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+19 +5
God is not a Good Theory
Sean Carroll's lecture from the 2nd mini-series (Is "God" Explanatory) from the "Philosophy of Cosmology" project. A University of Oxford and Cambridge Collaboration.
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+4 +1
A (much longer) Counter to the Moral Argument
The moral argument for god’s existence is one of the most common arguments apologists will use in debates with atheists. It also tends to be one of the most misunderstood arguments, which I think contributes to its persistence in sticking around despite having been debunked a long time ago.
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+24 +4
Does the meaning of words rest in our private minds or in our shared experience?
We can never fully access another person’s perspective, but to what extent do our individual private experiences matter when it comes to language and shared understanding? According to the early 20th-century Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, the answer is ‘not at all’.
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+9 +2
8 Great Philosophical Questions
Philosophy goes where hard science can't, or won't.
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+15 +5
The Famous Ethics Professor And The Women Who Accused Him
Thomas Pogge, one of the world’s most prominent ethicists, stands accused of manipulating students to gain sexual advantage. Did the fierce champion of the world's disempowered abuse his own power? By Katie J.M. Baker.
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+5 +1
Why science needs to break the spell of reductive materialism
“At the centre of my argument is a vexing question: since the Big Bang, why has the Universe become complex? I claim that at least part of the answer is that, as more complex things and linked processes are created, and can combine with one another to make yet more complex amalgams of things and processes, the space of possible things and linked processes becomes vastly larger, and the Universe has not had time to make all the possibilities.” By Stuart Kauffman.
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+3 +1
The Enlightenment was not an age of freedom
This claim is meant to sound paradoxical to most of my readers–but it shouldn’t. It’s no more paradoxical than the statement that that the Civil Rights era in the United States was not a golden age of racial equality. The Enlightenment was an era when many people were arguing loudly for religious an intellectual freedom–but they spent so much time arguing for it because religious and intellectual freedom wasn’t something they had yet.
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+10 +4
Wittgenstein’s Handles
When Wittgenstein returned to philosophy, the idea that drove him beyond all others was that the nature of language had been misunderstood by philosophers. They were better conceived of as a part of the activity of life. As such, they were more like tools. It is the utility of handles that Wittgenstein insists on here: By Christopher Benfey.
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+8 +1
Atheist Debates - Is Anything really possible?
Anything is possible. That's what we frequently hear, but is it actually true? It seems that some theists attempt to leverage this platitude as a foundation to shift the burden of proof and build "not impossible" into "possible" and extend it further to "true and worth betting my life on"...with little more than wishes and fallacies to support this chain.
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+18 +3
No, He’s Not Hitler. And Yet ...
We are supposed to find some solace these days in the assurance that Donald Trump is “not Hitler.” One reasonable response is this: Of course he isn’t. Only Hitler is Hitler, and he died in a bunker in 1945. There is no such thing as reincarnation, and history is nothing more than a long, linear series of individual people and events that come and go. It is, as the saying goes, “just one damn thing after another.”
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+42 +11
Why does philosophy hold clothes in such low regard?
Clothes can be forms of thought as articulate as a poem or equation. Why then does philosophy like to dress them down? By Shahidha Bari. (May 19, 2016)
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+32 +8
Western logic has held contradictions as false for centuries. Is that wrong?
Since Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Western philosophers and logicians have with few exceptions viewed contradictions as unacceptable, simply incapable of being true. But certain logical paradoxes demonstrate that some contradictions aren’t so easily dismissed as merely false, an idea that some Eastern philosophical traditions have grappled with more successfully. In this instalment of Aeon In Sight, the US-based British philosopher Graham Priest explains how the Liar Paradox – unresolved since antiquity – upends the traditional Western view that all contradictions must be false.
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0 +1
Heuristic: Mind-reading: understanding how the brain learns
We like to break down large problems into smaller ones and look at the whole picture as a sum of its parts. The pieces of a jigsaw puzzle form an image, or different letters come together to form words. There are times when a larger picture isn't just a zero-sum games, the whole is greater than the sum of its constituents, or even when a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. No matter how you look at the bigger picture, there are different ways we can find a bigger thing among smaller parts.
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+1 +1
Heuristic: The Fresh Prince of Bel-Aristotle
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+26 +12
A Nihilist’s Guide to Meaning
I’ve never been plagued by the big existential questions. You know, like What’s my purpose? or What does it all mean? By Kevin Simler.
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+3 +1
The Philosopher of Feelings
Martha Nussbaum’s far-reaching ideas illuminate the often ignored elements of human life—aging, inequality, and emotion. By Rachel Aviv.
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+39 +10
Voltaire’s Luck
The French philosopher outsmarts the lottery. By Roger Pearson.
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+6 +2
Happiness is Relative
Religion isn’t all bad. Sometimes false information leads to the correct conclusion or even to good results. Case in point: If you really do believe the Fridge is the one true being we should worship and see it’s power manifest in all our kitchens… If you truly believe the one commandment of the Fridge, a simple “Be Nice” then it follows that you might see another person in distress, remember the words of your cool God, then reach out and do something about it.
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+7 +1
How Is Plato’s Republic Relevant Today?
Written in ancient Greece at a time of major political decay, Plato’s Republic is becoming increasingly relevant for anyone who cares about justice.
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+16 +2
Democracies end when they are too democratic.
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