Philosophy in the News
- We Just Mined Your College Education
The push is on to use big data in higher education -- by tracking and data-mining students' digital footprint's through college. Learning might be personalized in ways that help struggling students from dropping out and to push star performers to excel. Obvious ethical issues arise. Collecting data will always create the possibility that it be misused, sold or stolen. What if data show that students who fit a certain profile struggle in a core course. Might those students be prevented from taking the class or pushed down a different path, based on such predictions? Currently there are practically no standards about how such information might be used.
- The Dance of Life
Our life is made up of experiences. But what experience is remains a mystery. Heidegger thought it inexplicable and neuroscientists cannot find its location. Do we just need a better theory to uncover its secrets? Or is experience somehow both all that we have and yet not part of this world? Formulator of the hard problem of consciousness David Chalmers, Oxford philosopher Peter Hacker and New York neuroscientist Susana Martinez-Conde debate the mystery of experience.
- Big Data Still Small to Biology
Science journalist Roger Highfield argues that biology is too complex to rely on data that have been blindly harvested. Such data afford us only an impoverished view of living things.
- String Theory, Philosophy and Quantum Mechanics
The originator of string theory talks philosophy and quantum mechanics. (video)
- Ethics of Employer’s Wellness Programs
Employers have more frequently been contracting with analytics firms that use data to encourage healthy behaviors and to project future health care costs in employer-sponsored health plans. But ethics and health policy researchers question the impact on employee privacy. The concern arose after reports of how one health care analytics product was able to track, for example, if a woman had stopped filling birth-control prescriptions.
- Your Driverless Car Takes the Ethics Exam
Here is the full Ethics Test you will want your driverless car to pass. (Hint: Maybe you shouldn't have your car doing your Ethics homework for you.)
- The Color of Mind
An interview with philosopher Derrick Darby.
- Physics and Metaphysics: Better Together
The branch of philosophy known as metaphysics overlaps with modern science and the two can push the boundaries of knowledge together. This special issue of New Scientist asks what science can tell us about the deepest questions humans have ever asked (metaphysics) and how philosophy can inform science and help us understand what it means.
- The Objective Goodness of Wine
Taking his cue from David hume, philosopher Barry Smith (London) believes there are right and wrong answers when it comes to wine quality. Some wines are simply better than others -- though probably not the wine you have in the cupboard. Sorry.
- Two-Year Old Solves Trolley Problem
Sometimes progress in philosophy comes from the most unlikely places. (video)
- %#@! Punk Aesthetics
It might not be beautiful but it's aesthetic all the same. Punk music burst onto the scene four decades ago with a vitality that shredded standards—musical and otherwise. Yet punk has been largely overlooked in aesthetic analysis, even though it can reveal some discordant truths about the nature and meaning of art— as well as that somewhat abstruse school of continental thought: Existentialism. (audio)
- Dare to Know
Western philosophy has had two golden ages. The first was the remarkable explosion of thought in early Athens, sparked by Socrates and continued by Plato, Aristotle and their followers. Then came the great flowering in northern Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, when a diverse group of thinkers questioned received opinion and put their faith in reason in what is now known as the Enlightenment. A review of The Dream of Enlightenment by Anthony Gottlieb which includes discussions of the likes of Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, Hume, Rousseau.
- Ethical Impact of Genomic Innovation
Work around the human genome and advances in the accessibility and analysis of data, creates huge opportunities for early healthcare interventions. But the advent of genomic information and evolving technology also brings a myriad of new ethical considerations and technology challenges.
- The Hour of the Wolff
Now we can all sit in on Robert Paul Wolff's class on Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. (video)
- Anger and Forgiveness
Anger is among the most familiar phenomena in our moral lives. It is common to think that anger is an appropriate, and sometimes morally required, emotional response to wrongdoing and injustice. However, at the same time, were all familiar with the ways in which anger can go morally wrong. So one might wonder: What exactly is the point of anger? A review of philosopher Martha Nussbaum's Anger and Forgiveness. (audio)
- Photo Finish / Photo Depiction
What does a photograph evidence? Away from philosophers, you might simply answer: A photograph evidences what it depicts. And it depicts what happened — what a camera detected in front of it when the photograph was taken. Of course, no? No. What a photograph depicts depends on how a camera detects what's in front of it. And also, what a photograph evidences depends on how the photograph is made -- as evidenced by the production of complex photographs, such as those of animal cells and outer space, show.
- What Is It Like to Be a Bat(man)?
The recent antics of English barrister Charles Foster -- who has spent time trying to live like various animals (urban fox, hunted deer, and with his son, badger) has helped refocus an ancient conundrum. [More reportage on Charles Forster, in the New Statesman.) (audio)
- Who Put the Norm in Normativity?
An interview with philosopher Ralph Wedgwood.
- Muskrat Love and Other Animadversions
A new book considers our complicated relationships with animals by looking at attitudes toward road kill, taxidermy, dead pets and art by animals.
- Understanding Altruism
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a new entry on altruism. Behavior is normally described as altruistic when it is motivated by a desire to benefit someone other than oneself for that person's sake. The term is used as the contrary of “self-interested” or “selfish” or “egoistic”—words applied to behavior that is motivated solely by the desire to benefit oneself. “Malicious” designates an even greater contrast: it applies to behavior that expresses a desire to harm others simply for the sake of harming them.... It is commonly assumed that we ought to altruistic to some extent. But to what extent? And why? Do people ever in fact act altruistically?