Digest Week 7 Michaelmas Term 2026
MT26, Week 7 (22 November - 28 November)
If you have entries for the weekly Digest, please send information to admin@philosophy.ox.ac.uk by midday, Tuesday the week before the event.
For events occurring at the Institute for Ethics in AI, see here.
Notices
Other Philosophy events, including those taking place elsewhere in the university and beyond
Human Self-Understanding in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Speaker: John-Stewart Gordon (Kaunas University of Technology)
Date: Monday, 23 November, 4-5:30pm
Venue: 0.079 Seminar Room, Ground Floor, The Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities
Abstract: The rapid development of artificial intelligence is transforming not only academic disciplines such as law, medicine, philosophy, and ethics, but also the ways in which human beings understand their place in the world. This transformation becomes particularly significant with the prospect of increasingly sophisticated AI systems and humanoid robots whose intellectual capacities may eventually equal or surpass those of human beings. From a theological perspective, these developments raise fundamental questions about the traditional understanding of humanity as created in the image of God (imago Dei) and as occupying a distinctive place within Creation. Human beings are now creating artificial entities that may possess capacities traditionally regarded as central to human distinctiveness, including rationality, autonomy, creativity, and perhaps even personhood. This raises the question of whether humanity’s special status derives simply from having been created by God, from the particular manner in which human beings were created, or from certain capacities and characteristics attributed to them. The presentation will examine whether artificially created beings could challenge traditional conceptions of humanity as the “crown of Creation.” If human beings create entities that resemble them in morally and intellectually significant respects, how should these entities be situated within a theological account of Creation? Would the emergence of an artificial species with superior intellectual capacities diminish humanity’s status, or does human dignity remain independent of comparative intelligence? What, moreover, would be the relationship between such artificial beings and God? By addressing these questions, the presentation explores how artificial intelligence may require us to reconsider human self-understanding, the meaning of the imago Dei, and the theological significance of humanity’s growing role as a creator of intelligent beings.
Avicenna Reading Group
Convenor: Ibrahim Safri
Date: Tuesday, 24 November, 2–3:30pm
Venue: Magdalen College, McFarlane Library
The theory of time remains one of the most complex and significant subjects of inquiry, central to both philosophical and physical discourse globally. Throughout the history of world philosophy, this concept has been continually refined, spanning Late Antiquity and Neoplatonism through to Islamic, Medieval, and Early Modern philosophical traditions. Within the global corpus of Arabic philosophy, diverse interpretations of time have emerged, shaped by three primary perspectives that influenced Islamic medieval conceptions of this theory. This reading class will focus on Avicenna’s The Physics of The Healing, in which he presents various notions of time before establishing his own account.
This MT26, and following a comprehensive introduction to the concept of time in global Arabic philosophy, we will continue with Chapter 11, on the Essence of Time.
Text: Avicenna, The Physics of The Healing; a Parallel English-Arabic Text. Translated by: Jon McGinnis. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2009.
Wittgenstein Reading Group
Wittgenstein’s Remarks on Colour.
Convenor: Richard Gipps
Date: Tuesday, 24 November, 5–7pm
Venue: Cherwell Room, St Hilda's College
Please contact Richard Gipps (richard.gipps@bfriars.ox.ac.uk) to enquire about attending the meeting and the relevant passages to read.