Event Themes
Explore the potential philosophical themes for this year's Philosothon. The final theme(s) will be selected based on participant votes during registration.
Algorithmic Aesthetics: Beauty in the Age of Machine Creation
Can an algorithm be an artist? Dive into the shifting landscape of creativity, authorship, and beauty as machines begin to generate art, challenging our very understanding of aesthetic value.
Algorithmic Governance: Authority Without Autonomy?
When code makes the rules: Explore the complex questions of authority, autonomy, and justice that arise when algorithms increasingly govern our social and political lives.
Attention Economies: The Commodification of Consciousness
Your focus is their profit. Unpack the ethical, political, and existential consequences of the digital world's relentless battle for our attention and the commodification of consciousness itself.
Cyborg Futures: Enhancement, Embodiment, and Posthumanism
Human, machine, or something new? Interrogate the blurring lines of embodiment, identity, and enhancement as technology merges with biology. What does it mean to be human in a cyborg future?
Digital Commons: Rethinking Property in Information Space
Who owns information? Challenge traditional notions of property and explore the ethical frameworks needed to navigate the tensions between digital enclosure and the creation of open knowledge commons.
Digital Doppelgangers: Identity and Authenticity Online
Avatars, profiles, data shadows: Who are you online? Investigate the fragmentation of the self and the meaning of authenticity in the age of digital doppelgangers.
Digital Ethics: Beyond Utilitarian Frameworks
Beyond simple cost-benefit analysis: Develop richer ethical frameworks to address the unique moral challenges posed by digital technologies, from privacy and bias to the very nature of online interaction.
Digital Intimacy: Technology, Connection, and the Transformation of Interpersonal Relations
Connection through code? Explore how screens, platforms, and AI companions transform love, friendship, and vulnerability. Can genuine intimacy flourish in digital spaces?
Extended Perception: Technology and Phenomenological Experience
How does technology change what we see, hear, and feel? Investigate the ways tools and digital interfaces extend, mediate, or transform our embodied experience and relationship with reality.
Meaningful Futures: Meaning in a World Dominated by AI
Purpose outsourced? As AI optimizes life and automates tasks, investigate the future of human meaning, struggle, and flourishing in an increasingly intelligent world.
Military-Industrial Futurism: War, Capital, and the Shaping of AI Trajectories
War machines, smart futures: Uncover how military imperatives and defense funding shape the trajectory of AI and advanced technologies. Who controls the future we build?
Minds and Machines: Consciousness Beyond the Human
Could a machine truly think or feel? Grapple with the fundamental nature of mind, consciousness, and meaning as artificial intelligence grows increasingly sophisticated.
Technological Singularity: Philosophical Implications of Superintelligence
What happens when AI surpasses human intelligence? Confront the profound philosophical, ethical, and existential questions raised by the possibility of a technological singularity.
The Algorithmic Panopticon: Surveillance, Privacy, and Power
From Bentham to big data: How does algorithmic surveillance reshape power, privacy, and control? Explore the invisible mechanisms of the digital panopticon and their challenge to autonomy.