Philosophers on Awakening the Force
Seven professional philosophers (and Star Wars fans) review Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Serious Altruism
A new utilitarian movement is applying serious intellectual rigour to the tug of the heart strings. It’s called effective altruism, and it has little time for random deeds. (audio)
Are Emojis Words?
Apparently face-with-tears-of-joy emoji has been declared the Word of the Year by Oxford Dictionaries. Philosopher Alva Noe is … surprised.
Justice Without Retribution
Is justice without retribution possible? A new network of interdisciplinary researchers from law, philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, and criminal justice, called the Justice Without Retribution Network, has recently been formed to explore the practical implications of free will scepticism for the criminal justice system. It will consider whether non-retributive approaches to criminal behaviour that do not rely on a traditional understanding of free will can be ethically defensible and practically workable. Philosopher Gregg Caruso, a co-founder of the initiative, discusses the issues.
Are These 10 Lies Justified?
We condemn lies, but tell them every day. The philosopher Gerald Dworkin invites readers to explain when it is right to lie, and why. (UPDATE: Professor Dworkin follows up on how 10,000 readers responded to the question.)
Why Is Race Not Gone Like Phlogiston?
Why does race persist as a category of being? Unlike phlogiston, race has been able to ward off close scientific and intellectual inquiry, refusing to deflate into the ether of ideas. We know from wretched experience that talk of race can so quickly lead to racism, and yet we cling to it as something useful. So how should race be understood, and what does the history of science and philosophy tell us about its persistence? (audio)
Philosopher Wins 2.5€ Prize
Dag Nikolaus Hasse is the seventh philosopher to win the Leibniz Prize which “aims to improve the working conditions of outstanding scientists and academics, expand their research opportunities, relieve them of administrative tasks, and help them employ particularly qualified young researchers.”
On Good Boring Art
Works of art, in all their variety, afford us the opportunity for boredom — and they do so when everything in our lives mitigates against boredom, says Alva Noë. Maybe this is one of art’s gifts.
The First Imperative
Stephen Engstrom on the categorical imperative. How’s that workin’ for ya? (audio)
Is Socrates Still on the Bus?
Simon Blackburn, Mariana Alessandri and John Kaag on why reports of Socrates’ impending demise are greatly exaggerated
The Existential MBA
Graduate business schools are not in the habit of teaching existentialism for fun and profit. But it’s possible that today’s captains of commerce are missing a big opportunity to better understand tomorrow’s economic environment. For a new school of educators, replacing Taylor and Ford with Nietzsche and Kierkegaard is compulsory in a world where discontinuity, doubt, and disruption are the only corporate certainties. (audio)
Memes, Dreams and Themes
Ideas — from annoying jingles to dangerous ideologies — spread. But how do we know when our minds are being manipulated?
Teaching Plato in Palestine
A discussion with philosopher Carlos Fraenkel. In his recent book Teaching Plato in Palestine Fraenkel tells of his attempts to recapture philosophy’s Socratic by doing philosophy in nonstandard contexts, with atypical interlocutors, and in unfamiliar places. (audio)
A Physicist on Philosophy on Physics
Some eminent physicists, including Stephen Hawking, have been sceptical about the value of philosophy to physics. Carlo Rovelli, a theoretical physicist who is author of the bestselling book Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, disagrees. (audio)
Return to the Unconscious
It’s been 100 years since the publication of The Unconscious—Sigmund Freud’s classic on what goes on behind the scenes. It remains influential, though it has come in for some serious criticism. We meet a philosopher on a mission to restore clarity to Freud’s concept; to let it do its work in explaining behaviours that otherwise seem peculiar, and free it from both magic and science. (audio)
Expressivism and Metasemantics
Michael Ridge argues that metaethical expressivism can avoid its most worrisome problems by going ‘Ecumenical’. Ridge emphasizes that he aims to develop expressivism at the level of metasemantics rather than at the level of semantics. This is supposed to allow him to avoid a mentalist semantics of attitudes and instead offer an orthodox, truth-conditional or propositional semantics. However, I argue that Ridge’s theory remains committed to mentalist semantics, and that his move to go metasemantic doesn’t bring any clear advantages to the debate between expressivism and its opponents [univ access access]
Andrew Alwood (Virginia Commonwealth)(UF alum), “Should Expressivism Be a Theory at the Level of Metasemantics?”, Thought 4.4 (2015).
The Debate That Changed Time
How the debris of a landmark disagreement between Einstein and Bergson became the foundation of our present ideas about the fabric of existence.
What’s the Point of Free Speech?
Has there even been a time when free speech has been a more contentious issue on university campuses? Philosopher Rae Langton argues that in order to elucidate the boundaries (if they exist) within which free speech may operate it is essential to consider what the point of free speech is in the first place. (video)
The Fifth Sense
The Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy has a new entry on touch. The sense of touch is one of the central forms of perceptual experience. Thought to be the first sense to develop, touch occurs across the whole body using a variety of receptors in the skin. It often combines these signals with rich information made available by stretch receptors in the muscles and tendons as we actively move and explore the world. Because of these unique features, touch raises many interesting philosophical issues. Its complex yet fundamental nature makes it a central topic of discussion in debates about the multisensory nature of perception, the relation between perception and action, and the connection between touch and bodily awareness.
Virtue, Happiness and the Meaning of Life
An interview with philosopher Candace Vogler. Vogler is the lead investigator on a multi-year research grant focussed on virtue, happiness and the meaning of life.
Getting Stoned
Philosopher Douglas Husak has done work on overcriminalization. He argues that parents should be more worried that their children will get caught and punished than that the drugs they use will harm them.
Animal Rights and Animal Art
Philosophers discuss the issues surrounding contemporary art that uses animals. (This discussion is not for the faint of heart.)
Moral Dispute or Cultural Difference?
Is it possible for two people to live in different moral worlds, in which different moral truths hold? Can we come to accept another person’s moral beliefs as true, even if we don’t adopt them ourselves? Philosopher Carol Rovane discusses moral relativism.
Philosophy of Humour
Across cultures, across our life times, across generations, human beings find things – at least some things – funny. It is simply one of our basic modes of being in the world. No wonder, then, that philosophers from Aristotle on have wrestled with trying to get a handle on what humor is.
Ontology and All That
Ontology and metaphysics—what things are in the world and what might unify them—can set many philosophical traps. Simple questions can lead to strange places and German philosopher Markus Gabriel takes us on one such curious journey. He’s worked out that the world does not exist. What could he possibly mean? And how on Earth, or in the heavens, does it solve a serious puzzle? (audio)
On Knowing that Instant
Philosopher Alva Noë reflects on learning of two shocking events, the Paris terrorist attacks and the hospitalization of his son, through social media on the tarmac at an airport.
World Philosophy Day
UNESCO hails philosophy as a ‘force for individual and collective emancipation’.
Key to Locke on Freedom
The Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy has a new entry on Locke on freedom. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/locke-freedom/
Medicine and Trust
How trustworthy are the experiments on which evidence-based medicine rests? Philosopher John Worrall discusses the issues. (audio)
Shame and Desire
We’re told that we live in a guilt culture—an improvement of sorts on the shame culture of yore—so pity those people in distant lands and times. One problem though: it’s not true. Shame has never been more prevalent, when powered by the internet and prosecuted by swarming social tribes; explaining it in liberal times takes some conceptual rigour. (audio)
Concept of Evidence in Law
The Stanford Encyclopedia has a new entry on the legal concept of evidence. It may seem obvious that there must be a legal concept of evidence that is distinguishable from the ordinary concept of evidence. After all, there are in law many special rules on what can or cannot be introduced as evidence in court, on how evidence is to be presented and the uses to which it may be put, on the strength or sufficiency of evidence needed to establish proof and so forth. But the law remains silent on some crucial matters.
Reasons for Action and Belief
Can we decide to what to believe? And, if so, can one have reason to decide to do so — to go ahead and believe something that one does not believe? And will there be some discussion of Pascal’s Wager? Yes there will. (audio)
You and Your Brain: Not Just a Meeting of the Minds
Consciousness science isn’t — and can’t be — just neuroscience, says philosopher Alva Noë, who applauds the interdisciplinary approach of a new Oxford journal titled Neuroscience of Consciousness.
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What is a Disease?
It’s been said that philosophy can’t cure disease; but it might be able to tell you what one actually is. Philosophers of medicine are trying to answer a fundamental question, which is not getting any easier in our world of hi-tech diagnostics. How can we be sure we’ve got it right? It’s a theoretical problem with ramifications for diagnosis and treatment, not to mention the cost. (audio)
How to Live a Lie
We can act as if God, morality and free will exist, even when we are certain they don’t.
Impossibly Good
We know from experience that our moral lives involve moral dilemmas. These are cases in which it seems that moral success is not possible because every action available to us is morally wrong, even unacceptable. In such cases, morality requires what is impossible: no matter what one does, one acts as one ought not to act. Philosopher Lisa Tessman discusses themes from her recent book, Moral Failure: On the Impossible Demands of Morality. (audio)
Pardon Our Dust! This Thought Is Under Construction
We take for granted the fact that we can combine concepts together to give new thoughts that we easily understand. How do we do this? Joshua Greene, who is both a psychologist and a philosopher, explores this question. (audio)
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