Mentors instead of machines: Why implicit (musical) knowledge cannot be algorithmized (guest post by Andreas Wildenhain)

My parents had a lot of records, including everything by the Beatles and Santana’s “Abraxas.” I was maybe six or seven years old and loved playing the albums on the record player, picking up a guitar and strumming along, realizing that some of the notes I was playing were the same as the ones I heard on the record. It was fascinating, and even more fascinating when I figured out the melody of “Moon River.” A little later, I realized that the few chords I found somewhere on a chart were also used by the Beatles. So I started to pick out Beatles songs. A new world opened up with melodies, sounds, rhythms. You just had to listen carefully.

But with some pieces, I was left behind: How did Eddie van Halen manage to play such cool solos … What were those rhythms in Stravinsky’s “Le Sacre de Printemps” and how could John Coltrane play those shimmering cascades of sound where I could no longer distinguish the individual notes? How did Kraftwerk produce those synthetic sounds? My parents and teachers told me I couldn’t just play around like that, I had to learn how to read music, then I would understand, and my guitar teacher gave me the sheet music for the song “Bald gras ich am Neckar” (Soon I’ll be grazing by the Neckar), which I was supposed to practice “diligently.” I was disappointed.

Why am I writing these personal memories from the perspective of an improvising jazz musician on the blog of a philosopher who, among other things, is intensively engaged with “reading as a social practice”? Isn’t music always a social practice? The answer is certainly yes, and I don’t want to sing the praises of the myth of the self-taught musician here, but rather ask myself whether it isn’t advantageous for the acquisition of musical knowledge and one’s own musical identity to first engage with the material oneself, without tutorials or AI, but perhaps with a mentor. The musical learning process has changed significantly in recent years due to the accessibility of modern media for all popular music styles. I think there are some parallels here with Martin Lenz’s observations on reading and the reception of demanding philosophical texts, which may be interesting because of their distance from philosophy.

People who grew up in the 1950s to 1970s and had a feel for blues, jazz, and rock didn’t have access to sophisticated teaching methods or educational guidance on how to play this music. There were records and our ears, but there were rarely any written forms of knowledge (sheet music/tabs). The challenge was to figure out how these musicians played their melodies, solos, chords, and rhythms.

Perhaps one could say that listening closely to a recording is comparable to Plato’s allegory of the cave. We hear things out in the world, but a truth about this music, apart from an aesthetic sensation, is not immediately accessible to us. So, as with a philosophical text that exudes fascination but also seems unwieldy and inaccessible, it is necessary to create one’s own context of meaning.

We cannot know what AC/DC, Björk, or Autechre were thinking, what ideas and feelings they had when they composed and recorded their pieces. However, the tremendous advantage of our generation is that for a long time there were no experts or gatekeepers, as everyone more or less had the same starting point. This meant that we were forced to make sense of what we heard in order to implement or reconstruct the ideas of the original.

And so questions arose, such as:

What was being played – composition vs. improvisation?
What rhythm – swing, Latin, odd metres?
What notes – scales, arpeggios?
What techniques – legato, staccato, bendings, palm mutes?
What harmonies – 3 to 5 notes, harmonic turns (cadences)?
Why do musicians suddenly play only one exotic scale (Miles Davis, *Kind of Blue*)?
How are these sounds created – Tangerine Dream, Metallica, Kaija Saariaho?

This activity took place without YouTube tutorials, guitar tabs, sheet music, or textbooks, and unfortunately, in the beginning, the results I heard were often wrong or only approximate to what the artists played. But doesn’t “playing wrong” also mean that I didn’t understand the composer’s intention? In rock/pop and jazz, it was usually never just about implementing a compositional idea, but about working with the material of the song, the idea of improvisation, and interpreting it. Musicians showed each other ideas during sessions (Real Book) or in the studio, or they learned by playing together in a band. People went to concerts by local or international artists to perhaps gain better access to musical ideas and to meet and exchange ideas with other musicians. In this sense, what was heard led to a social practice, and in my opinion, every understanding is already social because it took place within shared, pre-formed interpretive frameworks.

There was no ‘digital’ insight in the sense of true or false, but rather an approximation of truth (the artist’s original recording) that was shaped by one’s own ability to perceive things, ask questions, and draw conclusions. And this, in turn, meant that even if you didn’t play exactly like Kirk Hammett or Jaco Pastorius, you inevitably developed your own individual style. Good examples of this are musicians such as Volker Kriegel, the Krautrock musicians, Klaus Doldinger, and Kraftwerk, to name just a few German musicians. The “truth” does not lie in the exact reproduction of Charlie Parker or Van Halen licks, but in the successful communication of a musical idea in a context.

Pop and rock have their origins in African-American musical tradition, which was characterized, among other things, by the oral transmission of knowledge. Interestingly, the goal of orally transmitted music of African-American origin is to make musicians an individually recognizable voice of the community (cf. LeRoi Jones, “Blues People,” 1963). In this sense, the “best” musicians are those who develop their own voice (instrumental or vocal) and are recognizable to their social community. Think of idiosyncratic musicians such as Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Thelonious Monk, Howlin’ Wolf, Eminem, and D’Angelo, who illustrate this very vividly. Without going into further detail, this also illustrates an aesthetic that could not be further removed from that of a classical orchestra or the ideal of pure opera singing.

What I like about the method of independent “listening out” described above is the component of reflective acquisition (“I work on a problem (concept), understand its logic, and critically examine it in practical applications”), which is then applied in playing the song or improvising and presented to the audience. And this is precisely the opposite of schematic memorization (“This definition is true because the professor says so”), since pure memorization allows me to take a step back from the object of knowledge. In other words, in this case, I would no longer be an authentic spokesperson for what I am reproducing, since I am not making what I have learned my own experience. In this process, I remain “digitally” verifiable (true or false), but unfortunately nothing more. The increasing spread and use of artificial knowledge systems such as LLMs will probably reinforce the trend of avoiding things that could be discovered in this world, generating quick answers that may be correct but remain almost superficial, empty of content, and unverified for the speaker. LLMs offer us statistically prevalent information from a training data set, which, because we attach meaning to it, takes on an apparent necessity. Despite the many advantages of information retrieval with current LLMs, the greatest danger is that we will treat the knowledge humanity has acquired and written down to date as the status quo. We humans will then orient ourselves toward a knowledge authority that, detached from our human experience and our lived reality, determines what we need to know and what we do not.

In my work with my instrumentalists, it is therefore important for me to learn about each individual’s personal approach to music (metal, singer-songwriter, creative music), because only by understanding their motivations can I support them in developing their music as independently as possible. Mick Goodrick (guitar teacher in Boston) always told us, “We should become thinking guitarists,” and his teaching style led us to a meta-reflection on our learning practices.

And last but not least: those of us mentors who have already climbed a little way up the ladder can offer encouragement and motivation when it comes to questions about the path, motivation, and willingness to engage in a demanding and gruelling project for a longer period of time, and perhaps help to ensure that the insights gained do not lose touch with lived experience.

In this sense, I think that art, music, and literature, as well as all forms of social practice, remind us again and again in what sense we are human.

Books, music albums, and exhibitions are letters, messages, and images from friends that offer opportunities to engage with these messages.

Andreas Wildenhain

Why does hardly anyone in academic philosophy care about reading?

No, this is not about the decline of the occident, just a note about a curiosity in academic philosophy. Philosophy is a discipline in which reading is a key competence, not least in that philosophical exchange often focuses on the precise formulation of a premise or an argument. But while there are numerous guides on writing philosophy or on reconstructing arguments, there is next to nothing on reading. Given that different people reading philosophy often end up with contrary takes on texts (be they historical or contemporary) and given that much energy is spent on singling out proper takes, it is astonishing (to put it mildly) that there is so little reflection on reading. Or perhaps not? One of the first things I took in as a philosophy student is that philosophy is, by and large, an implicit culture where the rules of the game are not expressed but handed down by emulation. However, reading practices are not just about the rules of a specific game. Arguably, such practices make the often unreflected fabric of our intuitions and ways of life. So understanding our (current as opposed to some other) reading practice will not only yield an understanding of our particular ways but also of why we prefer certain texts and forms of reading over others in the first place. So why do we care so little? Preparing a larger project and a workshop on the issue of reading, I would like to share some encounters and musings.

Text production. – Having been educated as a historian of philosophy, first as a medievalist and, then, as an early-modernist, I have always been intrigued by the fact that texts have to be produced (before they can be consumed) by the historian. Becoming aware that the texts we read in books have come a long way (from picking and transcribing manuscripts into readable Latin, to a critical edition after choosing a leading manuscript, while referencing deviating manuscripts and sources, to a translation, a translation competing with other translations, being published), the material basis of reading and its availability, for whatever ideological or financial reasons, was already a thing to be pondered on. So, long before we can set eyes on a text, a number of decisions are made that include and exclude authors and whole traditions. When colleages say, they alter the canon by putting a new text on the reading list, I often want to ask why they think that the text is not already part of the canon, especially if it’s (fairly) readily available. But that’s by the by. The upshot is that reading presupposes the very availability of texts, and that’s a highly ideological matter already (or else tell me why everyone referencing medieval philosophy just references Thomas Aquinas).

“Why bother? – I just read.” – Still at Groningen University, I once asked colleagues whether we shouldn’t compose a reading guide detailaing how they approach their respective readings. The standard response was: “Why? I just read. There’s nothing much to say.” Asking further, they would often detail ways of reconstructing and formalizing arguments that were at once highly technical and subject to change. So, if you’re one of these poor souls thinking that there is one good way of reconstructing an argument in a text, just forget about it! It’s hard and ongoing work – no matter whether the text is by Plato or Ted Sider. The bottom line is that, no matter whether you’re a historian or a staunch analytic philosopher, any reading is highly contestable. Shouldn’t this fact give rise to a discussion of how readings are or should be constrained? You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But there is literally nowt (which is why I thought it timely to run a conference on the why and how of doing history of philosophy).

Texts versus arguments. – In my first year as a student of philosophy, I was asked to reconstruct an argument by Leibniz. We were supposed to use decimal numbers. My instructor (for those who care it was Lothar Kreimendahl) was not happy: Rather than presenting a list of numbered propositions, I gave what is nowadays called a narrative. I proudly rejected being graded for my supposed failure. But what this taught me was that the distance between the the text and its reconstruction can be very long and varied. I got out ok, but I still worry about the poor souls who think there is one true reconstruction or reading of a text. The upshot is that there is no clear way of getting from the text to a reconstruction of an argument. In fact, the text has to be seen in a certain context as speaking to a certain issue in the first place. But how is that known or established? Well, first of all it needs to be established, be it by your instructor, interlocutor or the stuff you’re reading about it. So there is no argument to be read off a text. The way of dealing with texts (as e.g. containers of arguments) has to be established already.

Who cares? – Of course, scholars dealing with different periods in the history of philosophy or reading cultures have to care. Doina-Cristina Rusu and Dana Jalobeanu, for instance, taught me that recipes and descriptions of experiments form a specific reading culture that needs to be studied in its own right in order to understand how things were understood and transmitted. The same goes for current philosophy, or so I think, but the implicit culture suggests otherwise. Yet, as long as this culture or cultures remain implicit, I think we’re not even doing proper philosophy (if doing philosophy includes studying the preconditions of one’s thought). So my guess is that we’re mostly doing what Kuhn took to be normal science. We unthinkingly emulate our teachers. But while doing so, we encounter the uncanny: students who don’t care about reading and even produce their writings with the help of LLMs. But funnily enough, in this very situation we insist on a proper distinction between the text reflected on and the text written. My hunch is that it’s our implicit reading culture that leaves us with very few responses to such misgivings. The bottom line is: We need an idea of how texts relate to thoughts etc. in order to handle the situation. But for that, we need to understand the preconditions of reading.

Not even didactics of philosophy? – While practitioners in different philologies and related disciplines seem to care greatly about reading practices, in philosophy the situation is so bad that not even didactics of philosophy have much to offer. Really? Obviously, or so I thought, philosophy teacher education would go into reading, no? Talking to some highly accomplished and experienced scholars in didactics like Vanessa Albus or Laura Martena, I learned that reading is not only thought of as problematic but often even actively pushed to the fringes in teaching philosophy. But why? Well, part of the reason is that philosophy is already taught in primary school, a level at which you won’t rely on texts. For later stages, a common resource is provided, amongst other things, by so-called sets of post-texts (Nach-Texte) which present summaries of a philosopher’s opinion (as one among other opinions). This way, a text by Kant might be reduced to the opinion of a talkshow guest in class. Not quite as drastic, but perhaps similar in spirit is Jonathan Bennett’s famous initiative of providing translations of classic texts from the early modern period from English into English, “prepared with a view to making them easier to read while leaving intact the main arguments, doctrines, and lines of thought.” This way you get, for instance, a simplified version of Locke’s Essay. (More than 15 years ago, I was involved in a translation project in which someone mistook these translations for proper texts and handed in a translation of a classic text from the simplified English into German. Luckily, we caught this in time.) The upshot is that (again, with notable exceptions) even didactics makes do with the miraculous move from the textual surface to the supposed argument or position – without much thought about interference by different possible reading strategies. At the same time, didactics is, strangely enough, a fairly young discipline that was still pushed to the sidelines during my student days.

Do philosophers still take pride in claiming not to have read that much? – Perhaps, then, the often rehearsed assumption that “thinking for yourself”, our supposed originality, doesn’t require or might even be hindered by too much reading still has great currency. Remembering school days, texts were often taken, not as a place of thought, but almost as a mere occasion for thinking. At the end of the day, I can only begin to suggest (in the time to come) why thinking about reading matters greatly and why it might still have been sidelined nonetheless, at least as a philosophical topic. But while my recent survey across philosophical disciplines on this issue was somewhat disconcerting (except for a few classics mainly from the French and some practicioners in the larger phenomenological tradition), I have high hopes when it comes to neighbouring disciplines.

Large Language Models and classism. The ethics of reading (3)

When reading texts with lots of general remarks and little attention to detail, I often wonder whether it’s produced by ChatGPT or some other LLM. I don’t like this kind of suspicion, especially in the context of teaching and evaluating. Not least because it primarily targets the author rather than the text: Has the author used an LLM and hence tried to cheat? So rather than assessing the text, I am incentivised to make a moral judgment. This readjusts my attitude as a reader in a crucial way. Rather than trying to enjoy the flow of the text or get into the argument, I wonder about the honesty and sincerity of the writer. While there is currently much discussion about cheating with LLMs, the unease that the suspicion causes me brings quite another worry to the fore: my own classism. Am I really worried to be cheated on or that the poor souls relying on AI are not learning to think for themselves? Or am I not rather mainly worried that these bullshitting texts produced by AI are soon indistinguishable from the products of my authentic intellectual labour? Let me explain.

Tacitly cultivating classism. – Being what is called a first-gen academic, one might say I’ve earned my cultural capital the hard way. I still remember how I mind-numbingly practiced philosophical terminology at the age of thirteen, enjoing the cluelessness of my parents when I put it to use. Looking back, I think of myself as impertinent and cruel. Intellectualism doesn’t come across as thuggish as brute anti-intellectualism. But I would say that, wouldn’t I? More to the point, my intellectualism paved a way that seems now to be threatened by the fact that text production can be outsourced just like other kinds of labour. Intellectual work of certain kinds is indistinguishable from work outsourced to LLMs. Being annoyed by people’s use of LLM’s I don’t feel consciously threatened. But I do wonder whether it’s this class aspect that creeps into my judgement of those users.

What kind of work do we actually grade as instructors? – My hunch is, then, that what is behind my suspicion against certain writers who might have used LLMs is owing to a certain classism or class anxiety. If people can outsource intellectual work at least to a certain degree, I might end up suspecting (tacitly) that these people don’t belong where they claim to be. Now you might respond that part of this suspicion is fair in that it targets fraud etc. Yet, I’m not sure it is fair. Of course, when dealing with straightforward cheating, our responses might be justified. But most cases are not that straightforward, or so I suppose at least. Just consider the teaching context: We might say we’re distinguishing students who “have done the work” from those who didn’t. But making such a distinction seems to rely on the fact that some students actually “do the work” in relation to one’s class. Yet, what if we’re merely rewarding those students who have learned intellectual skills to produce great texts long before they set foot in our classes? In other words, we might not reward intellectual skills developed as taught by us but intellectual skills as picked up long before. So what are you grading in such cases? The things that people learned in your class or the things that people bring along? If you’re perhaps not actually assessing people’s progress in your course, then the question arises what’s so salient about the distinction between someone well-educated long before and someone making up for an earlier disadvantage by using tools like LLMs to improve their work.

AI use between shaming and rewarding. – My point is not to appeal to such classism to silence justified criticism of naïve integration of AI into teaching contexts (here is a pertinent open letter I co-signed). But classism is a real thing; and “AI shaming” seems to be a new way of exercising the related kind of gatekeeping. Now that people start noticing that AI shaming is on the rise, it doesn’t mean it’s just part of an arsenal of arguments in favour of Tech Bros (as this thread insinuates). The stigma of using AI for one’s work is as real as the problem of cheating and related vices. But that doesn’t mean AI usage is exhausted by this. The world we live in will increasingly reward using AI. As an instructor I’m primarily faced with downsides when students use it to cheat, but as soon as we’re not acting as professionals ourselves we might become quite dependent on the benefits of AI. Just step outside your comfort zone and hand over the task of reformulating a text with a pertinent perspective! Having drafted a couple of legal documents, for instance, I have found that ChatGPT is a helpful tool. Of course, I still need to check on points, but the Legalese produced by this device is of real help. But relying on such help will be shamed by the next best expert in legal matters. And then it’s me who is at the receiving end of AI shaming.

From texts to their producers. – If we take the class perspective seriously, AI is not only presenting us with challenges but with contrary assessments ranging from worries about fraud, on the one hand, to worries about inappropriate gatekeeping, on the other. So how can we respond to this situation? My hunch is that we first need to acknowledge that this technology changes our reading culture. For a very long time, at least since the critical philological work of the 19^th century, we have learned to see texts as something objective in that they can be seen independently from their producers or authors (or the layers of production of texts). As Daniel Martin Feige noted, digitalization involves a striking return of the author (see part three of his Kritik der Digitalisierung). With the constant possibility of text production through LLMs, we will focus even more on the author and marks of authenticity again, whether we like it or not. But this doesn’t mean that we need to resign ourseves to constant suspicion.

Authentic versus bullshitting texts. – Turning to texts themselves, the crucial question for us will be whether such texts are authentic and genuine expressions by an author or bullshitting texts. In educational contexts, we have known long before the advent of LLMs that our grading systems incentivise bullshitting, with or without LLMs. So I’d repeat that we educators need to focus on actually reading rather than going for quick judgments. This would not merely mean assessing whether someone is cheating but to reflect on what we expect and on whether our expectations are mainly pertaining to class markers, as seems to be the case in many instances. The bottom line seems to be this: Our worry should not be about the use of AI or AI-prompted texts, but about bullshitting texts. This might still mean that our current reading culture (where we treat texts as something objective) might come to an end. But so be it.

CfA: Collegium Spinozanum V. An international summer school on Spinoza and Spinozisms

Call for Participants / Call for Abstracts:

Collegium Spinozanum V

An International Summer School on Spinoza and Spinozisms in Their Historical and Philosophical Contexts

FernUniversität in Hagen, 30 June – 3 July 2026

The Collegium Spinozanum V aims to bring together advanced students and established scholars working broadly on Spinoza’s thought, its sources, and its reception. Creating an international forum to stimulate scholarly exchange and conversations inspired by diverse approaches, the Collegium Spinozanum has been held four times with increasing participation and has now become a well-established tradition.

Over four consecutive days, morning sessions will be devoted to distinct areas of Spinoza scholarship, guided by our keynote speakers. Afternoon sessions will feature roundtable discussions and selected papers presented by participants.

Keynote Speakers

Alexander Douglas (University of St. Andrews)

Julia Peters (University of Heidelberg)

Kristin Primus (University of California, Berkeley)

Martin Saar (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt)

Academic Coordinators

Martin Lenz (FernUniversität in Hagen)

Andrea Sangiacomo (University of Groningen / Erasmus University Rotterdam)

Practical Information

Level: From advanced BA students to senior academics

Fee (includes course materials, administration, four lunches, coffee breaks, and one dinner):

€350 – PhD students, postdocs, and senior staff
€250 – Undergraduate students

In cases of financial hardship, a reduced fee may be available. Please indicate this in your application if applicable.

Requirements

Participants should have a basic prior knowledge of Spinoza’s philosophy and a general familiarity with philosophy and the history of philosophy. A sufficient command of English is required for active participation and presentation.

Learning Outcomes

After this course, participants will be able to:

Grasp key and challenging aspects of Spinoza’s philosophy and its historical dimensions.
Navigate contemporary scholarly debates related to Spinoza and Spinozism.
Develop analytical skills in reading, understanding, and explaining historical texts.
Enhance social and academic skills for engaging with a diverse scholarly audience.

Workload

Preparatory work: 24 hours
Contact hours: 30 hours
Total: 54 hours (equivalent to approximately 2 ECTS)

Participants will receive a Certificate of Attendance stating the total workload. Students may apply for credit recognition at their home institutions; the final decision rests with those institutions. The organizers will provide additional documentation if required.

Application Procedure

To apply, kindly send a mail to Alina Barendt: alina.barendt@fernuni-hagen.de

Please state ‘CS V’ in the header of your mail and provide your name, academic status and affiliation / place of study.

Please add the following documents in PDF format:

CV (max 2 pages)
Motivation statement (max 300 words) stating the reasons for attending the Collegium
For those who wish to present a paper: send an abstract of max. 500 words.

Application deadline: January 31, 2026

Participants who apply to present a paper will be notified of acceptance of their papers by February 15, 2026. Time slots for presentations are limited. But if your paper is declined, you can still participate in the summer school.

Please note that in the case that the number of applications will exceed 40, a selection may take place. The selection will give priority to participants who have been accepted and further to those who best meet the requirement (prior knowledge of Spinoza and background in philosophy and history of philosophy), and who completed their registration earlier.

Accommodation

The fee does not cover accommodation costs. Below is a list of nearby options:

Low budget:

Jugendherberge Hagen

Bildungsherberge Hagen

Medium budget:

High budget:

“The aims are discussed far too rarely” – An interview about the latest conference of the European Society for Early Modern Philosophy

A major conference on early modern philosophy brought together guests from all over the world on the Hagen campus. Organizer Prof. Martin Lenz explains what it was all about.

The society has come full circle: In 2004, the European Society for Early Modern Philosophy (ESEMP) was founded with a conference at the FernUniversität in Hagen – on the initiative of Hubertus Busche, who headed the Philosophy I department at the time. Now, around 20 years later, the professional society is inviting participants back to Hagen: to the 7th International ESEMP Congress: “Why and How Do We Study Early Modern Philosophy Today?”

Martin Lenz has headed ESEMP for the past three years, and since 2024, he has also lead the Philosophy I department. He was the lead organizer of the international meeting in Hagen. The German Research Foundation (DFG) supported the conference with its diverse program – from the Early Career Session to the round table. Keynote speakers were Mogens Lærke (Oxford) and Anik Waldow (Sydney).

Clearly identify aims

“We talk far too rarely about the aims, why we pursue our studies in the first place,” Lenz says, highlighting a basic assumption of the conference. What does this mean? “In philosophy, we have what’s known as canon expansion, for example. This means we’re trying to expand the canon with people who have hardly been read before.” These usually include members of underrepresented groups – such as female philosophers. But why expand the canon at all? Why not stick with the older works? “In this case, the answer seems to be a political one,” explains Lenz. “There is the goal of equality, which is followed by a research agenda.” As a researcher, he identifies with this concern. Nevertheless, it is important to reflect explicitly on such objectives, the “why?” – if only to choose the right method for one’s own work.

Utilizing a variety of methods

“And our methods in philosophy have become very diverse these days,” Lenz says, addressing the second major conference question: “How?” Sitting in a quiet room with dusty books? Academic work increasingly rarely corresponds to this image. “Digitalization has brought us many possibilities.” As an example, Lenz cites the so-called Digital Humanities – a still fairly young movement within philosophy that utilizes digital tools. “It’s often about making texts accessible, producing editions, or recognizing frequencies,” says Lenz. “For example, I could instruct an artificial intelligence system to search for all dissertations on a certain topic in a specific region.” Such a computer analysis can, among other things, help to counteract prejudices and subjective misconceptions: “You can then see, for example, that ‘Philosopher X’ wasn’t actually as dominant in their era as assumed.”

“How did we get here?”

For Lenz, the questions of “how?” and “why?” lead to fundamental considerations about the relevance of his discipline. “If we want to understand ourselves, we find ourselves in different histories – depending on our individual backgrounds. For example, can one understand the FernUni as a project if one is unfamiliar with the educational policy situation in North Rhine-Westphalia in the 1970s?” For him, history is not a linear process that inevitably ends in progress; it is asynchronous and dependent on subjective preconditions. “How did we get here? And why haven’t we all arrived at the same point?” Properly applied, philosophy helps answer such questions and organize narrative threads in the history of ideas.

Suggesting alternatives

Although philosophy often remains self-referential, it can provide new food for thought: “Philosophy does not thrive on progress, but on repeatedly returning to themes. It could be viewed as a great conversation spanning all time – within this, however, one often discovers alternatives to the prevailing thinking.” Lenz also locates the lively debates of the international conference in this interplay of old and new, established and alternative.

A vibrant campus

Breaking down established structures wasn’t just about the content: “With the conference, we also offered mentoring for researchers in early career phases.” They were assigned mentors in keeping with specific keywords, thus creating professional tandems. “Established people then attended lectures given by younger people and were able to provide feedback – and, conversely, gather new ideas themselves.” The plan worked, with all generations mingling at the conference. “My impression was that it was very well received.” The coordination both beforehand and on-site paid off. A large team was needed to effectively support the many people on campus and during the supporting program in Hagen. “There was a lot to do!” emphasizes Martin Lenz. “I would like to express my sincere thanks to everyone who helped.”

Interview and photos by Bendedikt Reuse

Translated from the German by Martin Lenz

Неисправимость ChatGPT и конец преподавания*

Автор: Мартин Ленц, Хагенский университет (The incorrigibility of ChatGPT and the end of teaching)

Перевод: Мария Весте, Университет Линчепинга, Швеция

Предположим, вы стали свидетелем аварии и должны сообщить об этом в полицию. «Ну, красная машина ехала на большой скорости в мою сторону, а потом резко повернула налево», — восклицаете вы. Вы изо всех сил пытаетесь подобрать правильные слова, чтобы точно описать те события и людей, которые вы заметили и их точную последовательность. Будучи по натуре немного педантичной, вы продолжаете исправлять себя. «Сначала казалось, что водитель хотел меня сбить», — такая формулировка в конце концов вас устраивает. — Теперь представьте, что вы пытаетесь уточнить свои впечатления с помощью ИИ. Очевидно, что всегда есть возможность улучшить стиль и грамматику. Но можно ли ожидать, что ИИ (любая Большая Языковая Модель (LLM) улучшит точность ваших фактических утверждений? Нет. Но что это значит, если ИИ все равно используют для улучшения фактических утвердений?

Учитывая то, как работает ИИ, он не имеет опыта в каком-либо смысле. Скорее, он генерирует предложения, предсказывая наиболее вероятную последовательность слов на основе полученных данных из огромного количества текста, на котором он был обучен. Таким образом, он не может улучшить содержание утверждений, основанных на опыте, то есть невозможно исправить содержание текста. Хотя это само по себе не удивляет, последствия, которые эта невозможность имеет в контексте обучения, заслуживает пристального внимания. Обучение частично осуществляется в процессе исправления утверждений. Сейчас, когда люди используют ИИ как устройство не только для сокрытия своих плагиатов, но и для «решения» всевозможных вопросов, этот аспект становится ключевым.

Я неоднократно задавался вопросом, что именно идет не так в контексте обучения с использованием ИИ, и теперь я начинаю думать, что все сводится к потере исправляемости, и к потере понимания того, что вообще означает исправляемость. Короче говоря, видя, что это ИИ как устройство улучшает форму (письменных) текстов в удивительных масштабах, мы не замечаем, что оно обедняет наши отношения с эмпирическим содержанием. Далее я хотел бы исследовать эту потерю в контексте преподавания философии.

Что такое исправимость? Исправимость означает, что утверждение или текст можно исправить. Если я говорю, что идет дождь, вы можете исправить меня, указав, что на самом деле дождя нет. Мы постоянно предлагаем и получаем исправления. Мы улучшаем формулировку того, что мы видели, находя более подходящие фразы. Мы можем различать грамматические и стилистические исправления как исправления формы в отличие от содержания, но часто эти два вида исправлений трудно разделить. Фраза «идет дождь» формально правильна, когда ее используют носители языка, но то, что делает ее правильной для пользователей языка, — это то, как она применяется к общему опыту мира (в котором случается дождь). Если я попрошу вас уточнить свою формулировку, предложив, например, что на самом деле идет проливной дождь, а не просто дождь, я могу иметь в виду одновременно внимание к вашему опыту и общепринятый способ выражения такого опыта в языке. Когда вы думаете о своем опыте и способах его лингвистического выражения, вы, вероятно, будете использовать как лингвистические источники (языковые конвенции, литературу, социолект, который, как предполагается, ожидает ваша аудитория, и т. д.), так и нелингвистические источники (все, что вы можете почерпнуть из других модальностей восприятия). Самое главное, вы будете использовать связи между применением лингвистических ресурсов и нелингвистическим опытом. Другими словами, мы связываем лингвистические конвенции с (нелингвистическими) фактами.

ИИ, напротив, этого не делает. Не имея отношения к миру, он ограничен лингвистическими ресурсами; у него нет других модальностей восприятия, и он не может соотносить лингвистические и нелингвистические факты. Другими словами, хотя он может улучшать формулировки, его нельзя исправлять. Говоря языком Витгенштейна, все, что кажется правильным ИИ, является правильным — а это означает, что нет смысла различать правильное и неправильное. (Есть интересная статья о том, как это узнать на собственном опыте.) Таким образом, мы даже не должны говорить, что у ИИ галюцинации, когда ИИ «выдумывает». Для этого устройства нет значимого различия между галлюцинациями и правильным пониманием вещей.

Сомневаюсь, что я сообщаю здесь какие-либо новости. Так зачем же об этом говорить? Потому что и язык ИИ, и язык создателей этой технологии постоянно напоминают о том, что это устройство обучается, исправляется и совершенствуется. Да, оно совершенствуется в том, что уже делает, но не в каком-либо другом смысле. Это напоминание обманывает многих из нас, заставляя думать, что это улучшение того рода, с которым мы знакомы, то есть ИИ учиться и осваивает новое, прежде неведомое. Это присуждение ИИ нам знакомых качеств обьясняет то, что ИИ теперь всё чаще воспринимается как содержательный, привлекательный или заботливый собеседник. ИИ (или мы сами себя) обманывает многих из нас, заставляя предполагать, что он может «учиться», будучи «исправленным». Но обучение для человека всегда подразумевает отношение (и как соотношение) к миру. Таким образом, главная путаница с ИИ заключается в том, что совершенствование ИИ в любом случае такое же, как мы пытаемся совершенствовать свой собственный способ самовыражения.

Как это влияет на преподавание (философии)? Есть много статей о закате гуманитарных наук в связи с появлением разнообразных ИИ устройств. Учитывая, как эта технология распыляет (не уничтожая полностью, но отрицая возможность закрепления четких координат) наше чувство авторства и нашу культуру чтения, я склонен думать, что весь наш подход к созданию текстов и чтению выйдет из моды и станет уделом зануд. Так же, как длинные соло на электрогитаре или клавишных, которые, казалось бы, были повсеместны в 70-х и 80-х годах, теперь являются уделом нескольких ботаников на YouTube. Так что, на мой взгляд, проблема не в том, что студенты подделывают тексты; проблема в том, что большинство текстов считаются неактуальными. Наряду с навыками и особенностями, которые необходимы для их создания. Умение писать хорошие тексты уже неактуально в мире, где так называемые лидеры обходятся без даже беглого просмотра своих брифингов. Но давайте вернемся к нашей теме. Мое предположение заключается в том, что утрата исправимости, присущая ИИ, является результатом более широкой тенденции, которая была четко признана в книге Гарри Франкфурта** «О бреде собачьем» (вы и без ИИ знаете как перевести выражение об экскрементах крупного рогатого млекопитащего мужского пола в английском язке означающем пренебрежение к сообщению на русский язык, где пренебрежение выражается отсылкой к мужскому половому органу человека) еще в 1986 году: как только вы понимаете, что можете убедить, не прибегая к методам оценки правдивости, вы можете вообще игнорировать правду. В конце концов, вопрос не в том, каким образом ИИ неисправим. Мы можем быстро это выяснить. Вопрос в том, почему мы позволяем исправлять себя устройству, которое не поддается исправлению.

Но это вопрос для умников. Таким образом, освоение длинных письменных текстов, не говоря уже об их написании, не кажется чем-то особенным, более того в настоящее время это не кажется многообещающим занятием. И не только потому, что у студентов есть стимулы подделывать свои работы, но и потому, что в принципе практически нет стимулов для создания таких работ. Зачем учиться играть на фортепиано, если есть клавишные инструменты с автоматическим аккомпанементом? Конечно, их звучание может быстро надоесть. Но кому какое дело, если это все, что есть в наличии? Итак, еще раз: проблема не в мошенничестве, а в неактуальности. Пишу это, я чувствую себя как динозавр, оплакивающий утрату своей естественной среды обитания. И, вероятно, это именно так: старик, жалующийся, что никто не ценит красоту, скрытую в искусстве, которое он так любит. И что с того? Действительно, что с того?

Что же остается учителям? Если вы не слишком беспокоитесь о плагиате, вы можете направить свою энергию на то, чтобы заставить людей думать, не анализируя тексты, а придумывая хорошие подсказки для ИИ или совершенствуя свои навыки видеомонтажа. Другими словами, хотя некоторые продукты (такие как хорошо написанные эссе) в будущем будут просто создаваться ИИ, вы можете помочь студентам улучшить «их» работу, сосредоточившись на том, чтобы помочь им использовать инструментарий этог и будущих устройств искусственного интеллекта. Однако остается вопрос: для чего нужен этот инструмент, если мы признаем, что написание текстов не имеет значения?

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* в моем переводе используется обозначение ИИ (искусственный интеллект) для обозначения разных программ (в статье – они обозначены как устройства), в оригинале Мартин Ленц упоминает программу ЧатГПТ, которая специализируется на обработке текстов

** В личном разговоре Мартин Ленц исправил мое (неинфомированное) представление о концепции БУЛШИТ, который нельзя потому, что это устойчивый философский термин. Я все же сохраню свою интерпретацию этого обозначения, которое вариативно в рамках разных языковых картин мира.

CfP: Reading as a Social Practice. An Interdisciplinary Workshop

CfP: Reading as a Social Practice. An Interdisciplinary Workshop

Berlin, 27-28 March 2026

Organised by Irmtraud Hnilica (Mannheim/Hagen) and Martin Lenz (Hagen)

According to a widespread consensus, we are currently living through a reading crisis. This workshop seeks to take a step back from the rhetoric of decline and instead raise the question of how reading itself can be conceptualised and approached from different disciplinary perspectives, particularly in philosophy and literary studies. To a first approximation, we propose that reading is determined not only by texts themselves or by individual readers, but mainly by the interactions between readers. We especially invite submissions engaging with this claim—whether through historical investigations of reading cultures, theoretical reflections on the social dynamics of interpretation, or analyses of contemporary practices in both analogue and digital spheres. We explicitly welcome submissions from scholars at all career stages. The aim of this international workshop is to spark new collaborations that will eventually result in a joint interdisciplinary network devoted to the study of reading as a social practice.

To submit, please email an abstract around 500 words to Martin Lenz (martin.lenz@fernuni-hagen.de) no later than 31 October 2025. Please use ‘Reading 2026’ as the header of your email. The email should contain a short bio of the author‘s details (including position and affiliation). We hope to notify you about the outcome by the end of November 2025.

The languages of the workshop are English and German. For each talk, there will be time for a 30-minute presentation, with about another 15 minutes for discussion. Upon acceptance, we grant reimbursement of accommodation and travel expenses.

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CfP: Lesen als soziale Praxis. Interdisziplinärer Workshop

Berlin, 27./28. März 2026

Organisiert von Irmtraud Hnilica (Mannheim/Hagen) und Martin Lenz (Hagen)

Einem weitverbreiteten Konsens zufolge erleben wir derzeit eine Lesekrise. Dieser Workshop möchte einen Schritt zurücktreten von der Rhetorik des Niedergangs und stattdessen die Frage stellen, wie Lesen selbst konzeptualisiert und aus verschiedenen disziplinären Perspektiven – insbesondere in der Philosophie und Literaturwissenschaft – betrachtet werden kann. In einer ersten Annäherung schlagen wir vor, dass Lesen nicht nur durch die Texte selbst oder durch individuelle Leser*innen bestimmt wird, sondern maßgeblich durch die Interaktionen zwischen Leser*innen. Wir freuen uns auf Beiträge, die sich mit dieser These auseinandersetzen – sei es durch historische Explorationen von Lesekulturen, theoretische Reflexionen über die sozialen Dynamiken der Interpretation oder durch Analysen zeitgenössischer Praktiken in analogen wie digitalen Räumen. Explizit erwünscht sind Einreichungen von Wissenschaftler*innen aller Karrierestufen. Ziel dieses internationalen Workshops ist es, neue Kooperationen anzustoßen, die in ein gemeinsames interdisziplinäres Netzwerk zum Lesen als sozialer Praxis münden sollen.

Bitte senden Sie ein Abstract von ca. 500 Wörtern bis spätestens 31. Oktober 2025 per E-Mail an Martin Lenz (martin.lenz@fernuni-hagen.de). Verwenden Sie als Betreff Ihrer E-Mail bitte: Reading 2026. Bitte ergänzen Sie Ihr Abstract durch eine akademische Kurzbio mit Angaben zu Position und Institution. Wir hoffen, bis spätestens Ende November 2025 Rückmeldung geben zu können.

Workshopsprachen sind deutsch und englisch. Vorgesehen sind 30 Minuten Vortrag und je 15 Minuten Diskussion. Fahrt- und Übernachtungskosten werden übernommen.

ESEMP Conference: Why and How Do We Study Early Modern Philosophy Today?

Following our Call for Abstracts last November, I am now happy to report that the Society for Early Modern Philosophy (ESEMP) runs its seventh conference at Hagen University, the place where the society was actually founded in 2004. In the meantime, we’ve finalised the downloadable conference programme (more details will be added on the conference website in the coming days). In case you want to register as a guest, there is an extra page for this.

At this point, I take the liberty to thank my wonderful team at Hagen for working ceaselessly to make (not only) this conference happen as well as the Hagen Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft for generous financial support.

The aim of this conference is to bring together leading experts and young talented scholars from all over the world to explore ways of approaching early modern philosophy and reflect anew on the aims of doing so. Following recent discussions in the field, we will wonder, for instance, whether we should favour historical over so-called rational reconstructions of texts or what precise aims are served by extending the canon. Likewise, we will ask how advances in the digital humanities shape our field. Even if one works in more traditional ways, one has to inquire whether common assumptions about how to place and study texts, figures or debates still stand. A second focus of our conference concerns (practical) issues concerning especially early career researchers. In this spirit, the conference includes a mentoring programme intended to connect mentees with experienced researchers who will provide advice on papers.

The incorrigibility of ChatGPT and the end of teaching

Suppose you witness an accident and have to report it to the police. “Well, the red car drove with high speed towards me and then took a sharp left turn”, you exclaim. You try hard to find the right words to capture the precise sequence of events and people you’ve noticed. Being a bit fussy by nature, you keep correcting yourself. “To begin with, it seemed as if the driver wanted to run me over.”, is the formulation you eventually settle on. – Now imagine you try to refine your impressions using ChatGPT. Obviously, there is always room for improving on style and grammar. But can you expect ChatGPT (or any LLMs or AI) to improve on the accuracy of your factual statements? No. But what does it mean if it is used to that end anyway?

Given the way ChatGPT works, it has no experience of the world in any sense. Rather, it generates sentences by predicting the most likely sequence of words based on the input it receives and the vast amount of text it was trained on. Thus, it cannot improve on the content of any statements relying on experience. While this is no surprise, the repercussions it has for teaching contexts deserve careful attention because such contexts thrive on the correction of statements. Especially now that people not only use this device to hide their plagiarisms, but also to “decide” all sorts of questions. I’ve been wondering repeatedly what precisely it is that goes wrong in teaching contexts with the use of AI and now I begin to think that it comes down to a loss of corrigibility, a loss of understanding what corrigibility even means. Put in a nutshell, seeing that this device improves the form of (written) texts in amazing dimensions, it makes us blind to the fact that it impoverishes our relation to empirical content. In what follows, I’d like to explore this loss with regard to teaching philosophy.

What is corrigibility? Corrigibilty means that a statement or text can be corrected. If I state that it’s raining you can correct me by pointing out that it’s in fact not raining. We offer and receive corrections all the time. We improve the way of phrasing something we’ve seen by finding more adequate phrases. We can differentiate between grammatical and stylistical corrections as corrections of form as opposed to content, but often the two are difficult to keep apart. The phrase “it’s raining” is formally correct when used among English language speakers, but what makes it correct for these users is how it’s applied to a shared experience of the world (in which it happens to rain). If I ask you to refine your phrasing, suggesting for instance that it’s really pouring and not just raining, I can mean at once to pay attention to your experience and the conventional way of expressing such an experience in the English language. When you think about your experience and modes of expression, you’ll likely involve linguistic sources (your language conventions, literature, the sociolect your audience is supposedly expecting etc.) as well as non-linguistic sources (whatever you can gather from other sense-modalities). Most importantly, you’ll involve relations of applying linguistic resources to non-linguistic experiences. In other words, we relate linguistic conventions to (non-linguistic) facts. ChatGPT, by contrast, doesn’t do that. Having no relation to the world, it is confined to linguistic resources; it has no other sense modalities and it has no way of relating linguistic to non-linguistic facts. In other words, while it can improve on formulations, it cannot be corrected. Put in Wittgensteinian terms, whatever seems correct to ChatGPT is correct – and that means that there is no sense of distinguishing between correct and incorrect. (There is an intriguing piece about learning this the hard way.) Thus, we shouldn’t even say that it’s “hallucinating” when it’s “making things up”. There is no meaningful distinction for this device between hallucinating and getting things right in the first place.

Now I doubt that I’m spreading any news here. So why is this worth saying? Because both the language of ChatGPT and of the merchants of this technology constantly suggests that this device is learning, being corrected and improved. Yes, it’s being improved at what it does already, but it’s not improved in any other sense. This lingo tricks many of us into thinking that the improvement is of the kind that we are familiar with. Just like AI is now increasingly taken to be a meaningful, sexy or caring interlocutor, it tricks many of us into assuming that it could “learn” by being “corrected”. But learning, for humans, always involves a relation to the world. The great confusion about ChatGPT, then, is that it would be improved in any way that we would try to improve our own way of expressing ourselves.

How does this affect teaching (philosophy)? There are many pieces about the decline of the humanities in the face of ChatGPT and related devices. Given how this technology diffuses our sense of authorship and our reading culture, I’m inclined to think that our whole way of cherishing text production and reading will go out of fashion and become a nerdy niche. Just like long electric guitar solos or keyboard solos, which seemingly were ubiquitous in the 70s and 80s, are now a thing for a few nerds on youtube. So as I see it, the problem is not that students are faking texts; the problem is that most texts are considered irrelevant. Along with the skills and features that go into their production. Being able to write good texts is already irrelevant in world where so-called leaders get by without even glancing at their briefings. But let’s stick to the current story. My hunch is that the loss of corrigibility ingrained in ChatGPT is the outcome of a larger trend that was clearly recognised in Harry Frankfurt’s On Bullshit as early as 1986: Once you realise that you can convince without sticking to techniques of truth-evaluation, you can disregard truth altogether. After all, the question is not in what way ChatGPT is incorrigible. We can figure that out quickly. The question is why are we letting ourselves be corrected by a device that is incorrigible.

But that’s a question for nerds. Mastering long written texts, let alone writing them, then, doesn’t seem to hold much of a promise for anything now. This is not just because students have incentives to fake their work; it’s because there are hardly any incentives to produce such work in the first place. Why do you need to learn to play the piano if you have keyboards with automatic accompaniment? Of course, you might get sick of their sounds quickly. But who cares if that’s all that’s on offer?

So again: the problem is not cheating; it’s irrelevance. Writing this, I feel like a fossil decrying the loss of its natural habitat. And that’s probably what it is: An old man whining that no one recognises the beauties hidden in the art he cherishes. So what? So what indeed?

So what’s left for teachers? If you don’t worry too much about plagiarized texts, you might adjust your energy towards getting people to think, not by by analysing texts, but by coming up with good prompts for ChatGPT or by enhancing your techniques of video editing. In other words, while certain products (such as well-written essays) will simply be done by ChatGPT in the future, you can support students in improving “their” work by focussing on helping them to use this and the AI devices to come as a good tool. The remaining question is, though, what this tool is good for, once we admit that writing texts is irrelevant?

What does it say? The supposed objectivity of written texts

“… interpretation is the source of texts, facts, authors, and intentions.”

Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in This Class?

Do you remember when you first committed some of your own thoughts to paper? Perhaps you kept a diary, perhaps you wrote poems or lyrics or crafted a letter to a friend. Perhaps you had worked on the aesthetics of your handwriting. Anyway, there it was. Something that you had written could now be read and, of course, misread in a distant place during your absence. This striking distance became even more evident to me when I had seen my words, not in my clumsy handwriting, but in the typeface of a word-processor. Imagining that someone would read my words not as my personal scribblings but as a text in an authoritative typeface, made me at once proud but also seemed to diminish my personal impact on the text. In any case, the absence or possible absence of the author from something written, I suppose, is what turns texts into something objective. As I see it, texts become objective when they can be read independently of the writer, of what the writer says and thinks. If this is correct, it seems that written texts are fundamentally different from spoken texts or thoughts. In turn, this makes me wonder whether it’s written texts alone that afford the interpretive openness allowing for different readings or interpretations as we know them in the humanities of our time. In what follows, I would like pursue some perhaps naïve musings on this issue.

Thinking versus speaking versus thought?

If you observe what you say in contrast to how you write, you’ll probably notice a stark difference between spoken versus written language. While academics sometimes seem to try and imitate the grammatical standards of their written language in their speech, we quickly notice that the grammatical rules, word choices and other aspects are vastly different. Pondering on this issue quickly brought me back to the ancient and medieval doctrine of “three kinds of language”, according to which thought is expressed through spoken language and spoken language is signified by written language. But once you notice how different already speaking and writing really are, it’s difficult to give much credit to said doctrine. The very idea that writing is a set of signs of what is spoken strikes me as a very impoverished understanding of the difference. This makes me wonder when written language was first considered as a set of signs independently from spoken language. Following Stephan Meier-Oeser’s work, my hunch is that William of Ockham and Pierre D’Ailly in their logical treatises are among the first to deem written signs as independent from spoken language. (Sadly, it’s not entirely clear why they hold this in contrast to many of their fellow thinkers.) Now, once you think of written language as independent from speech it seems that you acknowledge something that could be the objectivity of the written text. Of course, long before the written text is acknowledged as an independent signifier, there have been sacred texts like the Bible that were considered objective in some sense. But experiencing our very own writings as independent from our speaking must do something to the way we think about texts and their interpretability more generally, or so I think.

The written text as an objective ‘thing’

The way we encounter written texts or books (be it on paper or screens) seems to present them as distal objects, independent from how we interact about or with them. Like the table in front of you, the book on your desk or in your pdf isn’t altered when you look away. This experience is certainly at least in part responsible for the common assumption that texts and their meanings are stable items independently of us. Likewise, our experience of reading is commonly thought of as grasping something external to us or our interactions. But why? While I myself have begun to think that reading is in many ways a matter primarily dependent on interactions between readers, I equally wonder how written texts, non-sacred texts in particular, have earned the status of independent carriers of meaning that can be hit or missed. Our current reading practices inside and outside of academia seem to corroborate this assumption. – (What does it say? This is a question that silences classes but equally fosters the pretence that texts are stable unchanging sources of meaning that provide all the necessary constraints for possible interpretations. Yet, not knowing whether we’re reading a recipe or a a poem, we are probably unable to tell the genres apart without context. “Context” – this harmless little term obscuring all the greatly important factors allowing for recognition, and constantly underestimated as a “side issue” when it comes to competing readings!) But what does it take for a written text to be actually seen as independent in such ways?

The advent of ChatGPT

Investigating the question of the objectivity of texts will take some time. But currently it seems that this objectivity becomes undone in quite unexpected manners: the advent of chatGPT does not only call into question the production of texts through proper authorship. Rather, it also calls into question the independence of written language as a system of signs, thriving on a supposed text-world relation having been taken for granted for a very long time. Reading a piece of text, we can no longer presume that it was produced by a person having a relation to the world, to themselves and to other people making it a rational item, interpretable by rational beings, or simply readers.

How did we get here?