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David Corfield (May 06 2024 at 09:11):I gave a talk on Saturday at a conference -- The Future of the Humanities: Reflective Practices in the Age of AI. Rather ironic to have been asked to speak at the event when my Philosophy department at Kent is to close this summer.
My slides are here. I was speaking about ACT and AI/computer science, and raising questions about philosophical precursors. Take for instance the recent Bonchi et al. article Diagrammatic Algebra of First Order Logic, further uptake of Charles Peirce's existential graphs. Seeing that the original philosophical ideas generally come embedded within a whole system, I was wondering about the profit for the current user of such ideas in delving into their larger context.
David Corfield (Jun 08 2024 at 09:09):I'm taking this theme a little further forward in a final department talk next Tuesday (11 June). You can watch online from 15.30 (UK time, so 14.30 GMT) on Teams (link).
This issue has come even closer to the front of my mind after acting as 'opponent' at @Nathan Haydon 's PhD defence last week, and some conversations I've had with a couple of Symbolica people.
There's a way to glimpse things where ACT allows us to extract something quite coherent from a multitude of philosophical voices.
By the way, Nathan passed!
David Corfield (Aug 14 2024 at 08:16):Springer has just brought out a volume, Rethinking Thomas Kuhn’s Legacy, containing a chapter by me. It's titled Thomas Kuhn, Modern Mathematics and the Dynamics of Reason and probes the question of whether modern mathematics can be said to undergo revolutions, using higher category theory to illustrate. A very late draft is here.
John Baez (Aug 14 2024 at 08:54):Nice! I like this jab:
We would have been better prepared for this eventuality had it been expected of those philosophers tasked with understanding issues arising from mathematics that they attend to currents within active mathematical research...
John Baez (Aug 14 2024 at 09:01):If someone asked me whether modern mathematics can be said to undergo revolutions, I'd ask them about mathematics in general. Has it ever undergone revolutions? I can imagine someone saying "no", though I'd say "yes". If someone says mathematics has undergone revolutions in the past but is not doing so today, I can imagine two reasons:
1) mathematics is so well established that it's impossible to stage a revolution anymore
2) mathematics is sufficiently well established that it's harder, though not impossible to stage a revolution, and we happen to be living in a period between revolutions.
John Baez (Aug 14 2024 at 09:06):Anyway, your paper is a lot more well thought-out than this initial reaction! I just couldn't help it.
David Corfield (Aug 14 2024 at 09:17):John Baez said:
Nice! I like this jab
Seems I can't help myself adding such jabs. I'm not sure I ever got over hearing in one of my first philosophy classes the lecturer replying to a question about category theory that it was far too difficult for us to bother with. And so it has largely continued for over 30 years.
John Baez (Aug 14 2024 at 09:45):Maybe by now you should ask if it's possible for old mathematics to have once had revolutions.
John Baez (Aug 14 2024 at 09:47):Mac Lane, Eilenberg and Grothendieck are all dead; maybe it's safe for philosophers to start paying attention to them.