September 2015
September 2015
Dance as a Way of Knowing
Laura Maguire
30
Sep 2015
The title of this week’s show might sound a little mysterious. How can dance, of all things, be a way of knowing? Most things we know, we know either through perception or through thinking and reasoning. But on the surface of things, it doesn’t look like dance is either a form of perception or a form of thinking. So, in what sense is dance a way of knowing?
Read moreTechnological Immortality
John Perry
25
Sep 2015
Immortality, of the desirable kind, usually brings Heaven to mind. A great place to live, if the details are a bit obscure. But, as far as I have been told, the only technology involved is doing what God wants you to do, and then dying. So has Apple or Microsoft come up with a better way of getting to Heaven?
Read moreWhat is a Culture of Victimhood?
Ken Taylor
20
Sep 2015
A few thoughts about so-called cultures of victimhood and whether it's a new, old, or even real phenomenon, prompted partly by recent "debates" over trigger warnings, but also by our recent episode on the Changing Face of Feminism. I put "debates" in quotes like that because I think of the debates more as heated exchanges. Way too much talking past each other and way too little sympathetic listening has gone on.
Read moreThe Changing Face of Feminism
Laura Maguire
17
Sep 2015
Feminism is a complex set of ideologies and theories, but on the most basic level, its goal is to achieve equal social, political, and economic rights for women. The first wave of feminism, at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, focused mainly on women’s voting rights and property rights. Then came the second wave of feminism and the Women’s Liberation movement of the 1960s, which focused on issues beyond the legal status of women to include sexuality, reproductive rights, gender roles, and patriarchal attitudes and culture.
Read moreAshley Madison, accommodation, and silencing
10
Sep 2015
I recently read, with much interest, Jason Stanley’s How Propoganda Works and found it extremely stimulating and thought provoking. It was exciting to see how Stanley sees his work in even the most arcane areas of formal philosophy (philosophy of language and epistemology) as bearing on the most important political issues our society faces—issues of racism and injustice in liberal democracies. Equally as stimulating, has been following up on some of the sources Stanley cites as influencing his thinking on these
Read moreThe Ethics of Drone Warfare
Laura Maguire
09
Sep 2015
A big part of the moral problem with drones is that they make it too easy for the powers-that-be to bomb whomever they want without much political fallout. Sending troops in on the ground and putting them in direct danger comes with political consequences, but if we attack our so-called “enemies” remotely, and don’t have soldiers coming back in body bags, then there’s not going to be nearly as much backlash.
Read moreHas Science Replaced Philosophy?
Laura Maguire
03
Sep 2015
In the last few years a number of scientists, like Stephen Hawking, have been very vocal in pronouncing the death of philosophy. They seem to think that science can or will answer all the important questions there are. If there are any questions that science can’t answer, then they’re just pseudo problems, not worth thinking about.
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