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+18 +5
Solving the Raven-Paradox and Improving the Way we do Science
Evidence can only ever be gained through experiments and analyses that are most likely to produce results that falsify or cast doubt on the hypothesis being tested. By Rajiv Prabhakar.
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+15 +4
The thought police: five works of philosophy that every cop should read
Police officers in Baltimore have been making novel use of their notebooks. Anything Plato has said may be taken down and used, not as evidence against him, but in the classroom, where detective Ed Gillespie has made the ancient Greek philosopher part of the force’s annual in-service training. Gillespie gets his students to discuss cases of police misconduct in terms of Plato’s tripartite model of the soul, which holds that our behaviour is governed, at times, by either the intellect, the “spirit” or the “appetites”.
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+21 +3
Science and metaphysics must work together to answer life’s deepest questions
The swarming, ever-changing character of the living world challenges our deepest assumptions about the nature of reality. By John Dupré.
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+9 +2
What is the Basis for Human Equality?
One of the most fundamental American tenets—that all human beings are created equal—is nowhere near universally accepted. By Samuel Moyn.
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+25 +2
Hail Cicero, a Death and Afterlife
He couldn’t save the Roman republic, but his writing crossed centuries to help inspire ours. By E.J. Hutchinson.
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+12 +2
Such a Stoic
Seneca is revered as a Stoic philosopher—but he was devoted to money and power, and worked as a fixer for Nero. Elizabeth Kolbert weighs the evidence.(Feb. 22, 2015)
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+8 +3
Yacob and Amo: Africa’s precursors to Locke, Hume and Kant
The highest ideals of Locke, Hume and Kant were first proposed more than a century earlier by an Ethiopian in a cave. By Dag Herbjørnsrud.
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+12 +5
The problem of colour
Colours are a familiar and important feature of our experience of the world. Colours help us to distinguish and identify things in our environment: for instance, the red of a berry not only helps us to see the berry against the green foliage, but it also allows us to identify it as a berry. Colours perform a wide variety of symbolic functions: red means stop, green means go, white means surrender.
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+13 +5
Camus, Suicide, and Imagining Sisyphus Happy
Albert Camus was a French philosopher, author, and journalist. His views contributed to the rise of the philosophy known as absurdism. To examine Camus’ central ideas and views surely one must get back to one of his best works, The Myth of Sisyphus.
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+16 +2
Who serves whom?
The takeover of artificial intelligence seems to be a done deal. The open questions are: When will machines outperform us? Will they annihilate us? And: Should self-driving cars kill one pregnant woman or two Nobel prize winners? Artificial Intelligence is a complex riddle for all sorts of experts. It’s full of magic, mystery, money, mind-boggling techno-ethical paradoxes and sci-fi dilemmas that may or may not affect us in some far or near future.
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+8 +1
The Ghost and the Princess
The correspondence of René Descartes and Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia—a debate about mind, soul, and immortality. By Anthony Gottlieb.
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+8 +1
Lucretius: On the Nature of Things
ICE at Dartmouth
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+2 +1
Potentially Much Better
"Like many who have been influenced by the political philosopher Leo Strauss, Kass sees the decline of custom and tradition and the march of individualism and egalitarianism across all realms of life as the logical outcomes of modern liberal democracy." By Scott Spillman.
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+15 +5
The Last Jedi and the Problem of Free Will
In every Star Wars film destiny is a central theme, and The Last Jedi is no exception. The main characters – including Kylo Ren, Rey, and Luke Skywalker – are explicitly portrayed as possessing a fixed destiny in that their futures are preordained by a mysterious energy field that governs the entire universe: the Force. This same energy is also presented as determining the outcome of the struggle between the warring sides in which the main characters play their part: the Resistance and the First Order.
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+18 +4
Ecosophia: Zeno’s Laughter
We really are going to have to start a conversation about ethics, aren’t we? By John Michael Greer.
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+19 +5
Why Study Philosophy?
Physicists study matter, motion, and energy. Chemists study substances and their forms of combination, interaction and decomposition. Biologists study living things. And so forth. But what is it that philosophers study? One answer common throughout the ages is that as physicists study physics, philosophers study meta-physics. Philosophers, or at any rate the deepest of philosophers, we are told, are meta-physicists. Physicists study the contingencies of the world – things that happen to be so. Meta-physicists study the essential, necessary features of all possible worlds.
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+12 +2
A Celebrity Philosopher Explains the Populist Insurgency
Peter Sloterdijk has spent decades railing against the pieties of liberal democracy. Now his ideas seem prophetic. By Thomas Meaney.
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+15 +4
Philosophy can teach children what Google can’t
With jobs being automated and knowledge being devalued, humans need to rediscover flexible thinking.
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+12 +3
Berkeley's Idealism
Berkeley thought that the world and everything in it only exists when somebody is observing it. When we stop looking at something it no longer exists. This theory is called Idealism. Not to be confused with “being an idealist,” which usually means something else. And it’s neatly captured by the phrase “esse est percipi;” “to be is to be perceived.” That’s how my old textbooks used to explain it, I think that’s a little bit blunt: Berkeley’s point is actually a little subtler than that. I think the best way to get at what he’s saying is with a challenge.
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+2 +1
The Philosophy of the Midlife Crisis
Can we think our way out of middle-aged ennui?
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