Jack Carson Compares Jewish and Cherokee Ethics

 

Photo: Aimee Yu

Jack Carson, an MIT second-year undergraduate and EECS major, is the recent winner of the Elie Wiesel Ethics Essay Contest. His entry, “We Know Only Men: Reading Emmanuel Levinas On The Rez,” compares Jewish and Cherokee ethical thought. 

The essay links Carson’s hometown in Adair County, Oklahoma, to the village of Le Chambon sur Lignon, France. Both were places where the people went to extremes to help the "other". Carson attempts to answer the question: “What is to be done after catastrophe?” 

Carson explains in this interview that he wanted to explore how a culture that has been completely displaced can be preserved. Read the full interview here: Q&A: On the ethics of catastrophe | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Carson believes that the fast pace of technology highlights the importance of philosophy, literature, history, and the liberal arts. He plans to have a career at the intersection of machine learning, chemistry and biology. 

He said, "When I was younger, I just happened across a discussion of CP Snow’s famous essay on the “Two Cultures.” In it, he talks about his scientist friends who had never read Shakespeare, and his literary friends who couldn’t explain thermodynamics. In a modest way, I’ve always thought that I’d like my education to be one that allowed me to participate in the two cultures. The essay on Levinas is my attempt to pursue this type of education."

Perhaps he will wander down the path of cultural anthropology. Were he to do so, the discipline would be the better for it.

Questions about Sexual Harassment at Oxford

 

Copyright © University of Oxford Images / John Cairns Photography

John Tasioulas resigned from his position as director of the University of Oxford’s Institute for Ethics in AI in September 2025. Five months earlier, the university had begun an investigation into allegations of harassment against him.

Those details are revealed in an investigative article at Bloomberg by Katherine Griffiths about how “Oxford University has failed women over harassment concerns”:

Multiple men have remained in senior roles at Oxford for months or years after allegations of sexual misconduct emerged against them, Bloomberg found in a nine-month investigation based on interviews with almost 50 people as well as documents and other records.

The Bloomberg article does not state what the specific allegations against Tasioulas are, nor does it share the findings of the university’s internal investigation of those allegations.

Read more here:  Sexual Harassment Investigations at Oxford - Daily Nous

Nietzsche's The Genealogy of Morals

 

Friedrich Nietzsche's The Genealogy of Morals is one of the Project Gutenberg ebooks that is available to read online.

Excerpt from Part 9:

"But why do you talk of nobler ideals? Let us submit to the facts; that the people have triumphed—or the slaves, or the populace, or the herd, or whatever name you care to give them—if this has happened through the Jews, so be it! In that case no nation ever had a greater mission in the world's history. The 'masters' have been done away with; the morality of the vulgar man has triumphed. This triumph may also be called a blood-poisoning (it has mutually fused the races)—I do not dispute it; but there is no doubt but that this intoxication has succeeded. The 'redemption' of the human race (that is, from the masters) is progressing swimmingly; everything is obviously becoming Judaised, or Christianised, or vulgarised (what is there in the words?). It seems impossible to stop the course of this poisoning through the whole body politic of mankind—but its tempo and pace may from the present time be slower, more delicate, quieter, more discreet—there is time enough."

Heady stuff, if not necessarily true or evident.

Lloyd Gerson on Plato's Moral Realism

 

Dr. Lloyd Gerson is a Canadian. He teaches at the University of Toronto. In this YouTube video he defends Plato's moral realism and ground of truth against revisionist readings of Plato.

Gerson speaks about his book Plato's Moral Realism in which he argues that Plato's ethical philosophy is inseparable from his systematic metaphysics.

Plato's moral realism rests on the Idea of the Good, the unhypothetical first principle of all. It is this, as Plato says, that makes just things useful and beneficial. That Plato makes the first principle of all the Idea of the Good sets his approach apart from that of virtually every other philosopher. This fact has been occluded by later Christian Platonists who tried to identify the Good with the God of scripture. But for Plato, theology, though important, is subordinate to metaphysics. For this reason, ethics is independent of theology and attached to metaphysics. 

This book challenges contemporary accounts of Plato's ethics that start with the so-called Socratic paradoxes and attempt to construct a psychology of action or moral psychology that makes these paradoxes defensible. Rather, Lloyd Gerson argues that Plato at least never thought that moral realism was defensible outside of a metaphysical framework.


Related reading: Dr. Gerson's lecture on Platonism vs Naturalism; Philosophers' Corner: Thumbnail Sketch of Phillipa Foot; Moral realism - Wikipedia

Aldarir Sentenced for Multiple Counts of Smuggling

 

Ancient Egyptian artifact stolen and sold by Eldarir in 2019.

BROOKLYN, NY: A federal judge sentenced Egyptian doctor Ashraf Omar Eldarir to six months in prison for smuggling nearly 600 Egyptian antiquities through JFK. He used fake provenance to funnel gold funerary amulets, wooden tomb models, an ancient Egyptian polychrome relief, an ancient Roman limestone stele, and an ancient Roman limestone head.

The false provenances included “multiple documents, including what appeared to be decades-old Egyptian blank pages with watermarks, decades-old Egyptian loose stamps, and multiple black-and-white old-looking photographs purporting to depict an ancestor of the defendant displaying several of the artifacts in his office from long ago,” stated court documents, which noted forensic examiners determined the documents were forgeries and the photographs had been photoshopped and aged.

Robbers sent Eldarir videos of the objects from the grave sites "as if it were K-Mart and here’s your pick to choose from," William Campos, the assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in court.

Read more here: Man packed luggage with hundreds of looted ancient artifacts, feds say

Artists Against AI Generated Art

 

AI images are programmed. We should consider the value of original and truly unique work.

Why are some artists refusing to use AI for creative work?

Many express concerns about copyright infringement. They believe that their work is being used without their consent to train AI models, which then generate derivative works that compete with their own.

Artists argue that the AI technology does not represent true artistic work, and that it devalues their efforts. AI generated images do not entail the natural and lengthy process of art creation. True art is an expression of human experience, emotion, and creativity, something which AI lacks. That is why many view the AI generated images as the opposite of art.

Artists are also concerned that human artists are increasingly being replaced by AI technology.

Molly Crabapple posted an open letter and petition, calling for book and magazine publishers to refuse to use AI art. Crabapple’s letter include signatures from high profile people such as author Naomi Klein and actor Jon Cusack.

Related reding: The Harm and Hypocrisy of AI Art; Independent Artists Are Fighting Back Against AI Image Generators With Innovative Online Protests by Richard Whiddington for Artnet; Colonizing Art | OpenMind Magazine; Philosophers Needed to Navigate the AI Revolution

Philosophers Needed to Navigate the AI Revolution

 

Demis Hassabis, CEO and co-founder of Google DeepMind, has pondered the need for profound philosophical thought to guide humanity through the uncharted waters of advanced AI. His observation highlights a fascinating and potentially critical aspect of the ongoing AI revolution. He believes that the AI revolution requires not just technical prowess but also deep ethical and philosophical reflection.

“I think there is a need for some great philosophers,” Hassabis said. “Where are the great next philosophers? The equivalent of Kant or Wittgenstein, or even Aristotle.”

He went on to explain why he believed such philosophical minds were crucial: “I think we’re going to need that to help navigate society to that next step because I think AGI and artificial superintelligence is going to change humanity and the human condition.”

Read it all here: Will Need Great Philosophers To Navigate The AI Revolution: Google's Demis Hassabis