—one that works so well. The story behind Foul Play is an interesting one – listen in as they discuss how it all started, how much of it is improv, and how they accidentally found themselves developing an entirely new online technology for entertainment in the process. Alex and Andrew also share what it was like finding the right people for the project through vibe check alone, what makes "Foul Play" special, including not counting on any one person to be a star and allowing them to be exactly who they are and letting people do their thing, which isn't far from what motivates the two of them: doing what makes you happy and supporting other people. Andrew Barth Feldman is an American actor, singer, and songwriter. He rose to fame for his portrayal of the lead role in the Broadway musical "Dear Evan Hansen" at the age of 16, becoming the youngest actor to do so. Aside from his Broadway debut, Feldman has also appeared in several theater productions, including "Romeo and Juliet" at the Guthrie Theater and "The Phantom Tollbooth" at the Kennedy Center. He took a role in "High School Musical: The Musical: The Series" and starred in "Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical", "A Tourist's Guide to Love" on Netflix as well as in the upcoming comedy film, "No Hard Feelings". He has also performed at various events and benefits, including the Tony Awards and "The Jimmy Awards," where he won the Best Actor award. Feldman is also a talented songwriter, having written original music for "It Could Be Worse: The Musical" and "Normativity," two off-Broadway productions. He is a vocal advocate for mental health awareness and is passionate about using his platform to support various charitable causes. Alex Boniello is an American actor, singer, and musician who's won Tony Awards for co-producing “Hades Town”. He is known for his work on Broadway and off-Broadway productions, as well as in film and television. Boniello made his Broadway debut in 2011 as the understudy for the role of Moritz Stiefel in the musical "Spring Awakening". He later played the role of the voice of the skateboarder in the Broadway musical "American Idiot". In 2018, he originated the role of Connor Murphy in the Broadway production of "Dear Evan Hansen". His other stage credits include “21 Chump Street: The Musical”, “Cruel Intentions: The '90s Musical”, and “I Am Harvey Milk”. Aside from his work on stage, Boniello has also appeared in films such as "The Intern" and "Friendsgiving", and in television series such as "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt", “Ghosts” and "Jessica Jones". In addition to acting, Boniello is a musician and has released original music as a singer-songwriter. Alex will be seen in the upcoming follow-up to Disney's "Descendants" franchise. Andrew and Alex co-created and hosted Broadway Jackbox and Broadway Whodunit and recently, they have launched a new online murder mystery series called "Foul Play". Connect with Andrew and Alex: Watch Foul Play: foulplay.live Instagram: @alexboniello, @andrewbfeldman_, @foulplaymystery Twitter: @AlexBoniello, @andrewbfeldman TikTok: @andrewbfeldman_ Connect with The Theatre Podcast: Support us on Patreon: Patreon.com/TheTheatrePodcast Twitter & Instagram: @theatre_podcast TikTok: @thetheatrepodcast Facebook.com/OfficialTheatrePodcast TheTheatrePodcast.com Alan's personal Instagram: @alanseales Email me at feedback@thetheatrepodcast.com. I want to know what you think. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm discusses conceptions of value after postmodernism. Is postmodernism a nihilistic relativism or an activist moralism? Critics have accused it of both. What values pervade the postmodern academic paradigm? How do value conceptions shift when the postmodern paradigm gets diffused in popular culture? Is the "is-ought distinction" actually valid? What would a positive value project look like, and what are its benefits? Finally, what comes next for metamodernism and Storm's work? 0:00 Introduction 0:52 Postmodernism: Relativist or Activist? Nihilist or Moralist? 9:11 Value vs. Critique 17:07 Politics and Academia 22:17 Postmodern Diffusions 31:04 Is vs. Ought: Who's Afraid of Normativity? 38:04 Systematic Metamodern Philosophy 43:08 Imagining a Positive Future: Ethics and Wisdom 55:55 How Can Academia Reincorporate Wisdom? 59:42:21 Towards a Paradigm Shift: The Future of Metamodernism 1:09:35 Paradigm Projects 1:14:49 What's Next?

Raymond de Oliveira joins Brendan to discuss the value in the Universe, whether it emerges from the logic of reality itself or is arbitrarily chosen, whether existence is inherently of value, nihilism and Buddhism, the QRI grand narrative of replicators vs. consciousness, the role of suffering in wisdom, and the "Three Realms" of conscious experience. 0:00 Introduction 1:43 From Is to Ought? 9:17 Is Life a Net Negative? Utilitarianism, Gnosticism, Transhumanism 22:30 Dual-Aspect Monism and Suffering 25:52 Is Consciousness Worth It? 31:00 Teleology and Agency 32:58 Fighting a Meme War against Potential Gods 36:50 Values and Vows 40:03 The Law of Choice 42:36 Is Wisdom Earned by Suffering? Nihilism and the Truth of Silenus?

Sourcesheet is here

Pat and Brian discuss the role relations play in moral normativity, among other things : ) 

I speak with Cameron Boult about his series of papers and forthcoming book on epistemic blame: what it means, when it's appropriate, and how we modify our epistemic relationships with others. Here's any links you'll need to dive deeper: https://cameronboult.weebly.com/ https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/phpr.12726 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10670-021-00382-0 https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/phc3.12762?af=R#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20emotion%2Dbased,culpably)%20violated%20some%20epistemic%20norm. Twitter: @JordanCMyers Personal Website: https://jordanmyers.org/ Email: platoscavepodcast@gmail.com Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCD1RiH1j-M6C59z1upPXkWw?disable_polymer=true Plato's Cave Website: https://platoscave.fireside.fm/ Special Guest: Cameron Boult.

Discussing norms derived from nature with Margaret Davies, author of EcoLaw: Legality, Life, and the Normativity of Nature (2022). Nomos and nature are usually viewed in opposition. Here we ask, what are the norms to be derived from nature? How do they emerge and coexist?

Miroslav Volf has said that every Christian is a theologian. This is important not so much because it demands of an individual Jesus-follower to exert the best of her cognitive abilities, but because it demands of theologians that theology take seriously the experience, perception, and lived realities of human life. As part of our Future of Theology series, Keri Day (Princeton Theological Seminary) joins Matt Croasmun to discuss the purpose and promise of theology today, honing in on this phenomena and the temptation to see theology as an abstract exercise cut off from the particularities of faith. Keri Day is Associate Professor of Constructive Theology and African American Religion at Princeton Theological Seminary. She's author of Unfinished Business: Black Women, The Black Church, and the Struggle to Thrive in America as well as Religious Resistance to Neoliberalism: Womanist and Black Feminist Perspectives. About Keri DayKeri Day is Associate Professor of Constructive Theology and African American Religion at Princeton Theological Seminary. She's author of Unfinished Business: Black Women, The Black Church, and the Struggle to Thrive in America as well as Religious Resistance to Neoliberalism: Womanist and Black Feminist Perspectives. Production NotesThis podcast featured Keri Day and Matt CroasmunEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Nathan Jowers and Annie TrowbridgeEpisode Art by Luke StringerA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Science-informed normativity, published by Richard Ngo on May 25, 2022 on LessWrong. The debate over moral realism is often framed in terms of a binary question: are there ever objective facts about what's moral to do in a given situation? The broader question of normative realism is also framed in a similar way: are there ever objective facts about what's rational to do in a given situation? But I think we can understand these topics better by reframing them in terms of the question: how much do normative beliefs converge or diverge as ontologies improve? In other words: let's stop thinking about whether we can derive normativity from nothing, and start thinking about how much normativity we can derive from how little, given that we continue to improve our understanding of the world. The core intuition behind this approach is that, even if a better understand of science and mathematics can't directly tell us what we should value, it can heavily influence how our values develop over time. Values under ontology improvements By “ontology” I mean the set of concepts which we use to understand the world. Human ontologies are primarily formulated in terms of objects which persist over time, and which have certain properties and relationships. The details have changed greatly throughout history, though. To explain fire and disease, we used to appeal to spirits and curses; over time we removed them and added entities like phlogiston and miasmas; now we've removed those in turn and replaced them with oxidation and bacteria. In other cases, we still use old concepts, but with an understanding that they're only approximations to more sophisticated ones - like absolute versus relative space and time. In other cases, we've added novel entities - like dark matter, or complex numbers - in order to explain novel phenomena. I'd classify all of these changes as “improvements” to our ontologies. What specifically counts as an improvement (if anything) is an ongoing debate in the philosophy of science. For now, though, I'll assume that readers share roughly common-sense intuitions about ontology improvement - e.g. the intuition that science has dramatically improved our ontologies over the last few centuries. Now imagine that our ontologies continue to dramatically improve as we come to better understand the world; and that we try to reformulate moral values from our old ontologies in terms of our new ontologies in a reasonable way. What might happen? Here are two extreme options. Firstly, very similar moral values might end up in very different places, based on the details of how that reformulation happens, or just because the reformulation is quite sensitive to initial conditions. Or alternatively, perhaps even values which start off in very different places end up being very similar in the new ontology - e.g. because they turn out to refer to different aspects of the same underlying phenomenon. These, plus intermediate options between them, define a spectrum of possibilities. I'll call the divergent end of this spectrum (which I've defended elsewhere) the “moral anti-realism” end, and the convergent end the “moral realism” end. This will be much clearer with a few concrete examples (although note that these are only illustrative, because the specific beliefs involved are controversial). Consider two people with very different values: an egoist who only cares about their own pleasure, and a hedonic utilitarian. Now suppose that each of them comes to believe Parfit's argument that personal identity is a matter of degree, so that now the concept of their one “future self” is no longer in their ontology. How might they map their old values to their new ontology? Not much changes for the hedonic utilitarian, but a reasonable egoist will start to place some value on the experiences of peo...

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Science-informed normativity, published by Richard Ngo on May 25, 2022 on LessWrong. The debate over moral realism is often framed in terms of a binary question: are there ever objective facts about what's moral to do in a given situation? The broader question of normative realism is also framed in a similar way: are there ever objective facts about what's rational to do in a given situation? But I think we can understand these topics better by reframing them in terms of the question: how much do normative beliefs converge or diverge as ontologies improve? In other words: let's stop thinking about whether we can derive normativity from nothing, and start thinking about how much normativity we can derive from how little, given that we continue to improve our understanding of the world. The core intuition behind this approach is that, even if a better understand of science and mathematics can't directly tell us what we should value, it can heavily influence how our values develop over time. Values under ontology improvements By “ontology” I mean the set of concepts which we use to understand the world. Human ontologies are primarily formulated in terms of objects which persist over time, and which have certain properties and relationships. The details have changed greatly throughout history, though. To explain fire and disease, we used to appeal to spirits and curses; over time we removed them and added entities like phlogiston and miasmas; now we've removed those in turn and replaced them with oxidation and bacteria. In other cases, we still use old concepts, but with an understanding that they're only approximations to more sophisticated ones - like absolute versus relative space and time. In other cases, we've added novel entities - like dark matter, or complex numbers - in order to explain novel phenomena. I'd classify all of these changes as “improvements” to our ontologies. What specifically counts as an improvement (if anything) is an ongoing debate in the philosophy of science. For now, though, I'll assume that readers share roughly common-sense intuitions about ontology improvement - e.g. the intuition that science has dramatically improved our ontologies over the last few centuries. Now imagine that our ontologies continue to dramatically improve as we come to better understand the world; and that we try to reformulate moral values from our old ontologies in terms of our new ontologies in a reasonable way. What might happen? Here are two extreme options. Firstly, very similar moral values might end up in very different places, based on the details of how that reformulation happens, or just because the reformulation is quite sensitive to initial conditions. Or alternatively, perhaps even values which start off in very different places end up being very similar in the new ontology - e.g. because they turn out to refer to different aspects of the same underlying phenomenon. These, plus intermediate options between them, define a spectrum of possibilities. I'll call the divergent end of this spectrum (which I've defended elsewhere) the “moral anti-realism” end, and the convergent end the “moral realism” end. This will be much clearer with a few concrete examples (although note that these are only illustrative, because the specific beliefs involved are controversial). Consider two people with very different values: an egoist who only cares about their own pleasure, and a hedonic utilitarian. Now suppose that each of them comes to believe Parfit's argument that personal identity is a matter of degree, so that now the concept of their one “future self” is no longer in their ontology. How might they map their old values to their new ontology? Not much changes for the hedonic utilitarian, but a reasonable egoist will start to place some value on the experiences of peo...

This week we have another BONUS EPISODE! There is no guest for this one and instead Meghan and Cortland spend the episode discussing navigating relationship through deconstruction. Many of us who have left the limiting scripts handed to us by our evangelical or religious upbringing are left to re-frame our understanding of relationships outside of our previously rigid and binary understanding. We discuss the Billy Graham Rule which is the practice popularized by the late evangelist which said that married men should never be alone with any woman that wasn't their wife. This "rule" becomes a jumping off point for us to talk about breaking away from heteronormativity and compulsive (and toxic) monogamy. No matter your sexual orientation, relationship structure, or gender identity almost all of us have found that the way we were told to form and practice meaningful relationships in evangelicalism was limited and often unhelpful. Come along as we wander through this conversation, learn from each other, and answer some listener questions! As always, we love hearing from our listeners. Please consider leaving a rate and review on Apple Podcasts and reach out to say hello on social media! Twitter: Thereafter, Cortland, Meghan Instagram: Thereafter, Cortland, Meghan

If you thought that the COVID-19 pandemic knocked put the threat of terrorism to rest? Think again. Sondre Lindahl sees the threat of terrorism happening anywhere that there is political instability. The form it takes? Who perpetuates it, and how they carry out actions can vary widely, but rest assured, the threat of terror activities remains high. So how should the world prepare and respond? Sondre Lindahl suggests that the Global War on Terror was the wrong approach, and instead of using resources and political imaginations that way, can there be better global cooperation to work further upstream to prevent extremism? Tune in to find out. Sondre Lindahl is Associate Professor in Political Science at Østfold University College, Norway. He holds a PhD from the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Otago, New Zealand. His main research interest is counterterrorism, and he is the author of a A Critical Theory of Counterterrorism: Ontology, Epistemology and Normativity. He is a regular commentator on issues of security and terrorism in Norway. Follow Dr. Bob on Twitter: @ProfessorHuish

Katrina Maggiulli, PhD candidate, Environmental Studies, and 2021–22 OHC Dissertation Fellow. My dissertation seeks to better understand how popular essentialist understandings of species are operationalized through U.S. conservation policy to create materially specific species realities. I mark key foundations of these essentialist views on species in the eugenics-supported purity rhetoric of early U.S. conservation and show how contemporary debates over biotechnology as a conservation tool and speculative imaginaries of future species enable a rethinking of these restrictive and normative views on species being.

Kim talks to Rebecca Falkoff about hoarding. Her book on hoarding, Possessed, will be coming out with Cornell University press in April of 2021. In the episode, she references Giorgio Agamben's Stanze: La parola e il fantasma nella cutltura occidentale, translated into English as Stanzas: Words and Phantasm in Western Culture. by Ronald L. Martinez (University of Minnesota Press, 1993). And Arjun Appadurai's essay, “Mediants, Materiality, Normativity.” Public Culture 27 no. 2 (2015) doi: 10.1215/08992363-2841832 Rebecca is an assistant professor of Italian studies at NYU. She also has a blog on hoarding that you might want to check out: https://ifiwereahoarder.com/ The image is the future cover of Possessed. Painting by Carey Lin, Untitled (Screen shot 2009-10-19 at 1.20.48), 2011, Oil on canvas, 15 x 22 in. from the series Hardly nothing to do without Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Kim talks to Rebecca Falkoff about hoarding. Her book on hoarding, Possessed, will be coming out with Cornell University press in April of 2021. In the episode, she references Giorgio Agamben's Stanze: La parola e il fantasma nella cutltura occidentale, translated into English as Stanzas: Words and Phantasm in Western Culture. by Ronald L. Martinez (University of Minnesota Press, 1993). And Arjun Appadurai's essay, “Mediants, Materiality, Normativity.” Public Culture 27 no. 2 (2015) doi: 10.1215/08992363-2841832 Rebecca is an assistant professor of Italian studies at NYU. She also has a blog on hoarding that you might want to check out: https://ifiwereahoarder.com/ The image is the future cover of Possessed. Painting by Carey Lin, Untitled (Screen shot 2009-10-19 at 1.20.48), 2011, Oil on canvas, 15 x 22 in. from the series Hardly nothing to do without Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kim talks to Rebecca Falkoff about hoarding. Her book on hoarding, Possessed, will be coming out with Cornell University press in April of 2021. In the episode, she references Giorgio Agamben's Stanze: La parola e il fantasma nella cutltura occidentale, translated into English as Stanzas: Words and Phantasm in Western Culture. by Ronald L. Martinez (University of Minnesota Press, 1993). And Arjun Appadurai's essay, “Mediants, Materiality, Normativity.” Public Culture 27 no. 2 (2015) doi: 10.1215/08992363-2841832 Rebecca is an assistant professor of Italian studies at NYU. She also has a blog on hoarding that you might want to check out: https://ifiwereahoarder.com/ The image is the future cover of Possessed. Painting by Carey Lin, Untitled (Screen shot 2009-10-19 at 1.20.48), 2011, Oil on canvas, 15 x 22 in. from the series Hardly nothing to do without Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/psychology

Over the past two centuries, colleges have slowly replaced theology departments with religious studies departments. But what happens when theology becomes religious studies? It can produce a more neutral, observational approach that might not fully appreciate the normative claims of religious adherents and their values, commitments, and beliefs.A careful historical and objective study of religious history and the dimensions of religious practice are deeply valuable. But engaging religious texts and voices without a serious appreciation for the normative elements—that is, the things about a theological or religious idea that means your life would have to change—that would be a problem. It would evacuate the true substance and meaning of theological claims as they're experienced by religious adherents. But it would also fail to form students of religion and the humanities in a way that poses significant challenges to their own lived experience. For living a life worthy of their humanity.Today, we share a conversation between Tyler Roberts and Matt Croasmun from November 2016. Tragically, Roberts died at the age of 61 on June 3, 2021. He was Professor of Religious Studies at Grinnell College. In this conversation, Roberts reflects on the contribution of theology to the humanities, the role of religious studies in a critical examination of theology, and the importance of appreciating the kinds of theological and moral claims that can change your life. May his memory be a blessing. Show NotesObituary: Tyler Roberts (1960-2021) (Political Theology)Production NotesThis podcast featured Tyler Roberts and Matt CroasmunEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Nathan Jowers and Luke StringerA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

#deepmind #rl #society This is an in-depth paper review, followed by an interview with the papers' authors! Society is ruled by norms, and most of these norms are very useful, such as washing your hands before cooking. However, there also exist plenty of social norms which are essentially arbitrary, such as what hairstyles are acceptable, or what words are rude. These are called "silly rules". This paper uses multi-agent reinforcement learning to investigate why such silly rules exist. Their results indicate a plausible mechanism, by which the existence of silly rules drastically speeds up the agents' acquisition of the skill of enforcing rules, which generalizes well, and therefore a society that has silly rules will be better at enforcing rules in general, leading to faster adaptation in the face of genuinely useful norms. OUTLINE: 0:00 - Intro 3:00 - Paper Overview 5:20 - Why are some social norms arbitrary? 11:50 - Reinforcement learning environment setup 20:00 - What happens if we introduce a "silly" rule? 25:00 - Experimental Results: how silly rules help society 30:10 - Isolated probing experiments 34:30 - Discussion of the results 37:30 - Start of Interview 39:30 - Where does the research idea come from? 44:00 - What is the purpose behind this research? 49:20 - Short recap of the mechanics of the environment 53:00 - How much does such a closed system tell us about the real world? 56:00 - What do the results tell us about silly rules? 1:01:00 - What are these agents really learning? 1:08:00 - How many silly rules are optimal? 1:11:30 - Why do you have separate weights for each agent? 1:13:45 - What features could be added next? 1:16:00 - How sensitive is the system to hyperparameters? 1:17:20 - How to avoid confirmation bias? 1:23:15 - How does this play into progress towards AGI? 1:29:30 - Can we make real-world recommendations based on this? 1:32:50 - Where do we go from here? Paper: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas... Blog: https://deepmind.com/research/publica... Abstract: The fact that humans enforce and comply with norms is an important reason why humans enjoy higher levels of cooperation and welfare than other animals. Some norms are relatively easy to explain; they may prohibit obviously harmful or uncooperative actions. But many norms are not easy to explain. For example, most cultures prohibit eating certain kinds of foods and almost all societies have rules about what constitutes appropriate clothing, language, and gestures. Using a computational model focused on learning shows that apparently pointless rules can have an indirect effect on welfare. They can help agents learn how to enforce and comply with norms in general, improving the group's ability to enforce norms that have a direct effect on welfare. Authors: Raphael Köster, Dylan Hadfield-Menell, Richard Everett, Laura Weidinger, Gillian K. Hadfield, Joel Z. Leibo Links: TabNine Code Completion (Referral): http://bit.ly/tabnine-yannick YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/yannickilcher Twitter: https://twitter.com/ykilcher Discord: https://discord.gg/4H8xxDF BitChute: https://www.bitchute.com/channel/yann... LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ykilcher BiliBili: https://space.bilibili.com/2017636191 If you want to support me, the best thing to do is to share out the content :)

In the first of a two-part feature celebrating LGBTQ+ History Month, our presenter Roxana speaks to Dr Noreen Masud, BBC New Generation Thinker and Lecturer at the University of Bristol, about her work on flatness, negative affect, and the aphorism, and how each might help us resist heteronormativity. She also speaks to Talen Wright, PhD student at UCL Division of Psychiatry, about her research into trans mental health, microaggressions and microaffirmation. Both guests also discuss UCL's recent decision to cut ties with Stonewall, and the ramifications of this decision on trans safety and academic freedom within the university and society more broadly. For more information on UCL's recent decision to cut ties with Stonewall: https://thetab.com/uk/london/2022/01/21/vindictive-and-insensitive-students-and-staff-slam-ucl-decision-to-cut-ties-with-stonewall-44148 https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/dec/21/ucl-becomes-first-university-to-formally-cut-ties-with-stonewall Petition calling for UCL to re-join the scheme: https://www.change.org/p/ucl-ucl-staff-students-alumni-ask-ucl-to-rejoin-stonewall-schemes For more information on Talen Wright's study, and to take part, see Twitter @TransMMH and: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/psychiatry/research/epidemiology-and-applied-clinical-research-department/trans-microaggressions-mental-health The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the individuals and do not necessarily reflect the official policies, views or positions of any institutions with which they are affiliated. For more information and to access the transcript: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/moveable-type/moveable-type-podcast-lgbtq-history-month-part-1-episode-3 Date of episode recording: 2022-02-09 Duration: 01:00:23 Language of episode: English Presenter: Roxana Toloza Chacon Guests: Dr Noreen Masud; Talen Wright Producer: Anna De Vivo; Damian Walsh

WATCH: https://youtu.be/B44_ISJZMlY Menachem Fisch is Joseph and Ceil Mazer Professor Emeritus of History and Philosophy of Science, and Director of the Center for Religious and Interreligious Studies at Tel Aviv University, and Senior Fellow of the Goethe University Frankfurt's Forschungskolleg Humanwisseschaften, Bad Homburg. He has published widely on the history of 19th century British science and mathematics, on confirmation theory and rationality, on the theology of the talmudic literature, and the philosophy of talmudic legal reasoning. His recent work explores the limits of normative self-criticism, the Talmud's dispute of religiosity, the possibilities of articulating a pluralist political philosophy from within the assumptions of halakhic Judaism, the history and philosophy of scientific framework transitions, and the theo-political roots of Israel's reaction against political Zionism. EPISODE LINKS: - Menachem's Website: https://menachemfisch.academia.edu/ - Menachem's Books: https://www.amazon.com/Menachem-Fisch/e/B001H6QT1K%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share - Menachem's Publications: https://scholar.google.co.il/citations?user=1gSAA4YAAAAJ&hl=en CONNECT: - Website: https://tevinnaidu.com/podcast - Instagram: https://instagram.com/drtevinnaidu - Facebook: https://facebook.com/drtevinnaidu - Twitter: https://twitter.com/drtevinnaidu - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/drtevinnaidu TIMESTAMPS: (0:00) - Introduction (0:20) - Does science need philosophy? (& vice versa) (6:51) - Philosophical challenges of mind/brain research (14:03) - Neuroscience vs normativity (23:57) - Is it possible to predict feelings or qualia? (28:44) - Our perception of human complexity (35:32) - Karl Popper (science vs pseudoscience) (42:40) - Human consciousness and the self (47:30) - Psychiatric nosology (56:40) - Transcending normativity (1:02:07) - Teleology & religion (1:12:49) - Menachem's author recommendations (1:17:20) - Conclusion Website · YouTube

WATCH: https://youtu.be/B44_ISJZMlY Menachem Fisch is Joseph and Ceil Mazer Professor Emeritus of History and Philosophy of Science, and Director of the Center for Religious and Interreligious Studies at Tel Aviv University, and Senior Fellow of the Goethe University Frankfurt's Forschungskolleg Humanwisseschaften, Bad Homburg. He has published widely on the history of 19th century British science and mathematics, on confirmation theory and rationality, on the theology of the talmudic literature, and the philosophy of talmudic legal reasoning. His recent work explores the limits of normative self-criticism, the Talmud's dispute of religiosity, the possibilities of articulating a pluralist political philosophy from within the assumptions of halakhic Judaism, the history and philosophy of scientific framework transitions, and the theo-political roots of Israel's reaction against political Zionism. EPISODE LINKS: - Menachem's Website: https://menachemfisch.academia.edu/ - Menachem's Books: https://www.amazon.com/Menachem-Fisch/e/B001H6QT1K%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share - Menachem's Publications: https://scholar.google.co.il/citations?user=1gSAA4YAAAAJ&hl=en CONNECT: - Website: https://tevinnaidu.com/podcast - Instagram: https://instagram.com/drtevinnaidu - Facebook: https://facebook.com/drtevinnaidu - Twitter: https://twitter.com/drtevinnaidu - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/drtevinnaidu TIMESTAMPS: (0:00) - Introduction (0:20) - Does science need philosophy? (& vice versa) (6:51) - Philosophical challenges of mind/brain research (14:03) - Neuroscience vs normativity (23:57) - Is it possible to predict feelings or qualia? (28:44) - Our perception of human complexity (35:32) - Karl Popper (science vs pseudoscience) (42:40) - Human consciousness and the self (47:30) - Psychiatric nosology (56:40) - Transcending normativity (1:02:07) - Teleology & religion (1:12:49) - Menachem's author recommendations (1:17:20) - Conclusion Website · YouTube · YouTube

In this interview, I'm joined by Dr. Anne Jeffrey, a professor of philosophy at Baylor University. In 2019, her book, God & Morality was published with Cambridge University Press. There are three sections of the book. The first section surveys the philosophical literature on God's role in grounding moral normativity. The second section of the book surveys the philosophical literature on God's role in explaining moral knowledge. Our interview will be a summary of these two sections, and Dr. Jeffrey will explain how "thin theism" does not explain moral normativity and moral knowledge as well as "thick theism." Here's the link to the Dr. Jeffrey's book- https://www.amazon.com/God-Morality-Elements-Philosophy-Religion/dp/1108469442/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=god+and+morality&qid=1613158960&sr=8-3 Please consider supporting TAC on patreon. Go to http://www.patreon.com/theanalyticchristian.com For more resources on Christian philosophy and theology check out my website. http://www.theanalyticchristian.com

Intolerable: Writings from Michel Foucault and the Prisons Information Group (1970-1980) (University of Minnesota Press, 2021), edited by Kevin Thompson and Perry Zurn, is a groundbreaking collection of writings by Michel Foucault and the Prisons Information Group documenting their efforts to expose France's inhumane treatment of prisoners Founded by Michel Foucault and others in 1970-71, the Prisons Information Group (GIP) circulated information about the inhumane conditions within the French prison system. Intolerable makes available for the first time in English a fully annotated compilation of materials produced by the GIP during its brief but influential existence, including an exclusive new interview with GIP member Hélène Cixous and writings by Gilles Deleuze and Jean Genet. These archival documents--public announcements, manifestos, reports, pamphlets, interventions, press conference statements, interviews, and round table discussions--trace the GIP's establishment in post-1968 political turmoil, the new models of social activism it pioneered, the prison revolts it supported across France, and the retrospective assessments that followed its denouement. At the same time, Intolerable offers a rich, concrete exploration of Foucault's concept of resistance, providing a new understanding of the arc of his intellectual development and the genesis of his most influential book, Discipline and Punish. Presenting the account of France's most vibrant prison resistance movement in its own words and on its own terms, this significant and relevant collection also connects the approach and activities of the GIP to radical prison resistance movements today. Kevin Thompson is professor of philosophy at DePaul University. He is author of Hegel's Theory of Normativity. Perry Zurn is assistant professor of philosophy at American University. He is coeditor of Curiosity Studies: A New Ecology of Knowledge (Minnesota, 2020) and Active Intolerance: Michel Foucault, the Prisons Information Group, and the Future of Abolition. Kirk Meighoo is Public Relations Officer for the United National Congress, the Official Opposition in Trinidad and Tobago. His career has spanned media, academia, and politics for three decades. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Intolerable: Writings from Michel Foucault and the Prisons Information Group (1970-1980) (University of Minnesota Press, 2021), edited by Kevin Thompson and Perry Zurn, is a groundbreaking collection of writings by Michel Foucault and the Prisons Information Group documenting their efforts to expose France's inhumane treatment of prisoners Founded by Michel Foucault and others in 1970-71, the Prisons Information Group (GIP) circulated information about the inhumane conditions within the French prison system. Intolerable makes available for the first time in English a fully annotated compilation of materials produced by the GIP during its brief but influential existence, including an exclusive new interview with GIP member Hélène Cixous and writings by Gilles Deleuze and Jean Genet. These archival documents--public announcements, manifestos, reports, pamphlets, interventions, press conference statements, interviews, and round table discussions--trace the GIP's establishment in post-1968 political turmoil, the new models of social activism it pioneered, the prison revolts it supported across France, and the retrospective assessments that followed its denouement. At the same time, Intolerable offers a rich, concrete exploration of Foucault's concept of resistance, providing a new understanding of the arc of his intellectual development and the genesis of his most influential book, Discipline and Punish. Presenting the account of France's most vibrant prison resistance movement in its own words and on its own terms, this significant and relevant collection also connects the approach and activities of the GIP to radical prison resistance movements today. Kevin Thompson is professor of philosophy at DePaul University. He is author of Hegel's Theory of Normativity. Perry Zurn is assistant professor of philosophy at American University. He is coeditor of Curiosity Studies: A New Ecology of Knowledge (Minnesota, 2020) and Active Intolerance: Michel Foucault, the Prisons Information Group, and the Future of Abolition. Kirk Meighoo is Public Relations Officer for the United National Congress, the Official Opposition in Trinidad and Tobago. His career has spanned media, academia, and politics for three decades. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

Intolerable: Writings from Michel Foucault and the Prisons Information Group (1970-1980) (University of Minnesota Press, 2021), edited by Kevin Thompson and Perry Zurn, is a groundbreaking collection of writings by Michel Foucault and the Prisons Information Group documenting their efforts to expose France's inhumane treatment of prisoners Founded by Michel Foucault and others in 1970-71, the Prisons Information Group (GIP) circulated information about the inhumane conditions within the French prison system. Intolerable makes available for the first time in English a fully annotated compilation of materials produced by the GIP during its brief but influential existence, including an exclusive new interview with GIP member Hélène Cixous and writings by Gilles Deleuze and Jean Genet. These archival documents--public announcements, manifestos, reports, pamphlets, interventions, press conference statements, interviews, and round table discussions--trace the GIP's establishment in post-1968 political turmoil, the new models of social activism it pioneered, the prison revolts it supported across France, and the retrospective assessments that followed its denouement. At the same time, Intolerable offers a rich, concrete exploration of Foucault's concept of resistance, providing a new understanding of the arc of his intellectual development and the genesis of his most influential book, Discipline and Punish. Presenting the account of France's most vibrant prison resistance movement in its own words and on its own terms, this significant and relevant collection also connects the approach and activities of the GIP to radical prison resistance movements today. Kevin Thompson is professor of philosophy at DePaul University. He is author of Hegel's Theory of Normativity. Perry Zurn is assistant professor of philosophy at American University. He is coeditor of Curiosity Studies: A New Ecology of Knowledge (Minnesota, 2020) and Active Intolerance: Michel Foucault, the Prisons Information Group, and the Future of Abolition. Kirk Meighoo is Public Relations Officer for the United National Congress, the Official Opposition in Trinidad and Tobago. His career has spanned media, academia, and politics for three decades. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/law

Intolerable: Writings from Michel Foucault and the Prisons Information Group (1970-1980) (University of Minnesota Press, 2021), edited by Kevin Thompson and Perry Zurn, is a groundbreaking collection of writings by Michel Foucault and the Prisons Information Group documenting their efforts to expose France's inhumane treatment of prisoners Founded by Michel Foucault and others in 1970-71, the Prisons Information Group (GIP) circulated information about the inhumane conditions within the French prison system. Intolerable makes available for the first time in English a fully annotated compilation of materials produced by the GIP during its brief but influential existence, including an exclusive new interview with GIP member Hélène Cixous and writings by Gilles Deleuze and Jean Genet. These archival documents--public announcements, manifestos, reports, pamphlets, interventions, press conference statements, interviews, and round table discussions--trace the GIP's establishment in post-1968 political turmoil, the new models of social activism it pioneered, the prison revolts it supported across France, and the retrospective assessments that followed its denouement. At the same time, Intolerable offers a rich, concrete exploration of Foucault's concept of resistance, providing a new understanding of the arc of his intellectual development and the genesis of his most influential book, Discipline and Punish. Presenting the account of France's most vibrant prison resistance movement in its own words and on its own terms, this significant and relevant collection also connects the approach and activities of the GIP to radical prison resistance movements today. Kevin Thompson is professor of philosophy at DePaul University. He is author of Hegel's Theory of Normativity. Perry Zurn is assistant professor of philosophy at American University. He is coeditor of Curiosity Studies: A New Ecology of Knowledge (Minnesota, 2020) and Active Intolerance: Michel Foucault, the Prisons Information Group, and the Future of Abolition. Kirk Meighoo is Public Relations Officer for the United National Congress, the Official Opposition in Trinidad and Tobago. His career has spanned media, academia, and politics for three decades. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Intolerable: Writings from Michel Foucault and the Prisons Information Group (1970-1980) (University of Minnesota Press, 2021), edited by Kevin Thompson and Perry Zurn, is a groundbreaking collection of writings by Michel Foucault and the Prisons Information Group documenting their efforts to expose France's inhumane treatment of prisoners Founded by Michel Foucault and others in 1970-71, the Prisons Information Group (GIP) circulated information about the inhumane conditions within the French prison system. Intolerable makes available for the first time in English a fully annotated compilation of materials produced by the GIP during its brief but influential existence, including an exclusive new interview with GIP member Hélène Cixous and writings by Gilles Deleuze and Jean Genet. These archival documents--public announcements, manifestos, reports, pamphlets, interventions, press conference statements, interviews, and round table discussions--trace the GIP's establishment in post-1968 political turmoil, the new models of social activism it pioneered, the prison revolts it supported across France, and the retrospective assessments that followed its denouement. At the same time, Intolerable offers a rich, concrete exploration of Foucault's concept of resistance, providing a new understanding of the arc of his intellectual development and the genesis of his most influential book, Discipline and Punish. Presenting the account of France's most vibrant prison resistance movement in its own words and on its own terms, this significant and relevant collection also connects the approach and activities of the GIP to radical prison resistance movements today. Kevin Thompson is professor of philosophy at DePaul University. He is author of Hegel's Theory of Normativity. Perry Zurn is assistant professor of philosophy at American University. He is coeditor of Curiosity Studies: A New Ecology of Knowledge (Minnesota, 2020) and Active Intolerance: Michel Foucault, the Prisons Information Group, and the Future of Abolition. Kirk Meighoo is Public Relations Officer for the United National Congress, the Official Opposition in Trinidad and Tobago. His career has spanned media, academia, and politics for three decades. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/french-studies

Intolerable: Writings from Michel Foucault and the Prisons Information Group (1970-1980) (University of Minnesota Press, 2021), edited by Kevin Thompson and Perry Zurn, is a groundbreaking collection of writings by Michel Foucault and the Prisons Information Group documenting their efforts to expose France's inhumane treatment of prisoners Founded by Michel Foucault and others in 1970-71, the Prisons Information Group (GIP) circulated information about the inhumane conditions within the French prison system. Intolerable makes available for the first time in English a fully annotated compilation of materials produced by the GIP during its brief but influential existence, including an exclusive new interview with GIP member Hélène Cixous and writings by Gilles Deleuze and Jean Genet. These archival documents--public announcements, manifestos, reports, pamphlets, interventions, press conference statements, interviews, and round table discussions--trace the GIP's establishment in post-1968 political turmoil, the new models of social activism it pioneered, the prison revolts it supported across France, and the retrospective assessments that followed its denouement. At the same time, Intolerable offers a rich, concrete exploration of Foucault's concept of resistance, providing a new understanding of the arc of his intellectual development and the genesis of his most influential book, Discipline and Punish. Presenting the account of France's most vibrant prison resistance movement in its own words and on its own terms, this significant and relevant collection also connects the approach and activities of the GIP to radical prison resistance movements today. Kevin Thompson is professor of philosophy at DePaul University. He is author of Hegel's Theory of Normativity. Perry Zurn is assistant professor of philosophy at American University. He is coeditor of Curiosity Studies: A New Ecology of Knowledge (Minnesota, 2020) and Active Intolerance: Michel Foucault, the Prisons Information Group, and the Future of Abolition. Kirk Meighoo is Public Relations Officer for the United National Congress, the Official Opposition in Trinidad and Tobago. His career has spanned media, academia, and politics for three decades. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Intolerable: Writings from Michel Foucault and the Prisons Information Group (1970-1980) (University of Minnesota Press, 2021), edited by Kevin Thompson and Perry Zurn, is a groundbreaking collection of writings by Michel Foucault and the Prisons Information Group documenting their efforts to expose France's inhumane treatment of prisoners Founded by Michel Foucault and others in 1970-71, the Prisons Information Group (GIP) circulated information about the inhumane conditions within the French prison system. Intolerable makes available for the first time in English a fully annotated compilation of materials produced by the GIP during its brief but influential existence, including an exclusive new interview with GIP member Hélène Cixous and writings by Gilles Deleuze and Jean Genet. These archival documents--public announcements, manifestos, reports, pamphlets, interventions, press conference statements, interviews, and round table discussions--trace the GIP's establishment in post-1968 political turmoil, the new models of social activism it pioneered, the prison revolts it supported across France, and the retrospective assessments that followed its denouement. At the same time, Intolerable offers a rich, concrete exploration of Foucault's concept of resistance, providing a new understanding of the arc of his intellectual development and the genesis of his most influential book, Discipline and Punish. Presenting the account of France's most vibrant prison resistance movement in its own words and on its own terms, this significant and relevant collection also connects the approach and activities of the GIP to radical prison resistance movements today. Kevin Thompson is professor of philosophy at DePaul University. He is author of Hegel's Theory of Normativity. Perry Zurn is assistant professor of philosophy at American University. He is coeditor of Curiosity Studies: A New Ecology of Knowledge (Minnesota, 2020) and Active Intolerance: Michel Foucault, the Prisons Information Group, and the Future of Abolition. Kirk Meighoo is Public Relations Officer for the United National Congress, the Official Opposition in Trinidad and Tobago. His career has spanned media, academia, and politics for three decades. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

I was honored to be invited onto Kings and Queens, a podcast hosted by Joseph & Nicole Peterson, to talk about Jesus through a trans lens! The full episode is over on their podcast and includes more of my own personal story as well. For more about the Petersons, visit www.thepetersons.cc. For a transcript of this episode, click here. Talking Points: (0:00 - 3:30) Intro (3:30 - 11:28) Pastoring people into conversations about trans Jesus — why does the idea shock or offend many people? Normativity conflated with morality (11:29 - 14:18) Ideas of gender in Jesus's time and place; Jesus's gender nonconformity: no wife and kids; Mother Hen (14:19 - 19:35) Jesus closeted, coming out; his deep desire to be known by those he loves (19:36 - 23:40) Eunuch Jesus! — happily accepts association with those his world called sexually deviant; reclaiming slurs like eunuch or queer (23:41 - end) Jesus's transition story: genderless divinity entering finite humanity, assigned male at birth Further Reading: - blessedarethebinarybreakers.com/nt — "Assigned Male at Incarnation: An Intersex and Transgender Jesus" - https://blessedarethebinarybreakers.tumblr.com/tagged/trans+jesus — varied posts about Jesus being trans - Ep 40 of this podcast — "Goodness Embodied: An Intersex, Nonbinary First Human & a Disabled Risen Christ" - Ep 32 of this podcast — "A Queer Nativity: God's transition; Mary's trans-gressive yes; and Joseph's trans-formation into an ally" - Some of Avery's liturgy and poetry that speaks to a transgender Jesus — https://binarybreakingliturgy.com/?s=trans+jesus - Short sermon on trans Jesus — https://a-queer-seminarian.tumblr.com/post/166432404438/i-was-happy-to-be-part-of-this-years-lpts-more - Chris Paige's book OtherWise Christian ____ Blessed Are the Binary Breakers is part of the Rock Candy Podcast Network. Find more shows at www.rockcandyrecordings.com.

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: The Alignment Problem: Machine Learning and Human Values, published by Rohin Shah on the AI Alignment Forum. This is a linkpost for The Alignment Problem: Machine Learning and Human Values, by Brian Christian, was just released. This is an extended summary + opinion, a version without the quotes from the book will go out in the next Alignment Newsletter. Summary: This book starts off with an explanation of machine learning and problems that we can currently see with it, including detailed stories and analysis of: - The gorilla misclassification incident - The faulty reward in CoastRunners - The gender bias in language models - The failure of facial recognition models on minorities - The COMPAS controversy (leading up to impossibility results in fairness) - The neural net that thought asthma reduced the risk of pneumonia It then moves on to agency and reinforcement learning, covering from a more historical and academic perspective how we have arrived at such ideas as temporal difference learning, reward shaping, curriculum design, and curiosity, across the fields of machine learning, behavioral psychology, and neuroscience. While the connections aren't always explicit, a knowledgeable reader can connect the academic examples given in these chapters to the ideas of specification gaming and mesa optimization that we talk about frequently in this newsletter. Chapter 5 especially highlights that agent design is not just a matter of specifying a reward: often, rewards will do ~nothing, and the main requirement to get a competent agent is to provide good shaping rewards or a good curriculum. Just as in the previous part, Brian traces the intellectual history of these ideas, providing detailed stories of (for example): - BF Skinner's experiments in training pigeons - The invention of the perceptron - The success of TD-Gammon, and later AlphaGo Zero The final part, titled "Normativity", delves much more deeply into the alignment problem. While the previous two parts are partially organized around AI capabilities -- how to get AI systems that optimize for their objectives -- this last one tackles head on the problem that we want AI systems that optimize for our (often-unknown) objectives, covering such topics as imitation learning, inverse reinforcement learning, learning from preferences, iterated amplification, impact regularization, calibrated uncertainty estimates, and moral uncertainty. Opinion: I really enjoyed this book, primarily because of the tracing of the intellectual history of various ideas. While I knew of most of these ideas, and often also who initially came up with the ideas, it's much more engaging to read the detailed stories of _how_ that person came to develop the idea; Brian's book delivers this again and again, functioning like a well-organized literature survey that is also fun to read because of its great storytelling. I struggled a fair amount in writing this summary, because I kept wanting to somehow communicate the writing style; in the end I decided not to do it and to instead give a few examples of passages from the book in this post. Passages: Note: It is generally not allowed to have quotations this long from this book; I have specifically gotten permission to do so. Here's an example of agents with evolved inner reward functions, which lead to the inner alignment problems we've previously worried about: They created a two-dimensional virtual world in which simulated organisms (or “agents”) could move around a landscape, eat, be preyed upon, and reproduce. Each organism's “genetic code” contained the agent's reward function: how much it liked food, how much it disliked being near predators, and so forth. During its lifetime, it would use reinforcement learning to learn how to take actions to maximize these rewards. When an organism reproduced, ...

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Problems in AI Alignment that philosophers could potentially contribute to, published by Wei Dai on the AI Alignment Forum. (This was originally a comment that I wrote as a follow up to my question for William MacAskill's AMA. I'm moving it since it's perhaps more on-topic here.) It occurs to me that another reason for the lack of engagement by people with philosophy backgrounds may be that philosophers aren't aware of the many philosophical problems in AI alignment that they could potentially contribute to. So here's a list of philosophical problems that have come up just in my own thinking about AI alignment. Decision theory for AI / AI designers How to resolve standard debates in decision theory? Logical counterfactuals Open source game theory Acausal game theory / reasoning about distant superintelligences Infinite/multiversal/astronomical ethics Should we (or our AI) care much more about a universe that is capable of doing a lot more computations? What kinds of (e.g. spatial-temporal) discounting is necessary and/or desirable? Fair distribution of benefits How should benefits from AGI be distributed? For example, would it be fair to distribute it equally over all humans who currently exist, or according to how much AI services they can afford to buy? What about people who existed or will exist at other times and in other places or universes? Need for "metaphilosophical paternalism"? However we distribute the benefits, if we let the beneficiaries decide what to do with their windfall using their own philosophical faculties, is that likely to lead to a good outcome? Metaphilosophy What is the nature of philosophy? What constitutes correct philosophical reasoning? How to specify this into an AI design? Philosophical forecasting How are various AI technologies and AI safety proposals likely to affect future philosophical progress (relative to other kinds of progress)? Preference aggregation between AIs and between users How should two AIs that want to merge with each other aggregate their preferences? How should an AI aggregate preferences between its users? Normativity for AI / AI designers What is the nature of normativity? Do we need to make sure an AGI has a sufficient understanding of this? Metaethical policing What are the implicit metaethical assumptions in a given AI alignment proposal (in case the authors didn't spell them out)? What are the implications of an AI design or alignment proposal under different metaethical assumptions? Encouraging designs that make minimal metaethical assumptions or is likely to lead to good outcomes regardless of which metaethical theory turns out to be true. (Nowadays AI alignment researchers seem to be generally good about not placing too much confidence in their own moral theories, but the same can't always be said to be true with regard to their metaethical ideas.) Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org.

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Learning Normativity: A Research Agenda, published by Abram Demski on the AI Alignment Forum. (Related to Inaccessible Information, Learning the Prior, and Better Priors as a Safety Problem. Builds on several of my alternate alignment ideas.) I want to talk about something which I'll call learning normativity. What is normativity? Normativity is correct behavior. I mean something related to the fuzzy concept humans convey with the word "should". I think it has several interesting features: Norms are the result of a complex negotiation between humans, so they shouldn't necessarily be thought of as the result of maximizing some set of values. This distinguishes learning normativity from value learning. A lot of information about norms is present in the empirical distribution of what people actually do, but you can't learn norms just by learning human behavior. This distinguishes it from imitation learning. It's often possible to provide a lot of information in the form of "good/bad" feedback. This feedback should be interpreted more like approval-directed learning rather than RL. However, approval should not be treated as a gold standard. Similarly, it's often possible to provide a lot of information in the form of rules, but rules are not necessarily 100% true; they are just very likely to apply in typical cases. In general, it's possible to get very rich types of feedback, but very sparse: humans get all sorts of feedback, including not only instruction on how to act, but also how to think. Any one piece of feedback is suspect. Teachers can make mistakes, instructions can be wrong, demonstrations can be imperfect, dictionaries can contain spelling errors, reward signals can be corrupt, and so on. Example: Language Learning A major motivating example for me is how language learning works in humans. There is clearly, to some degree, a "right way" and a "wrong way" to use a language. I'll call this correct usage. One notable feature of language learning is that we don't always speak, or write, in correct usage. This means that a child learning language has to distinguish between mistakes (such as typos) and correct usage. (Humans do sometimes learn to imitate mistakes, but we have a notion of not doing so. This is unlike GPT systems learning to imitate the empirical distribution of human text.) This means we're largely doing something like unsupervised learning, but with a notion of "correct"/"incorrect" data. We're doing something like throwing data out when it's likely to be incorrect. A related point is that we are better at recognizing correct usage than we are at generating it. If we say something wrong, we're likely able to correct it. In some sense, this means there's a foothold for intelligence amplification: we know how to generate our own training gradent. Another fascinating feature of language is that although native speakers are pretty good at both recognizing and generating correct usage, we don't know the rules explicitly. The whole field of linguistics is largely about trying to uncover the rules of grammar. So it's impossible for us to teach proper English by teaching the rules. Yet, we do know some of the rules. Or, more accurately, we know a set of rules that usually apply. And those rules are somewhat useful for teaching English. (Although children have usually reached fluency before the point where they're taught explicit English grammar.) All of these things point toward what I mean by learning normativity: We can tell a lot about what's normative by simply observing what's common, but the two are not exactly the same thing. A (qualified) human can usually label an example as correct or incorrect, but this is not perfect either. We can articulate a lot about correct vs incorrect in the form of rules; but the rules which we can articulate never seem...

This episode of Season 5 of the BSP Podcast features Adriano Lotito, Milano-Bicocca University. The presentation is taken from our 2020 annual conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology' Online.   ABSTRACT: This contribution focuses on the Tran Duc Thao's work, Phenomenology and Dialectical Materialism, that is fundamental to post-war French thought, having influenced thinkers as Lyotard and Derrida amongst others and representing the first systematic attempt to synthesize Marxism and phenomenology. Firstly I examine the Tran's reconstruction of Husserlian phenomenology. Originally there is an objective idealism theorizing the independence of the object; then there is its reversal in a subjective idealism highlighting the constituting consciousness; finally there is the switch from static to genetic phenomenology with the thematization of the life-world as historical-empirical ground (I). Secondly I explore the contradiction indicated by Tran between the Husserl's idealistic frame, implicating the reproduction of an abstract dualism, and the results of the concrete analysis, bound to the original claim of going back to the things themselves. This tension is particularly detectable in The Origin of Geometry (II). Thirdly I discuss the Tran's solution to this riddle, namely the radicalisation of the materialistic stance discovered in the Husserl's late writings towards a Marxist horizon. The genesis of the a priori forms of the antepredicative experience is derived from the evolution of species and from the development of human work. The dialectic of behaviour as practical interaction between organism and nature determines the emergence of meanings structuring the experience. The notion of intentionality is interpreted as result of an immanent negation, the aufhebung of any immediate determinations through the work of an emerging  bodily-social intersubjectivity that in this way reaches the self-consciousness. The real movement, insofar as is sketched out and repressed at once, is sublated as intentional content. Transcendental subjectivity becomes an immanent subjectivisation of the object through praxis. This could lead to an alternative antireductionist ontologization of phenomenology despite a teleologism that risks to cage the dialectic in a too narrow path (III).   BIO: Adriano Lotito graduated in Philosophy (B.A) at the University of Bologna with a thesis entitled Phenomenology and Marxism in Tran Duc Thao (Supervisor Prof. Manlio Iofrida) and in Philosophy of the Contemporary World (M.A) at the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University with a thesis entitled Criteria of Normativity in the Axel Honneth's Critical Theory (Supervisor Prof. Roberto Mordacci). He is currently attending the Advanced Course in Critical Theory of Society at the Milano-Bicocca University. He is focusing, with the view to a future Ph.D., on the rethinking of the immanent critique specifically in connection with the work transformations.   This recording is taken from the BSP Annual Conference 2020 Online: 'Engaged Phenomenology'. Organised with the University of Exeter and sponsored by Egenis and the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health. BSP2020AC was held online this year due to global concerns about the Coronavirus pandemic. For the conference our speakers recorded videos, our keynotes presented live over Zoom, and we also recorded some interviews online as well. Podcast episodes from BSP2020AC are soundtracks of those videos where we and the presenters feel the audio works as a standalone: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/bsp-annual-conference-2020/   You can check out our forthcoming events here: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/events/   The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP? https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/  

In this episode, we welcome Moses Lee on to talk about the difficulties and tension of Asian-American ministry and churches currently in America and possibly a look into the future for Asian-American churches.

In this episode of the HigherEd Podcast, Kamaar and first-time podcast co-host Nicole Karpel sit down with esteemed guest Danielle Shelton as they navigate the complexities of developing a positive social identity in a learning environment. They discuss how to express high self-esteem without devaluing the dignity, posterity, and pride of others. Danielle also focuses on the importance of being comfortable with the fact that your opinions and lifestyle may differ from the "norm." Check out this week's episode, we think you'll love it!

An interview with Mark G.E. Kelly about his new book For Foucault: Against Normative Political Theory. The Public Sphere is a podcast from Contrivers Review.