News
News
[VIDEO] Is it OK to Kill Animals for Food?
Spencer Giel
07
Apr 2017
According to a poll conducted in 2016, approximately eight million US adults are vegetarian. The reasons that many vegetarians pose for their meatless diet vary, often including environmental or health benefits. However, what about the simple reason that killing animals for food is not morally justifiable? If the entire planet could survive eating only a vegetarian diet, are we justified in killing millions of animals a year? In this episode of Wireless Philosophy, Tyler Doggett of the University of Vermont tackles this question. If we do not approve of killing other humans for...
In Praise of Reading
Ken Taylor
25
Jul 2017
We modern humans read all sorts of things and for all sorts of reasons. Reading newspapers helps keep us informed about what’s happening in the wider world. We read letters, or once did, from those still dear, but no longer near. Lovers separated by oceans and continents once routinely bared their hearts to one another in passionately composed letters, recieved and read with great delight. As humankind’s ability to travel the world increased, reading took on ever greater importance as a means of cementing and maintaining bonds of family and friendship. These days the written word...
Read moreOneness is a Mystery
06
Apr 2016
Concepts such as infinity and oneness are problematic in terms of our capability to describe them accurately. While it can be argued that perception and language are always inaccurate representations of reality, we judge the fitness, accuracy and consistency of representations based on comparison and our concept of knowledge. For example, in mathematics we have a concept of unity that we call "one". The mathematical "one" can be identified as single object and is considered equal to or identical to the collection of components that together form the object. We consider this model to be an...
Read moreReincarnation
John Perry
30
Apr 2015
This we're thinking about Reincarnation – past lives, and future selves. Maybe you don’t believe in reincarnation. But a lot of people have and still do. Schopenhauer said, "we find the doctrine [of reincarnation] springing from the earliest and noblest ages of the human race, always spread abroad on the earth as the belief of the great majority of mankind." Most Buddhists believe in reincarnation. And I’m told one out of four Americans today believe in it. It deserves to be taken seriously. But first we should get clear on exactly what we mean when we talk about reincarnation. Here’s...
Read moreNot so deep thoughts about humor
John Perry
27
Feb 2006
Why do birds fly? Because they don't like to walk. That was a joke made up by my granddaughter Erin when she was three. She had learned the form of one kind of joke, without quite mastering the part about being funny. She made up jokes non-stop for about three hours, most of them even less funny than the above, regaling those trapped in the car with her, while turning blue from laughing so hard at them herself. It probably wouldn't be that hard to program a computer to do as well as Erin did. If it spit out enough two-liners, maybe some of them would be funny....
Read moreWho Gets to be a Citizen?
Ray Briggs
15
Sep 2020
Who gets to be a citizen? Should your political rights really depend on where you were born? Would it be better to live in a world without borders? This week, we’re talking about citizenship, political rights, and justice. Citizenship in a country comes with certain rights (like the right to vote, run for office, or be tried by a jury of your peers) as well as certain responsibilities (like the obligation to vote, to serve on a jury, or not to take the side of another government in a war). But what justifies us in handing out those rights to some people and not others? Many...
Read moreThe Experience of Beautiful Things
Ken Taylor
08
Mar 2005
Since lots of beautiful things don't have skin, whoever first said that beauty is only skin deep was clearly mistaken. When I was a kid, by the way, we used to continue "...but ugliness is to the bone." Of course, the speaker was probably being metaphorical. Perhaps he or she was trying to say that beauty is the least of the virtues that a thing can have. But is it really an apt metaphor? Perhaps we can answer by applying the implied standard to the metaphor itself. A "skin deep" metaphor would, I suppose, not be ...
Read moreWhy (Not) Trust Science?
20
Jan 2023
This week we’re asking why we should trust science—which may sound like a weird question. After all, why would we doubt the method that helps us build bridges and skyscrapers, formulate life saving medicines, and understand the cosmos? A first question here is why some people don't trust good science. Ignaz Semmelweis, a doctor in 19th-century Vienna, had a revolutionary idea. Everybody around him thought that patients were dying because they had “an imbalance of humors”; Semmelweis gathered data to show that washing your hands between patients was a great way to keep them...
Read moreScrap Thanksgiving?
Ray Briggs
29
Nov 2017
Happy belated Thanksgiving! Or bah humbug? I always find myself deeply ambivalent around the holiday season. On the one hand, Thanksgiving can be a joyous celebration of family and community. Family connections are inherently valuable, and since social isolation is dangerous, this gives us all the more reason to celebrate and strengthen them. On the other hand, Thanksgiving festivities can serve to cover up, and encourage, ongoing injustice. American children are told a sanitized story about the first Thanksgiving, in which Native Americans share a peaceful harvest meal with the English...
Read moreAre We Really All Equals?
Mohit Mookim
25
Apr 2018
Most of us hold the deep moral commitment that we are all equal in some basic way. All humans are worthy of equal (moral) concern, respect, and dignity. Jeremy Waldron, a famous NYU philosopher, defends this principle of basic equality in his new book. This review of the book by the fabulous Amia Srinivasan challenges some of his core arguments in this entertaining and engaging article. Is a commitment to basic equality enough to ground meaningful principles of justice? If we were looking for some quality possessed by all humans to justify basic equality, how can we avoid excluding the...
Read moreBeauty and subjectivity
John Perry
08
Mar 2005
Here are two truisms about beauty: Beauty is only skin deep Beauty is in the eye of the beholder With respect to the first I can only say, “Thank God.” The idea is that beauty is a superficial characteristic that does not provide great evidence for character, personality, wit, intelligence and other such virtues. As a one of the beauty-challenged members of our species, I would really resent it if beauty were a good indication of those things. Enough is enough. Let the rich and the beautiful be boring and dimwitted as far as I am concerned. It’s the second truism...
Read moreCancelling in Public and Private
17
Feb 2023
This week we’re thinking about Cancel Culture, which some consider a real problem: people losing their jobs, being harassed online, their home addresses being shared—all because they said something that came out the wrong way. Others see people who do or say terrible things getting some pushback, but mostly whining about how they’ve been victimized... on their Netflix comedy special. Let's leave aside the notable public figures, and the cases of egregious behavior: what about private citizens getting into trouble over innocent mistakes? Of course, regular folks can also say...
Read moreOf Philosophy and Basketball
David Livingstone Smith
06
Dec 2017
I’m reaching the end of a semester-long sabbatical, and will soon have to start thinking about preparing for the courses that I will be teaching in the spring semester. Sabbatical leave is something that we professors cherish. For one semester every seven years (or two semesters if you’re lucky) we are freed from the demands of teaching and the tedium of committee work to catch up on research and writing. I love teaching. For me, there is nothing more rewarding than cultivating young minds, and I regard making a living by teaching undergraduate philosophy is an immense privilege....
Read moreTrolling, Bullying, and Flame Wars
Laura Maguire
13
Apr 2018
Are trolling, bullying, and flame wars an inevitable result of online communication? Does the anonymity and invisibility of cyberspace lead to toxic speech and behavior? How can we create more toxic-free environments online?Without a doubt, the internet has revolutionized communications. It is an incredibly powerful tool that enables us to exchange ideas and information with people from all over the globe in an instant. But it also seems to bring out the worst of people’s anti-social tendencies. Trolls were once fictional characters, nasty creatures living under...
Read moreTransformative Experiences
Ken Taylor
15
Nov 2014
This week, our topic has to do with so-called transformative experiences. Some events in a person’s life are so powerful, so life-altering, that there’s a sense in which he or she may not be the same person before and after the event. Now I’m not talking about winning a mega-lottery, for example. Doing that would, of course, change my life. I could buy more stuff. Maybe I would work less. Certainly, I would travel more. Those kinds of changes aren’t really what we have in mind, though. Those are just changes in the external...
Read moreWhat Is (This Thing Called) Love?
Laura Maguire
20
Apr 2012
Many of us have been in love, and there have been countless great poems and popular songs written about it. So you’d think we’d all know what it is. Yet a lot of what has been written points to a deep mystery. So—as Cole Porter famously asked—what is this thing called love? Love is often portrayed as a powerful force, something that can inspire greatness in the lover. Alternatively, it is something that can make the lover act like a fool. Love can be the greatest feeling in the world, but it can also be utterly devastating when it doesn’t work out. How many love songs are...
Read morePhilosophy for the Young: Corrupting or Empowering?
Ken Taylor
02
Sep 2010
Our topic this week: Philosophy for the young – corrupting… or empowering? We asked that question in front of an audience of high school at Palo Alto High School, in Palo Alto, California. We record this program there last May, at the invitation of a teacher, Lucy Filppu, an English teacher by training, who teaches a special humanities course. We had a blast and we’d very much like to thank the students and teachers at Paly, as it is affectionately called, for having us. We’d love to go back sometime. Now the charge that philosophy...
Read moreSaint Augustine
John Perry
25
Jan 2008
What an interesting philosopher he turned out to be! And an interesting man, too. Set aside his historical importance --- the fact that he above all others brought together the Greek and Hebrew aspects of Christianity, that his work against the heresies of Arianism, Pelagianism and Manicheanism was tireless and and that, as many think, he is responsible for many of the more unfortunate aspects of Christianity, such as the low status of women, the negative attitude towards sex and other enjoyable bodily appetites, and the harsh doctrine of original sin. Just read him as...
Read moreHow (Not) to Fall Asleep
Antonia Peacocke
10
Jan 2019
I’m one of those 40 million Americans who struggle with insomnia. And so I’m here today with an insomniac question: Why can falling asleep be so difficult? There has been an exciting surge of research about sleep over the past twenty years. It is described very clearly by Matthew Walker—professor of neuroscience and psychology at UC Berkeley—in his 2017 book Why We Sleep. He identifies a variety of culprits that are now known to contribute to rampant sleep deprivation in the U.S. among insomniacs and others. They include: light from personal electronics; rigid and demanding work and school...
Read moreHow Much Thought Is Inactive?
19
Dec 2019
How much of your mental life is intentional action? And how much of it consists of inaction, not doing anything at all? To answer that, we need to get clear on what we mean by “intentional action” and “inaction.” When you do something intentionally, you have in mind what you are trying to do. You can tell someone what you’re up to. And in the realm of intentional action, you can do something in order to do something else. You can intend to perform a means to an end. You can do all sorts of things intentionally—snap your fingers, knead dough, run a marathon, paint a wall. When you...
Read moreAi Weiwei: How Censorship Works
Mohit Mookim
05
Jun 2017
Most of us have probably heard of censorship in China, but how does it really work? And what are its effects? To what extent are ordinary citizens responsible? Who better to hear the inside scoop from other than famous Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who routinely has to deal with his work being censored. Ai Weiwei takes to The Stone, the philosophy blog on The New York Times, to make his case. Read it here: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/06/opinion/sunday/ai-weiwei-how-censorship-works.html
Read moreA Moral Case for Meat
Eliane Mitchell
20
Oct 2017
From Peter Singer's Animal Liberation to arguments offered by the ancient Greeks and Hindus, many philosophers and environmentalists have made convincing cases against the practice of eating meat. But could there be a moral case in favor of it? One animal welfare advocate offers that eating meat gives animals a life worth living. By eating meat, in essence, humans create lives of worth and purpose, since most farm animals wouldn't be alive if there weren't a demand for their meat in the first place. But as the author points out, note that this position, that "...
Read moreSpinoza
John Perry
05
Nov 2015
Baruch Spinoza is sometimes called “the father of modernity.” Spinoza, along with Descartes and Leibniz, is considered one of the great rationalists of the 16th and 17th centuries. Of the three of them, Spinoza was philosophically the most radical. Both Descartes and Leibniz found a place in their systems for something like the traditional Judeo-Christian God, a personal God, who created the rest of us. Spinoza denied the authority of the Bible, the Judeo-Christian idea of a transcendent God, and opened the door to the secular philosophy of the modern age....
Read moreSex, Prostitution, and Well-lived Lives
Ken Taylor
16
May 2005
First, I want to thank Debra Satz for being our guest on the show yesterday. It was interesting and fun. I hope it was also enlightening. The discussion certainly provoked lots of calls, e-mails, and even comments on the blog. Even in philosophy, sex sells, I guess. Having sat with this topic for the last couple of weeks, I’m still pretty unsettled on my own final take on things. I’m pretty convinced -- I think -- that criminalizing prostitution – either on the supply side or on the demand side – is unworkable. I tend to side with those who...
Read moreThe Slow Miracles of Thought
23
Jul 2021
How can the human mind think about objects outside itself? How is it possible to talk about things that don’t even exist? This week, we’re thinking about reference—specifically, an “opinionated” theory of reference by our dear departed friend, longtime host and Philosophy Talk co-founder, Ken Taylor. Just hours before he passed away in December 2019, Ken announced on his Facebook page that he’d finally finished a book about reference that he had been working on for many years. He wrote: It will still take some time to spit and polish it all up into a form suitable for shipping off to...
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