The Philosophy Club

"I've encouraged my own kids to follow up on any itch of curiosity." — Debra Oswald

I was trained from childhood to be a stickybeak. My dad’s philosophy was ‘always follow your curious nose’ Debra Oswald’s father taught her to be inquisitive about the world. As an adult she discovered that curiosity can help us endure whatever is happening

I've taken off my Philosophy Club hat and put on my Neighbourhood House one! Fawkner Neighbourhood House (VIC) is calling for volunteers to support school students from migrant and refugee backgrounds at their homework club. Come and work alongside me to give something back to the community and be enriched, in turn, by cross-cultural experiences! Please spread the word — I am really excited about this one and look forward to collaborating with a cool bunch of volunteers! For further details contact [email protected]

Ever wanted to volunteer in your community - now's your chance!
https://buff.ly/NHr6GsJ.

"Generative AI may not be able to reason, but it produces compelling chains of reasoning. I call this “reasoning the noun” as opposed to “reasoning the verb”.... In the past it produced bad reasoning-the-noun, and at present it produces good reasoning-the-noun.

Seeing that, the natural human reaction is to look and try to find the current human endeavors where its chains of reasoning are faulty, and say, aha!, on this beachhead we make our stand.

But what if ... instead of trying to circumscribe uniquely human domains out of a natural defensiveness we start with a simpler question — if ChatGPT can provide good mechanistic reasoning-the-noun ... what does that surplus consume? Not what does that surplus make irrelevant — that’s the wrong end of the stick. What is the surplus, and what does it eat up? ...

What reasoning the noun consumes is reasoning the verb. To evaluate reasoning you need ... to be able to reason ...

It is quite time-consuming to do a Toulmin analysis of a claim. And it’s a tricky business. The core of the method — surfacing unstated assumptions that make the evidence relevant to a claim — is exactly the sort of thing that in the space of a busy day you just aren’t going to find the time to do. ...

It seems to me a much better starting point for thinking about education in the age of AI than gathering up the tasks that AI does not do well, and saying “this is what we’ll teach now, the leftovers of AI.” Because if this guess is right, it’s likely that the stronger AI’s reasoning capabilities in an area, the more in-demand reasoning skill in that area will be."

- Mike Caulfield, A surplus of reasoning-the-noun consumes a scarcity of reasoning-the-verb

Read the full article here:

https://mikecaulfield.substack.com/p/a-surplus-of-reasoning-the-noun-consumes

QUESTIONS AGAINST WAR At Wonder Ponder, the Publisher behind the Visual philosophy for all ages project, we need your help. And it’s a matter of war and peace. We have launched Q...

A beautiful metaphor for scholarly conversation:

"You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before.
"You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer her; another comes to your defense; another supports what you have to say; another disagrees. The discussion, however, is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress.”

– Kenneth Burke

𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗼 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱 '𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆'

'Professor O’Neil believes the critical thinking skills we all need to navigate this new media environment aren’t being taught in schools.

“The education system hasn’t adapted to the attention economy,” he says. “It still teaches people that we need to have deep critical engagement with claims.”

On social media there is a significant chance that what you’re reading is untrue – which means that the time spent engaging with it deeply would be wasted.

At worst, this can lead to conspiratorial thinking, where one looks so deeply that connections will inevitably be found where they don’t really exist.

In search of solutions, Professor O’Neil has been running pilot programs teaching school-aged children to use a method called “lateral reading”.

To avoid wasting your attention on a sea of false claims, lateral reading is about moving on quickly when something doesn’t seem right.

“You don’t go deep, you don’t go vertical, you don’t investigate a claim,” he explains. “You just look away and try to find reliable sources.”

Professor Thomson agrees that new forms of media literacy are “increasingly important in the digital age”.

“Looking beyond a single image and asking yourself critical questions... is vital to being a responsible digital citizen.”'

- From 'How to spot fake and AI images', ABC News

Most Australians struggle to spot what's real and what's fake. Here's some help Every time you pick up your phone, you have to decide what's true and what's fake. And it's getting harder.

𝗢𝘂𝗿 𝗸𝗶𝗱𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗼𝗻 𝗰𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴

"Critical thinking certainly appears to be a skill ‘on the rise’ and central to employment in the new economy. However, despite its importance, we don’t really know what critical thinking is. It is not even clear that critical thinking is principally, and just a 'skill'...

Faculty members often demonstrate ignorance about the intellectual traits – known as 'dispositions' – that are essential to critical thinking. They are also unable to outline the differences between critical thinking and creative thinking, problem-solving or decision-making. This raises doubts about their ability to teach it effectively.

The importance of critical thinking has never been greater, yet our understanding of it has never been so limited. This creates a perfect storm – a situation where the need for critical thinking is rising, but our capacity to foster it is in serious question. It’s a scandalous situation, demanding urgent attention if we are to navigate the complex challenges of the 21st century."

- Martin Davies, University of Melbourne

Our kids are missing out on critical thinking If we are to navigate the complex challenges of the 21st century, our understanding of, and ability to teach critical thinking demands urgent attention explains a University of Melbourne expert