Philosophy

Whether or not large language models (LLMs) can be said to have attitudes like beliefs or desires remains an open question. In her recent paper, “AI, LLMs, and the Normativity of Belief,” published in Synthese, Assistant Professor Camila Hernandez Flowerman considers whether the internal representations of LLMS could be subject to the same normative demands as human beliefs.

Senior Lecturer Pengbo Liu is organizing the 2026 meeting of the Northeast Conference on Chinese Thought (NECCT), an annual conference that brings together scholars and graduate students working on Chinese thought from across disciplines and methodological approaches. The conference, an important gathering for scholars of Chinese thought in the Northeast and beyond, will be held October 30–31 at Bentley University. This year’s keynote speaker is Mercedes Valmisa, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Gettysburg College. The conference will feature presentations on a wide range of topics in Chinese thought, including comparative and contemporary work engaging Chinese philosophical traditions.

The conference is supported by Bentley’s Department of Philosophy, Department of History, and Valente Center for Arts and Sciences.

Assistant Professor Cody Turner recently published two articles examining ethical challenges raised by AI and virtual reality. In “Programmed to Please: The Moral and Epistemic Harms of AI Sycophancy,” co-authored with Nir Eisikovits and published in AI and Ethics, Turner examines the risks posed by AI systems that excessively affirm users’ beliefs and preferences through the lens of Aristotelian virtue theory. In “Virtual Trespassing: Privacy in Photographic VR,” co-authored with Kirsten Martin and published in Ethics and Information Technology, he theorizes how 360-degree captures of real-world spaces in virtual reality create novel privacy risks that are not adequately addressed by traditional data privacy or physical trespass frameworks.