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Mini-Heap

A new edition of the Mini-Heap from Daily Nous collects recent links of philosophical interest, including discussions of aphantasia and empiricism by Uku Tooming and Roomet Jakapi, AI ethics and moral reasoning by Hollis Robbins and Seth Lazar, and the nature of mind and memory from animal metamorphosis examples.

read2 min views2 publishedJul 20, 2026

Recent links… Aphantasia, Hume, and empiricism — some people seem to lack mental imagery, and this has philosophical implications, argue Uku Tooming & Roomet Jakapi Are philosophers who work for AI firms “arsonists who moonlight as firefighters”? — Hollis Robbins on humanity, “My Fair Lady”, and why “neither the world nor the AIs will become more moral” from the work of AI’s philosophers “For most of human history, contexts were local and multiple. If you wanted to know how you should act, you would look around… Am I inside my home? Am I in the church? Am I in a bar?” — now, we live in “uni-context,” which explains a lot, argues Agnes Callard “AI systems [probably] possess at least local analytical moral competence comprehensively. I suspect there is no fundamental obstacle to extending local competence to global competence, or to extending analytical competence to practical competence” — Seth Lazar on recent experiments on the moral reasoning of AIs “When caterpillars are in their chrysalises, their brains physically dissolve… and are rebuilt as butterfly brains. Yet experiments show that memories from their caterpillar days survive” — one of several examples from the animal kingdom that may raise problems for the idea that the mind is the brain “Are you a recliner or a refrainer?” — The New Yorker’s Joshua Rothman on airplane passenger ethics “There’s a kind of epistemic transparency to our work in that everything you need to assess it is right there on the page” — Richard Chappell on whether external funding corrupts philosophy Mini-Heap posts usually appear when several new items accumulate in the Heap of Links, a collection of items from around the web that may be of interest to philosophers. The Heap of Links consists partly of suggestions from readers; if you find something online that you think would be of interest to the philosophical community, please send it in for consideration for the Heap. Thank you.Previous edition.

The post Mini-Heap first appeared on Daily Nous.

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