Theo Todman's Web Page - Notes Pages

Animadversions

Aeon Papers

(Work In Progress: output at 27/09/2023 10:05:10)

Colour ConventionsPrevious VersionsNote ReferencesNon-Note ReferencesNote CitationsNon-Note Citations


Introduction Papers Read: 643 Papers Unread: 2,785 → Pri 1: 99 Pri 2: 570 Pri 3: 828 Pri 4: 429 Pri 5: 264 Pri 6: 231 Pri 7: 136 Pri 8: 102 Pri 9: 65 Pri 10: 61

Introduction
  1. The Aeon eZine, described in Aeon: About:-
    1. Covers a large number of philosophical topics that I’m particularly interested in from a semi-professional point of view.
    2. It also covers others that are of more general interest, for which I’ve read papers as they crop up but don’t really have much time to comment on.
    3. Finally, there are others – and particularly videos – which are not as relevant, and which I often ignore.
  2. In May 2020, Aeon launched a new platform Psyche, described in Psyche: About. I’ve just treated the Psyche videos and papers as for Aeon.
  3. This Note contains links to Aeon & Psyche papers and videos I've found interesting – or hope to find interesting – from 2019 onwards, together with a few others that I’d not had time to categorise in this Note1. It represents an attempt to gain benefit from Aeon without incurring the overheads previously exemplified in the Note just cited. I intend to combine the two Notes in due course.
  4. The items accessed now appear in two lists: those I’ve read, and those I’ve not. The latter list ought to be itself divided in two – those I intend to read and those I don’t. This is because the items arrive too rapidly to be read, at least while I’m in “catch-up” mode, as will always be the case. However, I’ve decided to simply prioritise the items, with the lower-priority items likely to remain languishing at the bottom.
  5. The priorities are fairly random, and subject to revision. I decided to restrict “priority 1” items to a maximum of 10, but it got out of hand – nearly up to 300! So – as of end May 2022 – I added 1 to each priority and chose 10 to be priority 1. Hopefully I can stick to this: new items should have a maximum priority of 2, and then I look through these to select my ‘top 10’ – but only when there are no more items in the ‘priority 1’ list. I tried to cheat a bit by adding all the interesting items each week as priority 1 and then culling any unread items in excess of 10 before adding the next week’s in. Of late – end June 2023 – I’ve not been strict enough with this process, which has got out of hand again!
  6. I note here that this page is getting slow to load, so I will ultimately need to split it. This may be either by priority, or by topic, but deciding what to do is quite complex and needs thinking through. For now, I’ve simply removed the blurbs from any items for which a Paper has been created.
  7. Those I’ve read appear first, in reverse date of publication. I’ve tried to add a brief footnote for each.
  8. For the list of items I’ve not read, the items most recently published appear – within their respective priorities – at the top of the list when accessed, though with the videos first as they’re quicker to get through. Some of these items were "reminders" sent out at weekends when new material doesn't appear, so can have much earlier publication dates than their sequence in the list might imply.
  9. The counts of the papers read – and unread by priority – appear in the table above, with hyperlinks to the lists.
  10. Note that where a date appears, this is the date published, not the date read. Any comments or additional information appear as a footnote, followed by clicking the date. Click on the paper title for the link to the full text on the Aeon website.
  11. I intend to add links to the PID Notes, where applicable, to which these works are relevant, and to their authors if they appear in my database. Also, if a paper turns out to be important enough for my research, I’ll incorporate it into my database so the hyperlinks to the topic of interest work better and I can add more information.
  12. While this was supposed to be a “quick and dirty” approach, I unfortunately ran into the MS Access 64k-character size-limit for long text. Thankfully, this can be over-ridden if the text is populated using Access Basic code, so I’ve added the wherewithal to achieve this. The references to “WebRef= nnnn” signify the primary key for a couple of tables I use to generate this page.
  13. A note on completeness: I’ve now been through all the emails received from Aeon since the beginning of 2018. Relatively few were omitted. Those for 2017 were dealt with in this Note2, though my selection criteria were more rigorous in those days.
  14. I have to add a note of warning to myself. These papers are – in most cases – especially in the case of those selected – fascinating and informative. But they also lead on to other papers cited that are likewise fascinating and informative, or important if I am to follow in detail or critique the arguments put forward. There is no end to this process, which may end up as a distraction from constructive work.
  15. UPDATE (August 2023): I’m now focusing completely on my Thesis, so will no longer be adding everything that turns up to the database (I may catch up later). For now, I’ll only add the most important ‘priority 1’ items, and seek to whittle away at the ‘priority 1’ list.
  16. Some of the papers or videos are republications from other sites of interest. While noting the above comment, I will list them here (in the order they came to my attention):-
    → Closer to Truth
    → Neurophilosophy
    → Woit - Not Even Wrong
    → 3Blue1Brown
    → Institute of Arts and Ideas
    → Philosophy Overdose
    → Physics Reimagined
    → YouTube: Then & Now
    → The Royal Institution
    → Five Books
  17. I ought to add a note on why all this is worth bothering with.
    1. Firstly, some items are relevant to my research or other projects and provide a more contemporary or less formal / more exploratory approach than I’ll find in academic papers or books.
    2. Secondly, there are items on a very wide range of subjects that might be treated in magazines or broadsheets, but which are dealt with in greater depth here.
  18. So, my intention is to use Aeon for general culture and education, and Newspapers for … news.


Items Pending

Items Read

Items Not Yet Read
  1. Priority: 1
  2. Priority: 2