Ateş Uslu

I couldn’t help posting this (and sorry, I don’t have time to provide a translation and context for people unfamiliar with the Turkish high school curriculum 😀 )

Oh, by the way, yes, generative AI is a tool among others, no matter how complicated it is. And a tool is not neutral; any tool can be manipulated for whatever purpose, political, economic, criminal, etc. You could use a hammer as a murder weapon, but you are educated and compelled not to.

The easy way is to simply declare, "we don’t want it". The hard way is to think critically, to discuss it, and to develop some kind of applicable, concrete ethical code defining the boundaries of its use.

However, under the current conditions, you cannot enforce such a ban, because academia cannot be isolated from the rest of the world, and students will inevitably use whatever tools are within their reach.

I simply want to point out that it is actually impossible to ban it (unless you have coherent revolutionary plans for the future; and I am open to being convinced if those plans are good).

Ok, let me be clear: I am against the use of AI for generating any academic text (whether in whole or in part), just as I am against the use of internet search engines for plagiarism. Personally, I don't even use citation software, because I think handmade bibliographies are part of the craft.

We need to adapt to this process realistically. And by adaptation, I do not mean blind capitulation. We can both criticize and adapt.
Our urgent task is to reflect on the purpose of the humanities (and other academic fields), on intellectual production, and on the responsible use of new tools.

I personally think that a syllabus beginning with "the use of AI is not allowed in this class" is quite unrealistic. However, assignment ideas that attempt to outmaneuver students' use of AI can be remarkably imaginative.

One can find many other examples. Bottom line: a critical attitude toward a technological development does not necessitate its total rejection. People still use word processors, e-books, and smartphones in their academic work - and they also use AI. The point is to use these tools responsibly.

My first years as a lecturer coincided with the rise of the smartphone era, when some witty students would read the relevant Wikipedia article under the desk and then ask me random details on the subject in an attempt to outsmart me. I was frustrated, but banning smartphones was not a solution.

However, there is always a third way in such situations. Handwriting is not a cure for plagiarism; a genuine sense of academic integrity is. E-books may pose a threat to research and to the quality of book production itself, but abolishing them is not the solution - responsible use of e-books is.

Once upon a time, when the internet was becoming widespread, lecturers assigned handwritten papers for many reasons. As e-books gained popularity, we were warned about the various harms they could cause (I think people even wrote poems about the beauty of the smell of books).

There should be an alternative to both the unquestioning enthusiasm for AI in humanities classes and the "this is an analogous course, just use your brains" kind of neo-Luddism.
You can use tools in a toolbox, but you can’t live in it. Let’s remind students that generative AI is just that:a toolbox.

YouTube video by OperaVision TRAILER | ATTILA Verdi – Opernfestspiele Heidenheim

I personally like modernized opera stagings, but this one is obnoxious. Attila as an animalistic, gold-obsessed barbarian fighting against European nations carrying actual contemporary flags? Even the most patriotic Risorgimento supporter was more refined back in the 1840s.

youtu.be/1hLqPmFMmi8?...

27. Some historians are quite prolific and publish interesting, coherent works, but their methodology attracts little attention because they are not attached to a particular historiographical school. Richard Wolin comes to mind.

26. Despite the flourishing of specialized literature over the past half-century, the general understanding of Islamic intellectual history remains largely shaped by the perspectives of Leo Strauss or Ernest Renan.

I was talking about The Enlightenment Underground. I read it a while ago and quite liked it, and I’ve been thinking about revisiting it these days.

Thanks! I’m curious about your opinion on Martin Mulsow’s book on the German Enlightenment.

Relatively speaking. The other text is like a condensed version of Kant’s social and political ontology, while What is Enlightenment? is more of a brilliant occasional intervention.

Haha, maybe that was a little too strong. I’m curious about your take on J. Israel, by the way.

25. Intellectual historians would do well to take art and literature classes, as they definitely need to diversify their set of artistic references. I am personally sick of Klee’s Angelus Novus, Lorenzetti’s frescoes, and the cover of Leviathan - not to mention Raphael’s School of Athens.

24. Diderot is underrated. Rousseau is not.

(I realize that 21 was not an opinion, strictly speaking. But whatever.)

23. Jonathan Israel’s Enlightenment volumes seem to be disliked by many early modernists for some reason. I personally like them.

22. Byzantine thinkers could be weird from time to time. bsky.app/profile/ates...

21. Verse books were quite widespread in the Medieval Period, especially in subjects requiring the memorization of numerous details. Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) wrote several verse texts on medicine, the most famous being Al-Urjūza fī al-Ṭibb, transl. into Hebrew in the 13th c and into Latin in the 17th c.

JOSÉ MIGUEL IBÁÑEZ LANGLOIS HISTORIA DE LA FILOSOFÍA Poemas

20. There is a book on the history of philosophy that consists entirely of poems. It is sometimes brilliant, sometimes hilarious.

Mikhail Psellos has an interesting exchange of letters with Leo Paraspondylos on fish and cheese, a pretext for contrasting divine and human modes of creation.

As of today, Volkan Cidam (@volkancidam.bsky.social) has been denied access to the Boğaziçi University campus, where he worked for many years, due to his participation in the protests against the rectorate.

YouTube video by Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra - Topic Phönix-Schwingen, Op. 125

2/ Johann Strauss II, Phönix-Schwingen, Op. 125

www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzRi...

"I am Also of the Opinion That Materialism Must Be Destroyed", article by Graham Harman, published in Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 2010, vol. 28, pp. 772-790.

Meanwhile, the entirety of Eastern European philosophy before 1989 is criticized for its rejection of idealism in favor of materialism.

I'm not sure whether such a title would have been acceptable in a philosophy journal of the Eastern Bloc.