Philosophy in the News
- Kant is My Co-Driver
Should autonomous vehicles have ethics programmed in? And when bad things happen, who bears the moral responsibility?
- Externalism with Burge, Kripke and Putnam
This 2007 recording of philosophers Tyler Burge, Saul Kripke and Hilary Putnam discussing externalism has just been posted by University College Dublin. The session is chaired by Michael Devitt.
- A Liberal Arts Degree is Tech’s Hottest Ticket
Stop thinking of Silicon Valley as an engineer's paradise. There's far more work for liberal arts majors -- who know how to sell and humanize. Take the example of Slack Technologies which has become a recent wonder child of tech startups at the hands of philosophy graduate, Stewart Butterfield.
- Save Lives By Making a Bunch of Money
If you want to save lives, become an investment banker or something like that. Pursuing a highly lucrative career may be your most ethical choice.
- In the White Frame
Racial discrimination is so embedded in our system that it has become nearly invisible. And there is data to prove it. Philosopher George Yancy interviews sociologist Joe Feagin.
- Putting Plato Over the Plate
What makes hitting in baseball possible is our participation together in an ongoing game or play or, better, a relationship.
- The Ontology of Björk
Performer Björk recently enlisted the help of English professor Timothy Morton to discover what 'ism' she is. Morton is a proponent of object-oriented ontology — a view which rejects the privileging of human existence over the existence of nonhuman objects. A selection from the resulting correspondence is available online.
- White Privilege and Black Rights
A review of philosopher Naomi Zack's recent book White Privilege and Black Rights — "part of her continuing effort to think, as a philosopher, about questions of race and justice that are long-standing, but also prone to rise up, on occasion, with great urgency."
- Truth After the End of Truth
A generation raised on Foucault and Derrida has learned to distrust claims to objective truth. Yet the mantra that 'there is no truth' is a paradox. Do we need a new conception of fantasy and reality to free us from the tyranny of truthmakers and the paradoxes of postmodernists alike? American philosopher John Searle, post-postmodernist Hilary Lawson and Historian of Ideas at NCH Hannah Dawson untangle the truth.
- A.I. vs A.U. (Actual Unintelligence)
Seriously, if robots pose a danger, it isn't because they are so smart and threaten Terminator-style to take over the world. It's because, like cars, cranes and jackhammers, they're heavy and dumb and operate outside the performance specifications of flesh and blood human beings.
- The Pope as Philosopher
The papal encyclical Laudato si' uses moral arguments for environmental protection, yet as a philosophical statement, it's a terrific example of "public reason."
- Reconstructing Reality
Philosopher Margaret Morrison discusses themes from her recent book Reconstructing REality which examines and questions whether we have solid justification in modern science for epistemically privileging the results of experiments over the results of modeling and simulation — new knowledge we derive from idealizations, abstractions, and fictional models.
- What Economics Can’t Do
It can't predict the future — in Greece or anywhere else — with any certainty. So what's the use?
- How to Do Things with Pornography
A review of philosopher Nancy Bauer's recent book How to Do Things with Pornography in which she develops a novel interpretation of J.L. Austin's work on speech acts and uses it to ground a metacritique of recent feminist treatments of pornography as largely failing to engage their intended subject.
- Does Evil Exist?
Not every evildoer is an evil person, but if you commit enough despicable acts you might just qualify as the real deal. Luke Russell discusses themes from his recent book Evil: A Philosophical Investigation.
- Newton As Philosopher
Philosopher Andrew Janiak's recent book Newton argues that thinking of Newton as a scientist gets things importantly wrong. Newton was and conceived of himself as a natural philosopher. The distinction here is, Janiak, argues not just exchanging old terminology for new.
- Tragedy of the Commons Tweet Goes Viral
One student reacts to this instruction on his final assignment: "Select whether you want 2 points or 6 points added onto your final paper grade. But there's a small catch: if more than 10% of the class selects 6 points, then no one gets any points." And then all hell breaks out.
- Can Moral Disputes Be Resolved?
Chances are you believe honor killing is wrong. But you probably can't prove it.
- Snowden on Philosophy Talk
You might think we each have a moral duty to expose any serious misconduct, dishonesty, or illegal activity we discover in an organization, especially when such conduct directly threatens the public interest. However, increasingly we are seeing whistleblowers punished more harshly than the alleged wrongdoers, who often seem to get off scot-free. Given the possibility of harsh retaliation, how should we understand our moral duty to tell the truth and reveal wrongdoing? Should we think of whistleblowers as selfless martyrs, as traitors, or as something else? Do we need to change the laws to provide greater protection for whistleblowers? John and Ken welcome our era's most renowned whistleblower, former CIA analyst Edward Snowden.
- Philosophy Boosts Math, Literacy and Writing Skills
"More than 3,000 nine and 10-year-olds in 48 UK schools took part in hour-long sessions aimed at raising their ability to question, reason and form arguments. A study for the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) found pupils' ability in reading and maths scores improved by an average of two months over a year. For disadvantaged children, the study found writing skills were also boosted."