The so-called Jaffa Cake is a delicious structure consisting of a small sponge with a chocolate cap covering a veneer of orange jelly. It is arguably Britain’s greatest invention after the steam engine and the light bulb. But is a Jaffa Cake actually a biscuit? Important? Yeah, when you set out to make the world’s biggest one.
Read more "Cake or Biscuit? Only the Philosopher Knows for Sure"
Philosopher David Chalmers worries we are on the brink of creating a world devoid of consciousness. Discussions of the emergence of superintelligent machines often presume that eventually AIs will become conscious, but why think that? Instead, we could be creating a world endowed with artificial intelligence but not actual consciousness.
Pierre Bayle was one of the most famous and respected philosophers of his day, but few today know much about him. Anthony Gottlieb, author of a recent book about the early Enlightenment, The Dream of Enlightenment, argues that Bayle should be better known, particularly for his views on religious toleration, scepticism, and the secular state. (audio)
An interview with philosopher Jessica Leech.
Read more "What Kind of a Fact Is a Flying Pig for Kant for Example?"
Could you find your brain on a map? Could you find a map on your brain? Do we have maps in the brain? How else can we understand how we find our way around? Neuroscientist Kate Jeffery discusses recent findings about how animals represent the world around them. (audio)
We all want to do the right thing. But from suicide bombers to Catholic priests, we have never been able to agree on what the right thing is. Should we give up on morality and see it as a fiction designed to justify beliefs? Or, despite our disagreements, is it still the most important tool we have to measure human behaviour? (video)
Is the targeted killing of ISIS figures morally justified? Although some have very strong convictions about this question and they might think answering it to be quite simple, a fuller examination reveals it to be a rather complicated matter. The issue of whether such killings are justified breaks down into at least four different questions which we would want to have answers for.
Wittgenstein’s grave, Jeremy Bentham’s Auto-Icon, Karl Marx’s flat in Soho, London… Welcome to Philosophy Sites a podcast all about places that are linked with philosophers. (audio)
Read more "Marx’s Soho, Bentham’s Booth & Wittgenstein’s Grave"
An interview with philosopher Daniel Dennett on the fragility of civilisation in face of overwhelming technological change, and, inevitably, politics.
For singer-songwriter José González it is the Philosophy Bites podcast. Now that’s what we call style.
A review of Jason Neidleman’s Rousseau’s Ethics of Truth: A Sublime Science of Simple Souls. Neidleman conceives of Rousseau as engaged in a project that he calls an “ethics of truth”. This ethics of truth consists in the conviction that knowledge of how best to live and how to achieve a state of communion with a variety of different objects (other people, nature, God) is available to human beings provided they listen to the simple voice of nature and conscience and are not distracted by the artificial obstacles that society places in the way of self-knowledge and the good life.
Agnotology is the study of wilful acts to spread confusion and deceit, usually to sell a product or win favour. The BBC talks with historian and agnotologist, Robert Proctor.
Conscious thought allows us to think about the world, but also about counterfactual situations. It is part of what makes us human. Keith Frankish discusses the nature of conscious thought. (audio)
Italy’s greatest poet Dante Alighieri was also something of a philosopher, as we learn from his Convivio and of course the Divine Comedy.
Nineteen-year-old Nobel Laureate Malala Yousafzai aims to study philosophy at Oxford.
We need … to investigate, and to cherish, whatever helps us to see the uneven and often unlovely destiny of human beings in the world with humor, tenderness, and delight, rather than with absolutist rage for an impossible sort of perfection. Maria Popova shares highlights from Martha Nussbaum’s book Political Emotions.
Local coverage of philosopher Jennifer Lackey’s ethics course for maximum security inmates.
You could say that life is a gamble—from the casino to the surgery. Yet few fully comprehend the concept of probability. It might seem overly mathematical, but lurking underneath are some far-reaching questions about cause and effect; freedom and determinism; and whether a roulette wheel will necessarily spin red after rolling black thirty times. Darrell Rowbottom knows that in life—as in the casino—the stakes can be high. (audio)
And, since this is philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith, what can octopuses teach us about it?
‘What is a woman?’ may seem like a straightforward question, but as Amia Srinivasan explains, it is not quite as easy to answer as you might think. Here she discusses key feminist ideas about what a woman is, beginning with Simone de Beauvoir’s ideas on the topic. (audio)
Real estate agents have an actionable code of ethical conduct and must complete ethics coursework every four years. But how well is it working?
If we reflect on the stories we tell about ourselves, both to others and to ourselves, we may well find out things about who we are that complicate the view we would prefer to be identified with.
Philosopher Kristie Dotson discusses the relation between information and political oppression. Being oppressed isn’t just about having some of your rights denied — sometimes it’s about imbalances in who important information gets shared with, or imbalances in what kind of information gets shared. The philosophical term for these imbalances is ‘epistemic oppression.’ (audio)
Buddhist thought holds that at core there is no real self. This strikes the western ear as thoroughly counterintuitive—after all, we have memories, bodies, thoughts and other forms of self continuity. Scottish sage David Hume had no qualms about such a radical thought, and his work points to the real possibility of integrating eastern and western insights. (audio)
Insult and mockery is dehumanizing when wielded by the powerful. To resist, the disempowered should reject it, not return it.
Take it slowly and notice things: it’s a simple prescription that could lay the groundwork for the next stage in robotics machine learning, if not philosophy itself. Indigenous digital innovator Angie Abdilla is applying old ways to new challenges in perception, mind, and machine intelligence. Meanwhile, a slower approach to philosophy itself is also being explored by Michelle Boulous Walker. (audio)
The traditional view of evil is attractive because it exonerates us normal people; we can feel comfortable in our decency. But in this way, we fail to assess our own choices and character honestly. We caricature evil as something that only comes from people with rotten souls, so when we think about evil, we envision something that by definition excludes us. But as the philosopher Bernard Williams once said, “The modern world…has made evil, like other things, a collective enterprise.”
Plato’s dialogues are saturated with references to love. The way in which discussion of this theme is interwoven with wider ethical reflection suggests that he thinks that if we are to lead a good life, then it is a matter of the utmost importance to be clear about passionate love, or desire, what he calls eros.
Some neuroscientists are starting to come around to what many philosophers have urged: if you want to understand the mind, you can’t just look at brains.
Alfred Mele has spent four years and four million dollars trying to get to the bottom of free will. His mega project attempted to understand free will in philosophy, science and religion. One view he holds to be true is that free will is a bit like fuel: it comes in grades, depending on what you think free will actually is. And he’s certain that science has some way to go if it wants to debunk free will. (audio)
Philosopher Elselijn Kingma discusses the metaphysics of pregnancy. (video)
The relation between art and morality is complex. Eileen John explores some of the ways that art, and literature in particular, can explore questions about how we should live. (audio)
Are we conscious during dreamless sleep? Are there states of consciousness that persist throughout deep, dreamless sleep? A recent discussion in cognitive science suggest the answer may be ‘Yes’. Philosopher Alva Noe discusses.
Jacksonville’s director of ethics, Carla Miller, drafted the city’s code of ethics and has become a global authority on intragovernmental ethics. According to Miller, most “of the public trust in government is produced (or lost) at the local level.”
Just when we think we’ve outgrown our naive belief in real evil… We don’t think it is in our genes and people don’t get possessed. Yet across media and culture, from Star Wars to ISIS, evil still holds us strangely captive. Why does the devil seem to have the best tunes? Is the battle between good and evil an essential part of being human after all? Philosopher Rebecca Roache joins a psychologist and an author for an evil discussion. (video)
Why is it that art of some kind is found in every human culture? Stephen Davies discusses a variety of evolutionary explanations. (audio)
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a new entry on moral particularism and moral generalism. Among the many questions that arise in the attempt to come to philosophical grips with morality is what role, if any, moral principles have to play. Moral generalists think morality is best understood in terms of moral principles; moral particularists deny this. To many people, ordinary moral practice seems suffused with principles (keep your promises; do not steal; do unto others as you would have them do unto you). To many moral theorists, the central task of moral theory has been to articulate and defend moral principles, or, perhaps, a single ultimate moral principle (maximize impersonal happiness; act only on maxims that can be willed as universal law). The debate between particularists and generalists thus has the potential to force a reassessment of both moral theory and moral practice.