What Is the Self?
In the East, it is often argued there is no meaning of self that is independent of our relations to others. The self is irreducibly social.
The Anatomy of Melancholy
An extraordinary volume appeared in 1621. Robert Burton’s opus The Anatomy of Melancholy might seem an oddity nowadays but it could just have something valuable to say to our world where depression is considered a scourge. Philosopher Jennifer Radden has been dissecting the canon on melancholia all the way back to Hippocratic fragments, and she sees Burton’s door-stopper up there with the best of them. (audio)
Moral Radicalism
Stories of extreme do-gooders are both inspiring and unnerving. So how altruistic must one be?
Rethinking Neuroscience and Free Will
A new finding casts an old one in a very different, more free-will-friendly light.
Philosodogs!
Behind every great philosopher is an even better dog. Philosopdogs: a blog about dogs and the philosophers who love them.
Life Sentences Are Irrational
Philosopher Jennifer Lackey argues that life sentences don’t in the end make sense. Condemning a person to be in prison until death fails to appreciate the deep unknowability of how our future selves will be related to our present and past selves.
Talk to the hand
We don’t commonly think of procreation as a moral issue. But why not? When you think about it, creating another person seems like a morally weighty thing to do. And we tend to think that procreation under certain conditions would be irresponsible, selfish, or reckless. Might there also be cases where procreation is morally impermissible? Philosopher Rivka Weinberg discusses themes from her recent book The Risk of a Lifetime: How, When and Why Procreation May Be Permissible. (audio)
Space Aliens: Not Even Green
What do real space aliens look like? We were kind of hoping the answer would be ‘David Bowie’, but no such luck. Philosopher Susan Schneider is here to straighten us out.
Disability and Health Care Rationing
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a new entry on disability and health care rationing. In the 1990s philosophers, in particular bioethicists, debated the broad question of the justice of health care resource allocation, and in particular the ethical pros and cons of the dominant rationing strategy based on cost effectiveness analysis (CEA) with benefit characterized in terms of “quality of life”. A dominant theme in this literature was whether a pre-existing health state, or resulting health outcome, should be taken into account when allocating health resources. More specifically, the debate centered on whether a person’s disability should be taken into account, or whether doing so would be discriminatory or unfair.
When Everyone Was Your Ancestor
That would be about 5,000 years ago. Everybody alive back then was your ancestor (no one’s). And the same is true of everyone alive today. “At this point in history we all share exactly the same set of ancestors.” To make matters more tenuous, you actually share no DNA with the vast majority of your ancestors. It is time to rethink our ideas about geneology and family ancestry.
Neoplatonism
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a new entry on Neoplatonism. The term “Neoplatonism” refers to a philosophical school of thought that first emerged and flourished in the Greco-Roman world of late antiquity, roughly from the time of the Roman Imperial Crisis to the Arab conquest, i.e., the middle of the 3rd to the middle of the 7th century.
On Categorizing Mental Disorders
Are mental disorders like other illnesses? Can they be adequately categorized in relation to a set of symptoms? Steven E. Hyman discusses some philosophical questions that arise from the widely-used DSM-5. (audio)
Girlfriend, Mother, Professor?
“I’m not their mother. And I’m not their girlfriend either. I’m their university professor. At times I encounter students, both male and female, who don’t quite grasp this, and I consequently find myself in a whole host of awkward situations… The problem is that my students lack the cultural scripts to know how to deal with our teacher-student relationship.” Philosopher Carol Hays explores the roots of this phenomenon.
Who’s afraid of inequality?
Inequality—declared President Obama—is the defining challenge of our time. That might be true, but is it a moral challenge as well? Many think so, and see the egalitarian distribution of economic resources as self-evidently just. But are we missing the point about where the moral principle lies when considering the wealth of the one per cent? Renowned philosopher Harry Frankfurt recently applied his forensic analytic skills to Bullshit. This time round his attention is trained on the ‘defining challenge’. (audio)
Camus on Terror
Albert Camus, the philosopher and author of “The Rebel” recognized that killing was, at times, unavoidable.
Philosophy in Mexico
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a new entry on philosophy in Mexico. Mexican philosophy has received the influence of different traditions of thought. These sources have been combined and transformed according to the specific problems and circumstances of Mexican life. The result has been a rich and original tradition of thought of over five centuries that, together with Peruvian philosophy, is the oldest of the Americas.
What Do We Owe Each Other?
Emmanuel Levinas, a philosopher who survived Nazism, can help shed light on our moral obligation to refugees and others in need.
What is it to dream?
Dreams—we all have them, even if we do forget them. But what are they exactly? Aristotle gave it them thought. And they certainly became serious business for Rene Descartes who, for a while, lost his epistemic equilibrium over the very idea. Understandable, as dreaming brings up a bunch of deeply philosophical matters that remain largely unresolved—from the nature of consciousness to personal identity and selfhood. Can you really dream that you are someone else? (audio)
“But My Rage Is the Machine”
It turns out there is a lot of untapped comedy in philosophical ideas. Welcome to @NeinQuarterly, a darkly comic Twitter account.
What Condition My Condition Is In
Philosopher Anthony Gillies talks about why the meaning of ‘if-then’ claims is a hot topic once again. (audio)
The Imperative of Pain
We have a commonsense story according to which pain has the function of reporting tissue damage — that something bad has happeneed / is happening to the body. Philosopher Colin Klein argues that this commonsense explanation is importantly mistaken. Pain is a “protective imperative” whose function is to protect the body, not alert you to bad things that have already happened to it. Klein discusses themes from his recent book What the Body Commands. (audio)
Men Above the Law
Philosopher Martha Nussbaum discusses the Cosby case and how far some men are from the reach of the law and offers some of her own hard-won advice.
Why Musicians Need Philosophy
Musicians need philosophy, argues Roger Scruton, because, “released from its old institutional and social foundations” our serious music becomes a music of ideas. “It is not music that we hear in the world of Stockhausen but philosophy … And the same is true of other art forms that are cut loose from their cultural and religious foundations.”
Sound and Vision
Philosopher Simon Critchely, who published a book on David Bowie in 2014, talks about what made Bowie a special figure for so many.
Blood Oil
Does it matter where our oil and other resources come from? Philosopher Leif Wenar, author of the recent book Blood Oil, argues that Western democracies are compromising themselves by buying oil either directly or indirectly from tyrants with atrocious records on human rights. There is a strong case against these trade relationships, and, practically, they could be ended very swiftly. (audio)
Philosophy of Waste
The concept of mottainai combines elements of Buddhism and Shinto to create a nuanced approach to the environment and wasteful practices. (audio)
Knowing When It Is Too Good to Be True
Lumosity has agreed to settle a deceptive advertising suit. There is no quick fix for mental strengt. “I hate to say I told you so”, says philosopher Alva Noe.
Epistemology of the Large Hadron Collider
A new interdisciplinary research group is aimed at exploring epistemological issues in connection with the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. The lead investigator and five of the twelve principals are philosophers. The group has just been awarded funding by the German government.
Is This Land Our Land?
The armed protesters in Oregon are presupposing certain ideas about property and ownership. But do this idea stand up to scrutiny. And it isn’t just about land. You probably think you justly own your phone and that it’s wrong for the government or anyone else to take it from you. But why is your phone your private property (just as the protesters think that that Oregon refuge land belongs to the local people there)?
The Right to Be Loved
Children need love as a part of their emotional and cognitive development, and their parents should love them. But do children have a right to be loved — as many national and international charters declare? And if the idea is philosophically sound, what implications has it for family, parenting, child-rearing, and adoption? Philosopher S. Matthew Liao discusses themes from his recent book The Right to Be Loved. (audio)
Philosophy With Velociraptors
Philosophy and dinosaurs. Is it philosophy of paleontology, or just really really really ancient philosophy?
Shrugging the Future
What would we be willing to sacrifice to prevent the catastrophes humanity now faces? And why are so many of us not doing so?
Life’s Vampiric Moments
…when choosing to become a vampire isn’t that far off from choosing to become a parent. Having a baby, taking that job, moving country, becoming a vampire: faced with life’s big choices what do you do? Well, you might seek counsel, weigh up the facts, find more evidence, or just sleep on it. Delving into the most recent work on decision theory, the nature of consciousness, and philosophy of mind, Laurie Paul has developed an account of those threshold moments where life is sure to change forever. (audio)
Harvard Med Prof Makes the Case for Philosophy Education
Dr. David Silbersweig, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, says today’s multidisciplinary world needs liberal arts — and philosophy in particular — more than ever.
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Feuding Physicists Turn to Philosophy for Help
Are theories that postulate a multiverse science? Is string theory science? Physicists and cosmologists have been debating the question for the past decade. Now the community is looking to philosophy for help.
Following the Way
Taoism (sometimes Daoism) is one of the great philosophical traditions of China. Lao-Tzu, commonly regarded as its founder, said that “Those who know, do not speak; those who speak, do not know.” The arguments that Taoist texts offer for skepticism may seem surprisingly modern. Yet these same texts also offer recommendations for certain ways of life over others. So what exactly is Taoism, and what are its main tenets? Is it a religion, a philosophy, or a way of life? How do Taoists reconcile endorsing a specific way of life with skepticism about human thinking? (audio)
Philosophy in Africa
Is there a distinctive African philosophy? Philosopher Katrin Flikschuh discusses philosophy in Africa. (audio)