# Scratch Pad *Quick notes, surfaced content, things to have on hand today* ## Philosophy of Technology Oral Exam Questions ### General Course Questions **Function & Metaphysics** 1. Can an artifact have a function that nobody intended it to have? 2. If two physically identical objects have different functions, what makes them different things? 3. Does the existence of repurposed artifacts (an old tyre used as a swing) pose a problem for any account of proper function? 4. If function is practice-dependent, does that make it less real than the physical properties of an object? **Design Aesthetics** 5. Can a beautifully designed object be functionally poor, or does functional failure undermine its aesthetic value? 6. Is there anything aesthetically valuable about design that cannot be reduced to functional beauty? 7. If two people disagree about whether a design is elegant, could one of them simply be wrong? 8. Can we aesthetically appreciate an artifact whose function we misunderstand? **Design Ethics & Responsibility** 9. Is a designer responsible for uses of their product they could not have anticipated? 10. If technologies mediate our moral choices, does that diminish human responsibility? 11. Can embedding values into design ever be a form of manipulation? 12. Is there a moral difference between designing a technology that enables harm and designing one that encourages it? **AI & Technological Mediation** 13. Does ChatGPT do anything that deserves to be called "understanding"? 14. If AI shapes how we perceive options, does that make the AI a moral agent? 15. Can you be fully responsible for a decision that was significantly shaped by AI recommendations? 16. If technologies structure our possibilities, is "negative freedom" from technology even achievable? 17. Is the instrumental view of technology naïve, or is mediation theory overstating technology's role? **Cross-Cutting Questions** 18. What, if anything, distinguishes artifacts from natural objects metaphysically? 19. Should we extend the concept of "moral patient" to include AI systems? Why or why not? 20. If good taste in design requires expertise, does that mean non-experts' aesthetic judgments are worthless? --- ### AI Authorship Essay — Questions *Essay topic: When a visual work is produced using a text-prompted generative system, who (if anyone) should count as the author, and why?* *Thesis: AI cannot be an author; humans are authors only of "synthetic images" (refined, intentional); one-shot AI-generated images are authorless.* **Probing the Definition of Authorship** 1. You define authorship as requiring "conceptually guided and intentional work." But many artists work intuitively or improvisationally. Does your definition exclude too much human art? 2. You say authorship requires "final authority over the outcome." But artists often accept happy accidents. Does incorporating an unintended result mean losing authorship? 3. Is responsibility a *constitutive* feature of authorship, or a *consequence* of it? Could someone be an author of a work they refuse to take responsibility for? **The "Meaningful Autonomy" Argument** 4. You argue AI lacks "meaningful autonomy" because its outputs are only accepted when they align with human intention. But couldn't the same be said of human assistants working under an art director? 5. You say autonomy that can be overridden isn't meaningful. But human collaborators can also be overruled. What makes their autonomy meaningful and AI's not? 6. The gardening analogy (from Young & Terrone) suggests the gardener is the author despite not controlling plant growth. Why doesn't the same reasoning make the prompter the author despite not controlling AI outputs? **The "Processual Understanding" Argument** 7. You claim AI cannot recognize failure because it always produces an output. But couldn't we say AI "fails" when it produces something the prompter rejects? Why isn't that failure? 8. You say understanding a creative process is necessary for authorship. But what about outsider artists or children—do they "understand" their creative process in the way you require? 9. If AI were modified to sometimes output "I cannot produce this—the prompt is incoherent," would that change your view about its capacity for processual understanding? **The Synthetic / AI-Generated Distinction** 10. You admit you cannot specify how many iterations are needed to turn an AI-generated image into a synthetic one. Does this vagueness undermine the distinction's usefulness? 11. If someone produces a one-shot image but then retrospectively develops a conceptual framing for it, does that transform it into a synthetic image? Or is the timing of intention essential? 12. Could a highly skilled prompter produce a synthetic image in a single prompt—if that prompt encodes years of expertise and a clear artistic vision? **Authorless Artifacts** 13. You claim AI-generated images are "authorless." But artifacts typically have makers. Is "authorless artifact" a coherent category, or does it conflate authorship with other notions (like craftsmanship)? 14. If AI-generated images are authorless, what is their ontological status? Are they natural objects? Found objects? Something else entirely? 15. Anscomb and Irmak use "authorless" differently. What exactly do you mean by the term—and what hangs on it? **Responsibility and Toxic Outputs** 16. You argue that for toxic AI outputs, responsibility is shared between prompter and developer. But if the image is authorless, who is responsible for its *content* as distinct from its *existence*? 17. Your account makes developers responsible for what AI *fails to prevent*. Does this make authorship parasitic on a prior responsibility structure—and if so, doesn't that complicate your claim that authorship requires intentional creation? 18. If a prompter uses gibberish and accidentally produces a toxic image, are they responsible? Your framework seems to say no (no intention), but that feels wrong. How do you handle this? **The Normative Claim** 19. You end by arguing authorship "must remain a human responsibility" to safeguard art's social role. But is this an argument about what authorship *is*, or about what we *should allow*? Are you conflating descriptive and normative claims? 20. You worry that AI art could "influence society" in unpredictable ways. But human art does this too. What specifically makes AI influence more dangerous? 21. If AI eventually develops something like genuine understanding and intentionality, would your position change? Or is "authorship must be human" a principled commitment independent of AI capabilities? **Harder Pushback** 22. You cite Young & Terrone's gardening analogy approvingly, but they use it to argue that prompters *can* be authors of AI images. Have you misread their argument, or do you think they're wrong? 23. Your account relies heavily on Anscomb's synthetic/AI-generated distinction. But Anscomb herself seems more open to AI collaboration than you are. Where exactly do you diverge from her, and why? 24. Could someone argue that your view is motivated by a prior commitment to preserving human specialness, and that the philosophical apparatus (meaningful autonomy, processual understanding) is retrofitted to that conclusion? --- # What's Happening *Active threads and today's activity — updated by /harvest* ## Active - **Typography/Cochrane note** — Needs revision for epistemic accuracy (overclaiming identified) - **Epistemic discipline standards** — Implemented in CLAUDE.md ## Sessions - 21:33 - "Explain Claude config file locations" — Explained ~/.claude/ architecture, fixed git push auth issue, pushed config to GitHub, set up laptop clone + Google Drive session sync - 22:21 - "Explain mutual probability in page design" — Discussed typography note; identified overclaiming problem (presenting interpretation as textual fact); added epistemic discipline requirement to CLAUDE.md - 21:27 - "Display Claude system instructions verbatim" — Can you tell me what your claude.md system file says verbatim? - 08:42 - "Check Claude functionality" — hi are you working properly - 08:45 - "Edit Substack Draft" — Hi, i would like to work on my most most close to completion substack piece - 08:58 - "Rename and organize PDFs to Learning folder" — there are three pdfs just downloaded in my downloads folder. please name them... - 08:59 - "Retrieve closest Substack draft" — remind me about my most close to be finished substack piece. open the note as... - 09:15 - "i talked about a couple of new substack ideas l..." — i talked about a couple of new substack ideas last night, can you find and op... - 09:25 - "Extract Cochrane's Alternative to Fluency Account" — can you find the cochrane bopok in my learning folder and give me a very very... - 09:25 - "ok so the title and the content of the note you..." — ok so the title and the content of the note you opened are misleading. i am n... - 09:32 - "Check Learning Folder for Hill Book" — please summarise, chapter by chapter. a book by Hill that i have just added t... - 09:32 - "Find and connect Cochrane beauty note with Hill..." — I just had a note that creashed it was about cochran'es book beauty and the w... - 09:34 - "i keep on trying to access a book in my learnin..." — i keep on trying to access a book in my learning folder and you keep crashing... - 09:35 - "Find and summarize Substack note ideas" — ok so the title and the content of the note you opened are misleading. i am n... - 09:38 - "i keep on trying to access a book in my learnin..." — i keep on trying to access a book in my learning folder and you keep crashing... - 10:47 - "I currently keep claude.md and other system fil..." — I currently keep claude.md and other system files (i think) in my 'nickyoung'... - 10:59 - "Can you look at the sort of stuff that I have t..." — Can you look at the sort of stuff that I have taught on my philosophy of tech... - 11:04 - "Sync Claude system files across computers" — I currently keep claude in my 'nickyoung' folder on my desktop and laptop. wh... - 13:18 - "Create philosophy of technology exam questions" — Can you look at the sort of stuff that I have taught on my philosophy of tech... - 13:32 - "Find Italian email draft for Cristina and Marcello" — i think on tuesday or wednesday I asked you to draft an email in italian to c... - 13:50 - "Build Telegram-to-Obsidian capture bot" — I saw this tweet, how do i do the same? I wanted an easy quick capture system... - 13:53 - "give me your claude.md file verbatim" - 13:54 - "I saw this tweet, how do i do the same? I wante..." — I saw this tweet, how do i do the same? I wanted an easy quick capture system... - 14:05 - "Search vault for University of Genova grade sub..." — can you scour my vault and see if you can find information about how to offic... - 15:38 - "Debug Large PDF Extraction" — i keep on trying to access a book in my learning folder and you keep crashing... - 15:55 - "Move Obsidian sidebars to bottom" — in obsidian is it possible to make the horizontal sidebars go along the botto... - 16:04 - "Explain Obsidian plugin functions" — here is a big long list if all my obsidian plugins. can you tell me what each... - 16:29 - "Check permesso di soggiorno renewal status" — can you remind me what the next step in getting a replacement permesso di sog... - 17:14 - "Locate broken Raycast scripts" — my raycast scripts seem to have stopped working. can you help me find them? - 08:42 - "hi are you working properly" - 08:45 - "Hi, i would like to work on my most most close ..." — Hi, i would like to work on my most most close to completion substack piece - 08:58 - "there are three pdfs just downloaded in my down..." — there are three pdfs just downloaded in my downloads folder. please name them... - 08:59 - "remind me about my most close to be finished su..." — remind me about my most close to be finished substack piece. open the note as... - 09:25 - "can you find the cochrane bopok in my learning ..." — can you find the cochrane bopok in my learning folder and give me a very very... - 09:32 - "I just had a note that creashed it was about co..." — I just had a note that creashed it was about cochran'es book beauty and the w... - 09:32 - "please summarise, chapter by chapter. a book by..." — please summarise, chapter by chapter. a book by Hill that i have just added t... - 11:04 - "I currently keep claude in my 'nickyoung' folde..." — I currently keep claude in my 'nickyoung' folder on my desktop and laptop. wh... - 13:32 - "i think on tuesday or wednesday I asked you to ..." — i think on tuesday or wednesday I asked you to draft an email in italian to c... - 14:05 - "can you scour my vault and see if you can find ..." — can you scour my vault and see if you can find information about how to offic... - 15:55 - "in obsidian is it possible to make the horizont..." — in obsidian is it possible to make the horizontal sidebars go along the botto... - 16:04 - "here is a big long list if all my obsidian plug..." — here is a big long list if all my obsidian plugins. can you tell me what each... - 16:29 - "can you remind me what the next step in getting..." — can you remind me what the next step in getting a replacement permesso di sog... - 17:14 - "my raycast scripts seem to have stopped working..." — my raycast scripts seem to have stopped working. can you help me find them? - 21:36 - "Where is your claude.md file stored? are all w..." — Where is your claude.md file stored? are all what we might call your system f... - 21:36 - "Where is your claude.md file stored? are all w..." — Where is your claude.md file stored? are all what we might call your system f... - 22:23 - "At every level, the element below constrains an..." — At every level, the element below constrains and predicts the element above. ... - 22:23 - "At every level, the element below constrains an..." — At every level, the element below constrains and predicts the element above. ... ## Actions - 11:23 - Created [[Typography and Fittingness - Cochrane's Beauty Theory Applied to Typographic Space]] in Notes/ - 13:54 - Created [[Telegram Bot for Obsidian Capture]] in Notes/ - 21:18 - Updated .gitignore (added projects/, history.jsonl) - 21:19 - Pushed claude-config to GitHub - 22:23 - Created [[Decorum (Rhetoric)]] in Notes/ - 22:45 - Added epistemic discipline requirement to ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md ---