What happens when you look at a cucumber? Well, to put it simply, you see a cucumber. You consciously experience the oblong, dark green vegetable in all its glory. But what actually occurs in your eyes and brain to construct this vision? The story starts, as you turn your gaze, with light — light hits the cucumber, some of which is absorbed, and some of which reflects into your cornea. This light passes through your pupil and is focused by your eye's lens onto the retina, a thin, photosensitive tissue that converts light into electrical signals.

Close to the north pole of the moon lies the crater Anaxagoras, named for a Greek philosopher who lived in the fifth century B.C. The eponym is fitting, as Anaxagoras the man was one of the first people in history to suggest the moon was a rocky body, not all too dissimilar from Earth.

In her new book, “Fellow Creatures: Our Obligations to the Other Animals,” Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Philosophy Christine Korsgaard makes the case that humans are not inherently more important than animals and therefore should treat them much better than we do.

by Thomas R. Wells Suppose a company wants to fill a job. They would advertise it together with the requirements for any successful candidate. HR would screen out all the applicants not good enough to do the job and everyone e Perhaps you…

Our collective overuse and misuse of antibiotics is accelerating resistance to these universal drugs, leaving people increasingly vulnerable to infections that can no longer be treated. This applies not only to the use of antibiotics in human medicine, but also in animal industries. Antibiotic resistance is an example of a collective action problem. These are problems where what is individually rational leads to a collectively undesirable outcome.

We can wonder about what others are thinking or feeling without ever hearing them say a word. My toddler holds an empty ice cream cone, looking despondently at a melting ball of goo on the ground. It is obvious that she is sad she lost her treat. An orangutan brushes his head with a leaf, then hands the leaf to a human caregiver.

This weekend, French cultural institutes are sponsoring free intellectual rave parties in 65 cities across five continents. The Night of Philosophy and Ideas (La Nuit de la Philosophie et des Idées), which started as a small gathering among intellectuals in Paris in 2012, has become a global festival devoted to deep thinking.

You wander through life as if half-awake, time passing by. Activities you used to enjoy are now trite, exhausting, and empty of meaning. You feel alienated from others, who now seem far away, belonging to an inaccessible, alternate world where happiness is still possible. You are pushed further into the dark, hateful place inside yourself, where your thoughts– abusive, apathetic, and pessimistic– swirl relentlessly: I hate myself, it’s all pointless, I want to die. From where you are, there seems to be no hope, no relief, no escape. You are depressed.

Buddhist teachings often speak about the concept of self and no-self. It can be a challenge to understand but is fundamental to spiritual practice.

“Truth always rests with the minority,” the great Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard wrote in his diary in 1846 as he contemplated the individual vs. the crowd and why we conform, “because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion.”

If you look up “God” in a dictionary, the first entry you will find will be something along the lines of “a being believed to be the infinitely perfect, wise and powerful creator and ruler of the universe.” Certainly, if applied to non-Western contexts, the definition would be puzzling, but in a Western context this is how philosophers have traditionally understood “God.” In fact, this conception of God is sometimes known as the “God of the Philosophers.”

To arrive at the edge of the world's knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves.

Militia leader Ammon Bundy, famous for leading an armed standoff in Oregon, had a tender moment in November of last year. He recorded a Facebook post saying that perhaps President Trump's characterization of the migrant caravan on the U.S.-Mexico border was somewhat broad. Maybe they weren't all criminals, he said. "What about those who have come here for reasons of need?"

Existing is merely the thought of a memory that encapsulates the belief that we exist. One of the greatest misconceptions we are fooled into believing is that objects and specific arrangements alike have substantial meaning. It is easy to imagine the concept of an empty painting, but a painting of a flower becomes a concept to which a subject belongs. The subject is the flower and cannot — unlike the painting – exist without the other.

Reflecting on our undying urge to recreate a primal experience of intimacy with the surrounding world, David Abram offers notes on technology and animism in an age of ecological wipeout.

A literature professor at Manchester Metropolitan University recently unearthed a legendary manuscript: a 200-page work titled The Clockwork Condition by A Clockwork Orange’s Anthony Burgess. Don’t get too excited, Droog lovers. Colin Dwyer at NPR reports that Condition is not a sequel to the cult novel, but rather a meditation on the “condition of modern man” that was to be structured similarly to Dante’s Inferno. The manuscript was also something of a cash grab. After the release and success of Stanley Kubrick’s film version of book in 1971, a publisher reached out to Burgess...

“Man,” wrote Aristotle more than 2,300 years ago, “is a political animal.” Today, that seems particularly evident. The proliferation of mass social movements, the ever-present yet democratized nature of contemporary political commentary on social media, the 24 hour news cycle, and our penchant for politicizing everything all lend prima facie support to the idea that humans are helplessly activist. But Aristotle was not simply observing that we are inherently drawn towards boycotts, protests, and culture wars. He meant that we are strongly inclined towards social connection. People need collective commitment, not just individual...

The Slovenian philosopher says he does not defend the old communism, but rather new globalist communitarianism. The new challenges, he says, are ecology, the renewal of the welfare state and the prevention of “digital cognitive warfare”.

In a secretive school in China's capital rows of students face a giant video projection of Xi Jinping, making careful notes on the lecture on their leader's guiding principles. Sitting in red-covered chairs in a school dotted with statues of late Chinese leaders, being groomed.