(Guardian, 2025)
In his essay, “Why Mainstream Contemporary Professional Academic Philosophy Could Be Done By Chatbots,” Robert Hanna argues that if formal methods really are central to contemporary philosophy, then mainstream contemporary professional academic philosophy could be done by the most sophisticated chatbots—say, by ChatGPT-5, or whatever. In order to prove this, he reproduces an essay that he wrote in 2015, under the pseudonym “Z,” and posted on the blog Against Professional Philosophy. It provides a 20-step algorithm for writing publishable philosophy papers that any ChatGPT-like chatbot could implement, at least up to step 19. In Hanna’s opinion, this essay is an important primary-source document in the history of 21st century philosophy, which is why he reproduces it essentially unchanged and not updated, except for some minor formatting differences.
REFERENCE
(Guardian, 2025). Convery, S. “The Philosopher’s Machine: My Conversation with Peter Singer’s AI Chatbot.” The Guardian. 17 April. Available online at URL = <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/18/the-philosophers-machine-my-conversation-with-peter-singer-ai-chatbot>.
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