Philosophy in the News
- 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.
- Transient Truths
An interview with philosopher Berit Brogaard.
- 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.
- Add Your Own Egg
"Writing about moral philosophy should be a hazardous business."
- 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)