u/ThePhilosopher1923

Keir Starmer has resigned. The sixth U.K. prime minister to do so in 10 years. A common objection against Starmer was that he lacked vision. He came to power promising change, but in one of his first speeches he told people that "things will get worse before they get better". That "better" was never articulated. Starmer is not an aberration. Across the Western world, politics is becoming a project of managing one crisis after another. When it's more radical — like with Brexit or Trump — it's nostalgic about some lost past, not forward looking. Politicians have stopped thinking about the future.

At the same time, the barons of Silicon Valley do nothing but think about the future. Elon Musk, Peter Tiel, Alex Karp, Mark Andreesen are busy drafting manifestos about the future. And it's not just technological change they envision — it's political. A.I. company CEOs like Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are now literally sitting at the G7 table. With democratic politics having given up on long-term thinking, is Silicon Valley going to decide what our future will look like? How can we create the space to imagine plausible alternatives to AI-driven dystopias? And what will it take for democratically elected politicians to start thinking about the long-term future again?

About the Speaker:

Jonathan White is Professor of Politics and Deputy Head of the European Institute at the London School of Economics, where he researches and teaches on democracy, political thought, and political theory. His latest book is In the Long Run: the Future as a Political Idea (Profile, 2024). His other books include Politics of Last Resort: Governing by Emergency in the European Union (Oxford University Press, 2019), The Meaning of Partisanship (with Lea Ypi, Oxford University Press, 2016) and Political Allegiance after European Integration (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). He was the recipient of the 2017 British Academy Brian Barry Prize for excellence in political science, and has received best-article prizes from the European Journal of International Relations (2023) and Political Studies (2015). He has written for The Guardian, New Statesman and Boston Review, and more recently an article entitled The End of the Future, for Foreign Policy.

The Moderator:

Alexis Papazoglou is Managing Editor of the LSE British Politics and Policy blog. He was previously senior editor for the Institute of Arts and Ideas, and a philosophy lecturer at Cambridge and Royal Holloway. His research interests lie broadly in the post-Kantian tradition, including Hegel, Nietzsche, as well as Husserl and Heidegger. His writing has appeared in The Guardian, The Atlantic, The New Republic, WIRED, The Independent, The Conversation, The New European, as well as Greek publications, including Kathimerini.

https://preview.redd.it/xy4oyj5mmqah1.jpg?width=3946&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2bf184ff8b6b19832bfa82948d46ed861e3f1d61

This is an online conversation and audience Q&A presented by the UK-based journal The Philosopher. The event is free, open to the public, and held on Zoom.

You can register for this Monday 6th July event (11am PT/2pm ET/7pm UK) via The Philosopher here (link).

#Philosophy #PoliticalPhilosophy #SocialPhilosophy #Ethics #Politics #ArtificialIntelligence #Technology #Science

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

About The Philosopher (https://www.thephilosopher1923.org/):

The Philosopher is the longest-running public philosophy journal in the UK (founded in 1923). It is published by the The Philosophical Society of England (http://www.philsoceng.uk/), a registered charity founded ten years earlier than the journal in 1913, and still running regular groups, workshops, and conferences around the UK. As of 2018, The Philosopher is edited by Newcastle-based philosopher Anthony Morgan and is published quarterly, both in print and digitally.

The journal aims to represent contemporary philosophy in all its many and constantly evolving forms, both within academia and beyond. Contributors over the years have ranged from John Dewey and G.K. Chesterton to contemporary thinkers like Christine Korsgaard, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Elizabeth Anderson, Martin Hägglund, Cary Wolfe, Avital Ronell, and Adam Kotsko.

The Philosophies of the South series creates a platform for scholars, thinkers, activists, and practitioners engaging with intellectual traditions and critical frameworks that challenge the dominance of Western philosophical paradigms. Bringing together work inspired by decolonial thought, Indigenous epistemologies, and other critical traditions, the series explores how philosophy can be reimagined through perspectives that emerge from histories of colonialism, resistance, and alternative ways of knowing. Through conversations across disciplines and practices, the series alms to foster intellectual exchange, expand philosophical inquiry, and contribute to ongoing struggles for epistemic justice.

Decolonizing the Self: Learning Land, Unlearning Empire

In this conversation, Leny Mendoza Strobel and S. Lily Mendoza reflect on their respective journeys from decolonial theory into Indigenous studies and practice. Drawing on their shared work with the Center for Babaylan Studies, a movement for decolonization and indigenization among diasporic Filipinx, they explore how reclaiming Indigenous knowledge systems, ancestral wisdom, and embodied practices can transform understandings of self, community, and belonging. The discussion considers how diasporic Filipinx and other communities grapple with histories of colonial dispossession, work toward accountability to the land (and those land’s original peoples) both in the homeland and in the diaspora, re-learn Indigenous ways of knowing, and re-imagine futures grounded in relationality, wholeness, and collective care.

About the Speakers:

Leny Mendoza Strobel is professor emerita in American Multicultural Studies at Sonoma State University and a Founding Elder at the Center for Babaylan Studies. Her work has focused on the process of decolonization and re-indigenization. Most recently, she facilitates a local place-based cohort with the vision of "repair and reparations" with local indigenous communities.

S. Lily Mendoza is a professor of culture and communication at Oakland University and the Executive Director of the Center for Babaylan Studies. She is known for her path breaking work on the politics of indigeneity and critique of the cultural logic of modernity.

https://preview.redd.it/0wejkambxr9h1.jpg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c086a29e2a8216fdcbc122bdb842f76fd3468d47

This is an online conversation and audience Q&A presented by the UK-based journal The Philosopher. The event is free, open to the public, and held on Zoom.

You can register for this Monday 29th June event (11am PT/2pm ET/7pm UK) via The Philosopher here (link).

#Philosophy #CriticalTheory #PoliticalPhilosophy #SocialPhilosophy #Ethics #Politics #Postcolonialism #Epistemology #Indigenous

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

About The Philosopher (https://www.thephilosopher1923.org/):

The Philosopher is the longest-running public philosophy journal in the UK (founded in 1923). It is published by the The Philosophical Society of England (http://www.philsoceng.uk/), a registered charity founded ten years earlier than the journal in 1913, and still running regular groups, workshops, and conferences around the UK. As of 2018, The Philosopher is edited by Newcastle-based philosopher Anthony Morgan and is published quarterly, both in print and digitally.

The journal aims to represent contemporary philosophy in all its many and constantly evolving forms, both within academia and beyond. Contributors over the years have ranged from John Dewey and G.K. Chesterton to contemporary thinkers like Christine Korsgaard, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Elizabeth Anderson, Martin Hägglund, Cary Wolfe, Avital Ronell, and Adam Kotsko.

>Alignment of artificial intelligence (A.I.) encompasses the normative problem of specifying how AI systems should act and the technical problem of ensuring AI systems comply with those specifications. To date, AI alignment has generally overlooked an important source of knowledge and practice for grappling with these problems: law. In this paper, we survey the emerging field of legal alignment that aims to fill this gap and systematize research that studies how legal rules, principles, and methods can be leveraged to address problems of alignment and inform the design of AI systems that operate safely and ethically. Our survey provides a taxonomy of the three core research pathways of legal alignment and explores how each can be operationalized in practice: (1) designing AI systems to comply with the content of legal rules developed through legitimate institutions and processes, (2) adapting methods from legal interpretation to guide how AI systems reason and make decisions, and (3) harnessing legal concepts as a structural blueprint for confronting challenges of reliability, trust, and cooperation in AI systems.

>These research pathways present new conceptual, empirical, and institutional questions, which include examining the specific set of laws that particular AI systems should follow, creating evaluations to assess their legal compliance in real-world settings, and developing governance frameworks to support the implementation of legal alignment in practice. Tackling these questions requires expertise across law, computer science, and other disciplines, offering these communities the opportunity to collaborate in designing AI for the better.

Join Jonathan Zittrain in conversation with Audrey Borowski about his work and book project as well as current challenges in AI from regulation, privacy, to current trends in AI developments. Check out Zittrain's "The Future of the Internet and How to Stop it" and "Legal Alignment for Safe and Ethical AI" and hope to see you on Monday!

About the Speaker:

Jonathan Zittrain is Professor of International Law at Harvard Law School. He is also a Professor of Public Policy, Harvard John F. Kennedy School of Government, a professor of computer science at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, faculty director of the Harvard Law School Library, and co-founder and director of Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. His research interests include the ethics and governance of artificial intelligence; battles for control of digital property; the regulation of cryptography; new privacy frameworks for loyalty to users of online services; the roles of intermediaries within Internet architecture; and the useful and unobtrusive deployment of technology in education.

Zittrain established the Assembly Program, a three-track fellowship program that convenes cohorts of experts, professionals, and students to develop solutions to complex technology policy issues, including those in cybersecurity, AI, and online disinformation. He also championed the development of the Caselaw Access Project, which has expanded free public access to U.S. case law.

The Moderator:

Audrey Borowski is currently a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow and Isaac Newton Trust Fellow at the University of Cambridge working on the philosophy of artificial intelligence. She received her doctorate from the University of Oxford and is a regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement and Aeon. Her first monograph Leibniz in His World: The Making of a Savant has been published by Princeton University Press. Audrey’s current research, and second book project, focuses on the topic of data, algorithmic systems and ideology.

https://preview.redd.it/yxlvgryamb8h1.jpg?width=860&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6c988d9a2200b541c87729b519b47c3c8b61355f

This is an online conversation and audience Q&A presented by the UK-based journal The Philosopher. The event is free, open to the public, and held on Zoom.

You can register for this Monday 22nd June event (11am PT/2pm ET/7pm UK) via The Philosopher here (link).

#Philosophy #CriticalTheory #PoliticalPhilosophy #SocialPhilosophy #Ethics #Technology

About The Philosopher (https://www.thephilosopher1923.org/):

The Philosopher is the longest-running public philosophy journal in the UK (founded in 1923). It is published by the The Philosophical Society of England (http://www.philsoceng.uk/), a registered charity founded ten years earlier than the journal in 1913, and still running regular groups, workshops, and conferences around the UK. As of 2018, The Philosopher is edited by Newcastle-based philosopher Anthony Morgan and is published quarterly, both in print and digitally.

The journal aims to represent contemporary philosophy in all its many and constantly evolving forms, both within academia and beyond. Contributors over the years have ranged from John Dewey and G.K. Chesterton to contemporary thinkers like Christine Korsgaard, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Elizabeth Anderson, Martin Hägglund, Cary Wolfe, Avital Ronell, and Adam Kotsko.

Hegel turned the world onto its head and Marx turned it back on its feet, and now finance is turning the world on its head again. In the early 19th century, Hegel proposed that human history was shaped by consciousness, by human spirit, by the head. Marx argued, in turn, that history was actually determined by practical social conditions, by the way people make their means of living, standing on their feet. It was capitalism that made it seem like heads — owners of industry and leaders of states and their apologists, intellectuals — made history happen, and not workers. The feet were the source of power while the heads claimed all the power for themselves.

It is harder to believe this is true now. Industry does not matter much to finance, and labor even less. Finance packages up the productive economy to resell it according to its own rules. A few prescient people have been studying the way the new rules ruin living conditions, pervert political possibilities, and increasingly dominate the global order. Yet, there is still no field dedicated to theorizing the ill effects of the newly upside-down world. We need, in short, a critical theory of finance.

About the Speakers:

Melinda Cooper is Professor of Sociology at the Australian National University. Her research focuses on the interaction between neoliberal and new conservative philosophies of power. She is the author of three monographs — Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance (Princeton University Press, 2024), Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism (Zone Books, 2017) and Life as Surplus: Biotechnology and Capitalism in the Neoliberal Era (University of Washington Press 2008).

Stefan Eich is Professor of Government at Georgetown University. His research is in political theory and the history of political thought, in particular the political theory of money and financial capitalism. He is the author of The Currency of Politics: The Political Theory of Money from Aristotle to Keynes (Princeton University Press, 2022), which was awarded the 2024 David and Elaine Spitz Prize as well as the 2023 APSA Foundations of Political Theory Best First Book Prize.

Radhika Desai is a political economist and scientist. She is Professor at the Department of Political Studies, and Director of the Geopolitical Economy Research Group at the University of Manitoba. She proposed geopolitical economy as a Marxist analysis of the international relations of the capitalist world that is historical, integrates the ‘political’ and the ‘economic’, class and nation, in a single framework that is capable of anticipating and explaining the rise of the multipolar world.

The Moderator:

Paul North is Professor of German and Philosophy at Yale University. He writes and teaches on literature and other media, continental philosophy, literary and critical theory. He is editor (along with Paul Reitter) of a new translation of Marx’s Capital.

https://preview.redd.it/bc455mk5aq6h1.jpg?width=1600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a22efe25e24db708096804846eb2e11db0378de6

This is an online conversation and audience Q&A presented by the UK-based journal The Philosopher. The event is free, open to the public, and held on Zoom.

You can register for this Monday 15th June event (7am PT/10am ET/3pm UK) via The Philosopher here (link).

#Philosophy #CriticalTheory #PoliticalPhilosophy #SocialPhilosophy #Ethics #Politics #Economics #Finance #Investing #Capital

About The Philosopher (https://www.thephilosopher1923.org/):

The Philosopher is the longest-running public philosophy journal in the UK (founded in 1923). It is published by the The Philosophical Society of England (http://www.philsoceng.uk/), a registered charity founded ten years earlier than the journal in 1913, and still running regular groups, workshops, and conferences around the UK. As of 2018, The Philosopher is edited by Newcastle-based philosopher Anthony Morgan and is published quarterly, both in print and digitally.

The journal aims to represent contemporary philosophy in all its many and constantly evolving forms, both within academia and beyond. Contributors over the years have ranged from John Dewey and G.K. Chesterton to contemporary thinkers like Christine Korsgaard, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Elizabeth Anderson, Martin Hägglund, Cary Wolfe, Avital Ronell, and Adam Kotsko.

The Philosophies of the South series creates a platform for scholars, thinkers, activists, and practitioners engaging with intellectual traditions and critical frameworks that challenge the dominance of Western philosophical paradigms. Bringing together work inspired by decolonial thought, Indigenous epistemologies, and other critical traditions, the series explores how philosophy can be reimagined through perspectives that emerge from histories of colonialism, resistance, and alternative ways of knowing. Through conversations across disciplines and practices, the series alms to foster intellectual exchange, expand philosophical inquiry, and contribute to ongoing struggles for epistemic justice.

On Indigenous Inhumanities:

Indigenous philosophies guide how we live, act, and relate. Mark Minch-de Leon and Krushil Watene discuss Māori and Indigenous traditions of knowledge, ethics, and relationality that confront colonial frameworks. They explore how these practices shape community, resist injustice, and offer pathways for decolonial futures.

About the Speaker:

Mark Minch-de Leon is Professor of Indigenous Studies at the University of California, Riverside and the director of the California Center for Native Nations (CCNN). He works at the intersections of Indigenous Studies, Rhetorical Theory, and Narrative and Visual Studies. His forthcoming book looks at the anticolonial, nonvitalist dimensions of California Indian intellectual and cultural resurgence. Indigenous Inhumanities: California Indian Studies After the Apocalypse is grounded in the ongoing proliferation of cultural and intellectual production by California Indian communities in the aftermath of what many refer to as the end of the world and others, genocide. Caught in the dilemma of creating a future with the remnants of a catastrophic past, California Indians engage inventive reorientations that shift the meanings and values of survival, culture, knowledge, vitality, and what it means to be human. The book will be published by University of Minnesota Press as part of the Indigenous Americas series.

The Moderator:

Krushil Watene is Professor of Philosophy at the Massey University in Auckland, New Zealand. Her research addresses fundamental questions in ethics, politics, and Indigenous philosophy. In particular, it engages at the intersections of diverse philosophical traditions, pursues collaborative trans-disciplinarity, and recognizes the critical role of local communities for global change. Her primary areas of expertise include theories of well-being, development, justice, intergenerational justice, and Indigenous philosophy. She is a member of the UNDP Human Development Report Advisory Board, a member of the International Science Council Committee for Freedom and Responsibility in Science, and a member of the transformation pathways workstream of the Earth Commission.

https://preview.redd.it/itehjky6255h1.jpg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=60bf8edbc1d466edbb12f5cb2f2864f9f58cb625

This is an online conversation and audience Q&A presented by the UK-based journal The Philosopher. The event is free, open to the public, and held on Zoom.

You can register for this Monday 8th June event (11am PT/2pm ET/7pm UK) via The Philosopher here (link).

#Philosophy #CriticalTheory #PoliticalPhilosophy #SocialPhilosophy #Ethics #Politics #Postcolonialism #Epistemology #Indigenous

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

About The Philosopher (https://www.thephilosopher1923.org/):

The Philosopher is the longest-running public philosophy journal in the UK (founded in 1923). It is published by the The Philosophical Society of England (http://www.philsoceng.uk/), a registered charity founded ten years earlier than the journal in 1913, and still running regular groups, workshops, and conferences around the UK. As of 2018, The Philosopher is edited by Newcastle-based philosopher Anthony Morgan and is published quarterly, both in print and digitally.

The journal aims to represent contemporary philosophy in all its many and constantly evolving forms, both within academia and beyond. Contributors over the years have ranged from John Dewey and G.K. Chesterton to contemporary thinkers like Christine Korsgaard, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Elizabeth Anderson, Martin Hägglund, Cary Wolfe, Avital Ronell, and Adam Kotsko.

If you are about to give a commencement speech at a university this summer, don’t mention A.I. Or at least don’t say nice things about it, or that it’s going to change the world whether people like it or not, or that it’s the next industrial revolution. If you do, graduating students — who are notoriously heavy A.I. users — will boo you. Who can blame them? LLMs have turned expensive university education into a charade and students are graduating into a less-than-ideal job market. And it’s not just students who aren’t so hot on the future our AI overlords are predicting.

So how can people resist the onslaught of AI, and the narratives of inevitability that are being pushed by Silicon Valley’s AI leaders? Obama’s famous quip “don’t boo, vote!” comes to mind. Indeed, influential AI researcher and author Garry Markus has predicted that anti-AI sentiment will be a major driving force of the 2028 US Presidential election. But so far, most political parties seem to have drunk the Kool-Aid of inevitable technological progress, it might be too late by the time they catch on to how voters think. Is there anything ordinary citizens can do in the meantime? Are narratives of AI inevitability thinly disguised self-fulfilling and self-serving prophecies? And is there a way of reimagining what AI can mean for us all?

About the Speaker:

Ismael Kheroubi Garcia has been working in the AI ethics space since 2020, when he worked on establishing the Alan Turing Institute’s research ethics committee. Since 2022, Ismael has been offering AI ethics and research governance consulting at Kairoi, helping organisations identify crucial tech decisions, anticipate their consequences and implement safeguards to guide decision-making processes. Since 2023, Ismael also leads the Fellow-led AI Interest Group at the RSA (Royal Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce). He is also an associate director of We and AI, a diverse community of volunteers working at the intersection of social justice and AI. He is the co-author of “Resisting, Refusing, Reclaiming, Reimagining: Charting Challenges to Narratives of AI Inevitability”.

The Moderator:

Alexis Papazoglou is Managing Editor of the LSE British Politics and Policy blog. He was previously senior editor for the Institute of Arts and Ideas, and a philosophy lecturer at Cambridge and Royal Holloway. His research interests lie broadly in the post-Kantian tradition, including Hegel, Nietzsche, as well as Husserl and Heidegger. His writing has appeared in The Guardian, The Atlantic, The New Republic, WIRED, The Independent, The Conversation, The New European, as well as Greek publications, including Kathimerini.

https://preview.redd.it/vbgjdl9id54h1.jpg?width=700&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ac891470ad5e9ea5eef5e798bb8a6063f6fae516

This is an online conversation and audience Q&A presented by the UK-based journal The Philosopher. The event is free, open to the public, and held on Zoom.

You can register for this Monday 1st June event (11am PT/2pm ET/7pm UK) via The Philosopher here (link).

#PoliticalPhilosophy #AI #Philosophy #Technology #SocialPhilosophy #Ethics #Politics #CriticalTheory

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

About The Philosopher (https://www.thephilosopher1923.org/):

The Philosopher is the longest-running public philosophy journal in the UK (founded in 1923). It is published by the The Philosophical Society of England (http://www.philsoceng.uk/), a registered charity founded ten years earlier than the journal in 1913, and still running regular groups, workshops, and conferences around the UK. As of 2018, The Philosopher is edited by Newcastle-based philosopher Anthony Morgan and is published quarterly, both in print and digitally.

The journal aims to represent contemporary philosophy in all its many and constantly evolving forms, both within academia and beyond. Contributors over the years have ranged from John Dewey and G.K. Chesterton to contemporary thinkers like Christine Korsgaard, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Elizabeth Anderson, Martin Hägglund, Cary Wolfe, Avital Ronell, and Adam Kotsko.

The Philosophies of the South series creates a platform for scholars, thinkers, activists, and practitioners engaging with intellectual traditions and critical frameworks that challenge the dominance of Western philosophical paradigms. Bringing together work inspired by decolonial thought, Indigenous epistemologies, and other critical traditions, the series explores how philosophy can be reimagined through perspectives that emerge from histories of colonialism, resistance, and alternative ways of knowing. Through conversations across disciplines and practices, the series alms to foster intellectual exchange, expand philosophical inquiry, and contribute to ongoing struggles for epistemic justice.

(De)Bordering the Human:

Borders are often framed as neutral tools for organising political life. Yet modern border regimes are deeply entangled with the histories of empire, colonial expansion, and racial hierarchy that shaped the modern world. In this online conversation, Nandita Sharma and rémy-paulin twahirwa examine how borders regulate movement, produce categories of belonging and exclusion, and define the boundaries of the human. They bring together critiques of nationalism, migration governance, and coloniality to reflect on how struggles over mobility continue to reshape our political and philosophical understandings of the world and what a borderless human might look like.

About the Speaker:

Nandita Sharma is Professor in the Sociology Department at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa and an activist-scholar. Her research addresses human migration, migrant labor, nation-state power, ideologies of racism, sexism, and nationalism, processes of identification and self-understanding, and social movements for justice. She is the author of Home Economics: Nationalism and the Making of ‘Migrant Workers’ in Canada (University of Toronto Press, 2006) and Home Rule: National Sovereignty and the Separation of Natives and Migrants (Duke University Press, 2020).

The Moderator:

Rémy-Paulin Twahirwa is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Aston University (ESRC-funded project: Peripheralisation of Asylum Accommodation), community organiser and writer based in London, specialising in immigration detention, borders, and the racialised governance of mobility. Their research examines confinement, legal personhood, and the expansion of the carceral state, with particular attention to the afterlives of empire and coloniality in contemporary border regimes. They are currently completing their first manuscript, On Ghostly Lives and serve as Managing Editor of The Philosopher.

https://preview.redd.it/9zamh0sttv2h1.jpg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0859d7aef241ffb8fb9bf202195b18cff8471027

This is an online conversation and audience Q&A presented by the UK-based journal The Philosopher. The event is free, open to the public, and held on Zoom.

You can register for this Monday 25th May event (11am PT/2pm ET/7pm UK) via The Philosopher here (link).

#Philosophy #CriticalTheory #PoliticalPhilosophy #SocialPhilosophy #Ethics #Politics #Postcolonialism #Epistemology

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

About The Philosopher (https://www.thephilosopher1923.org/):

The Philosopher is the longest-running public philosophy journal in the UK (founded in 1923). It is published by the The Philosophical Society of England (http://www.philsoceng.uk/), a registered charity founded ten years earlier than the journal in 1913, and still running regular groups, workshops, and conferences around the UK. As of 2018, The Philosopher is edited by Newcastle-based philosopher Anthony Morgan and is published quarterly, both in print and digitally.

The journal aims to represent contemporary philosophy in all its many and constantly evolving forms, both within academia and beyond. Contributors over the years have ranged from John Dewey and G.K. Chesterton to contemporary thinkers like Christine Korsgaard, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Elizabeth Anderson, Martin Hägglund, Cary Wolfe, Avital Ronell, and Adam Kotsko.

Few thinkers have been as influential upon current discussions and theoretical practices in the age of media archaeology, philosophy of technology, and digital humanities as the French thinker Gilbert Simondon. Simondon's prolific intellectual curiosity led his philosophical and scientific reflections to traverse a variety of areas of research, including philosophy, psychology, the beginnings of cybernetics, and the foundations of religion. For Simondon, the human/machine distinction is perhaps not a simple dichotomy. There is much we can learn from our technical objects, and while it has been said that humans have an alienating rapport with technical objects, Simondon takes up the task of a true thinker who sees the potential for humanity to uncover life-affirming modes of technical objects whereby we can discover potentiality for novel, healthful, and dis-alienating rapports with them. For Simondon, by way of studying its genesis, one must grant to the technical object the same ontological status as that of the aesthetic object or even a living being. His work thus opens up exciting new entry points into studying the human's rapport with its continually changing technical reality.

Join us for an online discussion of the work of Gilbert Simondon (1924–1989), with two leading experts on his thought. Simondon asked how things — whether crystals, living organisms, or human beings — come to be the distinct individuals they are. His answer, which he called individuation, saw identity not as something fixed, but as an ongoing process of becoming. He applied the same thinking to technology, arguing that machines and technical objects are not mere tools but have their own evolving reality that deserves to be taken seriously. Simondon has been an important influence on thinkers including Gilles Deleuze, Bernard Stiegler, and Bruno Latour. Come and find out why his ideas feel so vital today — no prior knowledge required.

About the Speakers:

— Cécile Malaspina is currently faculty with The School of Materialist Research. Previously, she served as the directrice de programme at the Collège International de Philosophie, Paris. She is responsible for the Art and Curatorial Practice program at the New Centre for Research and Practice, and a Research Fellow at King’s College, London. Before turning to philosophy she trained as an artist, art historian (Goldsmiths) and curator (RCA). She is the author of An Epistemology of Noise (Bloomsbury, 2018) and the principal translator of Gilbert Simondon’s On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects. Her most recent publication is the edited volume From the Mental State of Noise to the New Frontiers of Techno-Human Cognition: Creative Disruptions Across AI, Gaming, Modelling, French Theory, and Politics (Routledge, 2026), based on her Aesthetics of Noise Seminar at King’s College London, where she was Visiting Research fellow until 2025.

— Ashley Woodward is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Dundee. He is co-Chair of the Society for European Philosophy, an executive member of the Friedrich Nietzsche Society, and an editor of Parrhesia: A Journal of Critical Philosophy. He co-edited the first volume on Simondon in English, Gilbert Simondon: Being and Technology (EUP, 2013), and contributed to The Idea and Practice of Philosophy in Gilbert Simondon (Schwabe Verlag, 2024). He has produced three books addressing underappreciated aspects of Jean-François Lyotard’s work and addressing its contemporary relevance: Lyotard and the Inhuman Condition, Acinemas: Lyotard’s Philosophy of Film, and Lyotard’s Philosophy of Art. He has also taught in a number of creative arts programs, including the School of Creative Arts, the Centre for Ideas at the Victorian College of the Arts, and the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music at the University of Melbourne.

https://preview.redd.it/5coraehqm81h1.jpg?width=359&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8309a30a8c38de1397052a1d36ea4524e82459d2

This is an online conversation and audience Q&A presented by the UK-based journal The Philosopher. The event is free, open to the public, and held on Zoom.

You can register for this Monday 18th May event (11am PT/2pm ET/7pm UK) via The Philosopher here (link).

#PoliticalPhilosophy #AI #Philosophy #Technology #SocialPhilosophy #Ethics #Politics #CriticalTheory

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

About The Philosopher (https://www.thephilosopher1923.org/):

The Philosopher is the longest-running public philosophy journal in the UK (founded in 1923). It is published by the The Philosophical Society of England (http://www.philsoceng.uk/), a registered charity founded ten years earlier than the journal in 1913, and still running regular groups, workshops, and conferences around the UK. As of 2018, The Philosopher is edited by Newcastle-based philosopher Anthony Morgan and is published quarterly, both in print and digitally.

The journal aims to represent contemporary philosophy in all its many and constantly evolving forms, both within academia and beyond. Contributors over the years have ranged from John Dewey and G.K. Chesterton to contemporary thinkers like Christine Korsgaard, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Elizabeth Anderson, Martin Hägglund, Cary Wolfe, Avital Ronell, and Adam Kotsko.

Last month, the powerful tech company Palantir published what was widely described as its manifesto. According to the company’s post on X it was meant as a brief version of the book The Technological Republic, co-authored by Alex Karp, co-founder and CEO of Palantir and Nicholas W. Zamiska, head of corporate affairs and legal counsel at Palantir. The manifesto claims among other things that AI will replace nuclear weapons as the new deterrent, calls for the return of a universal national service and argues that Silicon Valley has a moral obligation to participate in the defence of the United States.

The bullet points of the manifesto don’t seem on the surface to be advancing a coherent philosophy, having been described as “the ramblings of a supervillain” by a British MP. But Alex Karp has an usual background for a tech CEO, having completed a PhD in philosophy in 2002 at the J.W. Goether University in Frankfurt Germany, with a thesis entitled Aggression in the Life-World.

So, does Karp’s training in the philosophy of the Frankfurt School find expression in Palantir’s manifesto? Is this a version of technofascism? And what can we do when powerful tech companies start thinking they have deep insights into geopolitics, public policy and the state of “Western civilization”?

About the Speakers:

• Moira Weigel is Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard University and Faculty Associate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. Her research focuses on history, theory, and social life of media and communication technologies, from the early nineteenth century to the present. More recently, she has focused on data-driven technologies, particularly social media and marketplace platforms, as well as on new developments in artificial intelligence and machine translation. Her book Voices from the Valley: Tech Workers Talk About What They Do and How They Do It (2020) consists of a series of long-form anonymous interviews with workers at every level of the Bay Area tech industry, from startup founders to cafeteria workers and in-house massage therapists to Google engineers. It received positive reviews from The New York Times, Wired, The Nation, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among other outlets, and was named one of Wired‘s “8 Best Books About Artificial Intelligence to Read Now.”

• Anthony Burton is a postdoctoral researcher in the Media Studies department at the University of Amsterdam. He works on the relationship between social theory, intelligence, desire, and mimesis in contemporary late fascist politics. He is co-author of Algorithmic Authenticity, which brings together different disciplinary understandings of “authenticity” in order to find alternative ways to approach mis- and disinformation that go beyond contemporary fact-checking and its search for the “authentic” truth. Patterned under the algorithmic flows of digital capitalism, authenticity itself is subject to variation, iteration, and outside influence. Linking cross-disciplinary research on the history and practices of algorithmic authenticity points to new research questions to understand the impact of algorithmic authenticity on social life and its role in contemporary information disorder.

The Moderator:

Alexis Papazoglou is Managing Editor of the LSE British Politics and Policy blog. He was previously senior editor for the Institute of Arts and Ideas, and a philosophy lecturer at Cambridge and Royal Holloway. His research interests lie broadly in the post-Kantian tradition, including Hegel, Nietzsche, as well as Husserl and Heidegger. His writing has appeared in The Guardian, The Atlantic, The New Republic, WIRED, The Independent, The Conversation, The New European, as well as Greek publications, including Kathimerini.

https://preview.redd.it/lrg491j3190h1.jpg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6480f63c09491688f92d9f3ddb3d697625a66144

This is an online conversation and audience Q&A presented by the UK-based journal The Philosopher. The event is free, open to the public, and held on Zoom.

You can register for this Tuesday 12th May event (11am PT/2pm ET/7pm UK) via The Philosopher here (link).

#PoliticalPhilosophy #AI #Philosophy #Technology #SocialPhilosophy #Ethics #Politics #CriticalTheory

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

About The Philosopher (https://www.thephilosopher1923.org/):

The Philosopher is the longest-running public philosophy journal in the UK (founded in 1923). It is published by the The Philosophical Society of England (http://www.philsoceng.uk/), a registered charity founded ten years earlier than the journal in 1913, and still running regular groups, workshops, and conferences around the UK. As of 2018, The Philosopher is edited by Newcastle-based philosopher Anthony Morgan and is published quarterly, both in print and digitally.

The journal aims to represent contemporary philosophy in all its many and constantly evolving forms, both within academia and beyond. Contributors over the years have ranged from John Dewey and G.K. Chesterton to contemporary thinkers like Christine Korsgaard, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Elizabeth Anderson, Martin Hägglund, Cary Wolfe, Avital Ronell, and Adam Kotsko.

The Philosophies of the South series creates a platform for scholars, thinkers, activists, and practitioners engaging with intellectual traditions and critical frameworks that challenge the dominance of Western philosophical paradigms. Bringing together work inspired by decolonial thought, Indigenous epistemologies, and other critical traditions, the series explores how philosophy can be reimagined through perspectives that emerge from histories of colonialism, resistance, and alternative ways of knowing. Through conversations across disciplines and practices, the series alms to foster intellectual exchange, expand philosophical inquiry, and contribute to ongoing struggles for epistemic justice.

Decolonizing Knowledge:

What does it mean to decolonise knowledge today? In this conversation, Radha D’Souza and Rinaldo Walcott reflect on the intellectual and political stakes of challenging dominant forms of knowledge produced through colonial and imperial histories. Drawing on anti-colonial thought, Black studies, and critical legal scholarship, they explore how knowledge emerges from struggles for freedom and how these traditions continue to shape debates about justice, power, and liberation today.

About the Speaker:

Radha D’Souza is Professor of Law, Development and Conflict Studies at the University of Westminster. She is a lawyer, social justice activist, writer and commentator. Her inter and transdisciplinary research straddles Legal Studies, Development Studies, History, Comparative Philosophy, Resource Conflicts and Geography, from Third World perspectives. She practiced law in the High Court of Mumbai in the areas of labour rights, constitutional and administrative law, public interest litigation and human rights. Together with Dutch artist Jonas Staal, she is co-founder of the art project Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes. She is the author of Decolonizing Knowledge: Looking Back, Moving Forward (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2025).

The Moderator:

Rinaldo Walcott is Professor and Chair of Africana and American Studies at the University at Buffalo. His research is in the area of Black Diaspora Cultural Studies, gender and sexuality with interests in nations, nationalisms, multiculturalism, policy and education broadly defined. As an interdisciplinary Black Studies scholar, Walcott has published in a wide range of venues on everything from literature to film, to theatre to music to policy. His articles have appeared in scholarly journals and books, as well as popular venues like newspapers and magazines and media online sources. He often comments on black cultural life for radio and TV.

https://preview.redd.it/cs9m35dsz80h1.jpg?width=2500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b405be23fdf13773dcde624c3fb4a8f96355bdca

This is an online conversation and audience Q&A presented by the UK-based journal The Philosopher. The event is free, open to the public, and held on Zoom.

You can register for this Monday 11th May event (11am PT/2pm ET/7pm UK) via The Philosopher here (link).

#Philosophy #Epistemology #PoliticalPhilosophy #SocialPhilosophy #Ethics #Politics #CriticalTheory

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

About The Philosopher (https://www.thephilosopher1923.org/):

The Philosopher is the longest-running public philosophy journal in the UK (founded in 1923). It is published by the The Philosophical Society of England (http://www.philsoceng.uk/), a registered charity founded ten years earlier than the journal in 1913, and still running regular groups, workshops, and conferences around the UK. As of 2018, The Philosopher is edited by Newcastle-based philosopher Anthony Morgan and is published quarterly, both in print and digitally.

The journal aims to represent contemporary philosophy in all its many and constantly evolving forms, both within academia and beyond. Contributors over the years have ranged from John Dewey and G.K. Chesterton to contemporary thinkers like Christine Korsgaard, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Elizabeth Anderson, Martin Hägglund, Cary Wolfe, Avital Ronell, and Adam Kotsko.

An expansive vision for data equality that goes beyond algorithmic fairness.

When we gave algorithms power over our world, we hoped that the apparent neutrality of machine thinking would create a more egalitarian age. Yet we are more divided than ever, staring down threats to democracy itself. In Data Equals, Colin Koopman argues that data technologies fail us so often because we built them around a deficient notion of equality.

It is not enough that algorithms engage everyone’s data with the same measuring stick. The data themselves are all too often structured in ways that obscure and exacerbate stratifying distinctions. Koopman contends that we must also work to ensure that those people subject to computational assessment enter data systems on equal terms. Part philosophical argument, part practical guide (replete with case studies from education technology), Data Equals offers novel methods for realizing democratic equality in a digital age.

About the Speaker:

Colin Koopman is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oregon. His research, writing, and teaching focuses on political theory and ethics, particularly the politics and ethics of technology. His current research is concerned with the politics of information, that is, with questions about data and democracy. He explores these fields in terms of both century-old paper database technologies and contemporary techno-trends like artificial intelligence. Methodologically, Koopman's research mobilizes analytics and concepts from the philosophical traditions of genealogy and pragmatism to engage current issues of politics, ethics, and culture. His work also engages research in other disciplinary contexts by media scholars, historians, anthropologists, political scientists, legal theorists, and information scientists. His latest book, Data Equals: Democratic Equality and Technological Hierarchy was published in September 2025 by the University of Chicago Press.

The Moderator:

Isabelle Laurenzi holds a Ph.D. in political theory from Yale University. Her dissertation draws on theories of political consciousness and action, as well as feminist critiques of domination and power. She is currently writing a book about politics, intimacy, and the ordinary ways people seek change in their lives.

https://preview.redd.it/ijaj7kzo2axg1.jpg?width=860&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=160633596c5b33c09cb6d9fe5321a205e5aa50a4

This is an online conversation and audience Q&A presented by the UK-based journal The Philosopher. The event is free, open to the public, and held on Zoom.

You can register for this Monday 27th April event (11am PT/2pm ET/7pm UK) via The Philosopher here (link).

#PoliticalPhilosophy #AI #Philosophy #Technology #SocialPhilosophy #Ethics #Politics #CriticalTheory

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

About The Philosopher (https://www.thephilosopher1923.org/):

The Philosopher is the longest-running public philosophy journal in the UK (founded in 1923). It is published by the The Philosophical Society of England (http://www.philsoceng.uk/), a registered charity founded ten years earlier than the journal in 1913, and still running regular groups, workshops, and conferences around the UK. As of 2018, The Philosopher is edited by Newcastle-based philosopher Anthony Morgan and is published quarterly, both in print and digitally.

The journal aims to represent contemporary philosophy in all its many and constantly evolving forms, both within academia and beyond. Contributors over the years have ranged from John Dewey and G.K. Chesterton to contemporary thinkers like Christine Korsgaard, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Elizabeth Anderson, Martin Hägglund, Cary Wolfe, Avital Ronell, and Adam Kotsko.

Is artificial intelligence going to take over the world? Have big tech scientists created an artificial lifeform that can think on its own? Is it going to put authors, artists, and others out of business? Are we about to enter an age where computers are better than humans at everything?

The answer to these questions, linguist Emily M. Bender and sociologist Alex Hanna make clear, is “no,” “they wish,” “LOL,” and “definitely not.” This kind of thinking is a symptom of a phenomenon known as “AI hype.” Hype looks and smells fishy: It twists words and helps the rich get richer by justifying data theft, motivating surveillance capitalism, and devaluing human creativity in order to replace meaningful work with jobs that treat people like machines. In The AI Con, Bender and Hanna offer a sharp, witty, and wide-ranging take-down of AI hype across its many forms.

Bender and Hanna show you how to spot AI hype, how to deconstruct it, and how to expose the power grabs it aims to hide. Armed with these tools, you will be prepared to push back against AI hype at work, as a consumer in the marketplace, as a skeptical newsreader, and as a citizen holding policymakers to account. Together, Bender and Hanna expose AI hype for what it is: a mask for Big Tech’s drive for profit, with little concern for who it affects.

About the Speakers:

Emily Bender is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Washington. Her research interests encompass multilingual grammar engineering, computation in linguistics, societal impact of language technology and sociolinguistic variation.

Alex Hanna is a sociologist and Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR). Her work examines how new computational technologies, such as A.I. and machine learning, exacerbate racial, gender, and class inequality through their data practices and effects on labor.

The Moderator:

Audrey Borowski is currently a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow and Isaac Newton Trust Fellow at the University of Cambridge working on the philosophy of artificial intelligence. She received her doctorate from the University of Oxford and is a regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement and Aeon. Her first monograph Leibniz in His World: The Making of a Savant has been published by Princeton University Press. Audrey’s current research, and second book project, focuses on the topic of data, algorithmic systems and ideology.

https://preview.redd.it/3rzhyiqmksvg1.jpg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=412715bf60c39619a8fbf66b99ce23a9e6d996de

This is an online conversation and audience Q&A presented by the UK-based journal The Philosopher. The event is free, open to the public, and held on Zoom.

You can register for this Monday 20th April event (11am PT/2pm ET/7pm UK) via The Philosopher here (link).

#PoliticalPhilosophy #AI #Philosophy #Technology #SocialPhilosophy #Ethics #Politics #CriticalTheory

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

About The Philosopher (https://www.thephilosopher1923.org/):

The Philosopher is the longest-running public philosophy journal in the UK (founded in 1923). It is published by the The Philosophical Society of England (http://www.philsoceng.uk/), a registered charity founded ten years earlier than the journal in 1913, and still running regular groups, workshops, and conferences around the UK. As of 2018, The Philosopher is edited by Newcastle-based philosopher Anthony Morgan and is published quarterly, both in print and digitally.

The journal aims to represent contemporary philosophy in all its many and constantly evolving forms, both within academia and beyond. Contributors over the years have ranged from John Dewey and G.K. Chesterton to contemporary thinkers like Christine Korsgaard, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Elizabeth Anderson, Martin Hägglund, Cary Wolfe, Avital Ronell, and Adam Kotsko.