Out of Context Philosophy

If you open up a philosophy article or chapter on your computer, the software you’re using, now updated with various AI features, may present you with something like the following message: “This looks like a long article. Would you like me to summarize it for you?” You may be unlikely to use this feature. You’re skilled at reading philosophy and you understand the value of reading through it yourself. But what about other people? What about your students? What can we tell them to encourage them to read primary texts rather than the various summaries of them that today’s technology offers up? You probably have your own set of reasons you might share with them. But I suspect that it probably does not include the following reason, offered up recently by Zach Weinersmith of SMBC-Comics: [Zach Weinersmith, SMBC Comics. Share with permission. The quote is from Thomas Nagel’s, “Sexual Perversion”. However, the quote is actually not in the original 1969 Journal of Philosophy version of the…