#FrancisOnFilm: Green Book

Green Book, which won the Oscar for Best Picture, just came out on Netflix and in various other places. Its success has been controversial, largely because the story is told through the eyes of the white driver, Tony Vallelonga (Tony Lip). Reportedly, no members of the family of Don Shirley (Dr. Shirley), the black concert and jazz pianist who employed Lip as his driver for a pre-Christmas tour through the segregated Deep South, were contacted before or during the making of the movie.   Critics such as Brooke Obie have called the movie a "white man's savior film" that harms Dr. Shirley'...

Thinking and Mental Action

Here’s something you’ll know if you’ve ever sat through a boring lecture: sometimes your mind simply goes wherever it will. Thoughts of different kinds come to you, one after the other, linked by mere association. At one moment you’re daydreaming about your new puppy; in the next, you suddenly recall that “W.H.O. let the dogs out” tweet; moments after, you sit through a mental rendition of the classic Baha Men song; and from there, you have flashes of your misspent youth. When your thoughts freely transition one to the next in this way, we sometimes say your mind is ‘wandering.’   ...

Life as a Work of Art

Some philosophers, including the guest on this week's program, Lanier Anderson, his teacher Alexander Nehamas, and their hero Nietzsche, are of the opinion think that we should think of our lives as works of art.  I think Ken is sympathetic to this idea, at least.  I"m a bit skeptical, but ready to learn.   First off, it seems that lots of lives are literally works of art, or parts of works of art.  Captain Ahab’s life is part of Melville’s novel, Moby Dick, for example.  But my life isn’t a work of art in this sense, and I don't suppose anyone thinks I should regard...

The Ethics of Whistleblowing

This week we're asking about The Ethics of Whistleblowing -- with Edward Snowden – one of world’s most famous whistleblowers. Mr. Snowden joined us from Moscow in front of a live audience at Stanford University. Not only was the program recorded for radio broadcast, we also made a video of the event, with a lively question and answer period that follows the radio portion of the interview. It takes you even deeper in to Snowden's thought process. Again, this extended discussion cannot be heard on the radio. You can also check out several excerpts from...

A Comic Book for 17th-Century Philosophy

Interested in learning more about 17th-century philosophy, but from a graphic novel? Father-son duo Steven Nadler, a professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin, and Ben Nadler, an illustrator, co-authored Heretics!—a graphic novel that explains the history of philosophy during this period. If you need a quick brush-up or fun introduction to Copernicanism or René Descartes's dualism, the Nadlers have made 17th-century scholarship accessible to a broad audience. Check out a chapter from Heretics! (courtesy of The Atlantic) here:...

May the Fourth Be With You

In honor of 5/4, Star Wars Day, we're taking a deeper look at the paradox of the Force in Star Wars. Eduardo Perez, an Assistant Professor of English, examines the paradox of the Force in George Lucas' Star Wars universe. The Force, it is claimed, must be balanced—yet this is not quite the case. The balance of the Force is in direct contradiction to the desire for the good guys to win. Is there a way for the franchise to satisfy both of these pulls?  Read more to find out (WARNING: SPOILERS):  https://andphilosophy.com/2017/03/13/the-paradox-of-the-force-the-quest-...

200 and Counting!

Help Us Celebrate 200 Episodes of Philosophy Talk! Our 200th episode is coming up, and to mark the occassion we're compiling a Philosophical Top 10 List.
 What burning issue do you think philosophers and Philosophy Talk  should tackle in the years ahead?Send your suggestions for our Philosophical Top 10 list to comments@philosophytalk.org or post them here on our blog.   We will be monitoring the blog during the show. 
 

Why I am not a Stoic!

  I learned alot about Stoicism both in preparing for yesterday's episode and from our guest  John Cooper.  Fortunately, although John Cooper  knows a great deal about the stoics, he wasn't very stoical in his discussion of them.  He was lively, impassioned, and engaging.  It was, I thought, a very good episode.   If you didn't hear it, check it out.   (I can't yet link to it, though, since the episode usually goes up on the web only after it's also aired on OPB.) I don't profess to fully understand stoicism.   I never read much...

Teaching Philosophy

The study of philosophy, or the study of what other people have said that gets categorized under the heading 'philosophy', has the potential to leave one feeling a perpetual student. Expertise can be acquired in a so-called "field" of study. Along the way, however, students will have realized their "field" of study looks less like an actual field and more like a narrowly defined section of a bookshelf in a stuffy library. They will have also realized that one never finished studying philosophy. It's an interesting thought experiment to put the shoe on the other foot. What if you had to teach...

Can Free Speech Exclude?

On The New York Times's philosophy blog, The Stone, Professor Ulrich Baer defends student protests of speakers with whom they disagree. Baer's core argument is that some voices in the public debate may end up excluding others from the public debate. This happens when someone's discourse dehumanizes certain groups in society. In these cases, Baer sees it as appropriate for students to protest in order to prevent these individuals from speaking. In fact, Baer sees this as maximally protecting our right to free speech, because those individuals who...

Can We Have Our Truth Back, Please?

I think we can all agree that this is a pretty terrible time to be a fan of truth. Politicians have always lied, of course, but few have dared to deny the verifiably obvious, such as the size of an inauguration crowd. Few have perpetuated conspiracy theories, such as the one about Obama’s place of birth. Few would have defended their distortions by claiming that their words were “not intended to be a factual statement,” that there are “alternative facts,” or that “facts don’t exist any more.”   Meanwhile, an absurdly high percentage of the population believes that Barack...

Did I Cheat?

First, I wish to thank John and Ken for being so kind as to invite me to be a guest on the show; I enjoyed it very, very much. Ken wondered whether I have "cheated" in the sense that I call something "freedom" which perhaps is not a genuine freedom.  I certaiinly sympathize with the worry that traditional compatibilism is a "cheat" or in Kant's words a "wretched subterfuge."  I love W. I. Matson's fulminations about compatibilism: "The most flabbergasting instance of the fallacy of changing the subject to be encountered anywhere in the complete history of sophistry...  [a ploy...

All We Need to Solve Inequality is a Plague

Since the 1970s, the United States and much of the developed world has seen massive wealth inequality. While many agree inequality is a problem, few agree on the best way to solve it.  Historically, inequality has risen and fallen dramatically over time, and, trying to find a cause for the ebb and flow, Stanford historian Walter Scheidel surveyed each important point in history when inequality diminished. What he concluded is hardly heartening.  In a recent article in The Atlantic, Scheidel argues that the only events in history that have sufficiently addressed...

Another Reason Zoom Is So Draining

Months into our lockdowns, many of us are becoming intimately familiar with Zoom fatigue. This is the particular dead-eyed, mind-numbing exhaustion I feel at the end of pretty much every video meeting I’ve ever attended.    Recently the Internet has exploded with reasons Zoom exhausts you more than in-person interaction. For example:    you can’t make eye contact properly; you miss non-verbal signals that help you talk in turn and read emotions; you are constantly switching your attention between different faces, voices, and messages; you can’t stop staring at your...

Why Read Proust in 2022?

This essay also appears at the website of Oxford University Press, publisher of Josh's new book, 
"The World According to Proust."
  The world is literally on fire; authoritarianism threatens multiple countries; racism and xenophobia are rampant; women’s and LGBTQ rights are under threat—why on earth would anyone spend time reading a 3,000-page novel by a man who’s been dead (exactly) a hundred years?
 
Well, there’s at least some politics in Proust’s novel. The longest sentence—stretching over three full pages—is a lament...

The Philosophy of Westworld

(Warning: spoilers!)At first glance, Westworld is just another show about robots run amok—a simple remake of the 1973 Westworld movie, a new Terminator, or at best a twenty-first-century I, Robot. It appears to be solely interested in Frankenstein-style questions about people creating technology that no-one can control, and in Blade-Runner-style questions about artificial life forms evolving into creatures like us, with as much—or as little—autonomy, self-understanding, and feeling as we have. If you look a little closer,...

The Appeal of Authoritarianism

Why do some people find authoritarian leaders appealing? Why do they sometimes secure vast numbers of votes in democratic countries? These are some of the questions we’re asking in this week’s show.    Authoritarian leaders tend to corrupt the political system, rig the courts, assail the free press, jail their opponents, constrain or close universities, and lie brazenly to their citizens. They pit social groups against one another, depicting some as “real Americans” (say) and others as interlopers and/or exploiters. It’s hard to imagine what any fully rational voter could see in...

Two Concepts of Safe Space

Sometimes people want a place where they’ll be free from identity-based insult. But sometimes people want a place where they can talk freely about ideas without having to worry about being declared offensive. It’s legitimate to hope for both kinds of place. Loosely speaking, both can be dubbed “safe spaces.” But immediately a difficulty arises: the two kinds of safe space are often (not always) at cross-purposes. Let’s call the first kind of place a “safe-being space.” This is where one can exist without risk of feeling demeaned. The second kind can be called a “safe-talking...

The Psychology of Climate Change Denial

Something has puzzled me for a long time about the psychology of those who deny climate change—about the denialists, as they’re called. I’m talking about the serious climate change deniers, the ones who go around making “research” presentations on the matter, like Lord Monckton. But I think I’ve just recently started to grasp what’s going on in their heads. Denialists seem somewhat rational at first: they form denials in accordance with the fragment of evidence that they actually have seen, even if the overall weight of the evidence is against them. On this view, there’s not much of a puzzle...

Feminism and Philosophy's Future

Male philosophers may think feminist philosophy has nothing to offer them. Yet feminist philosophy has already enriched analytic philosophy and promises to deepen philosophers' "serious engagement" with continental thinkers, argues Gary Gutting in this article from The Stone. Feminist philosophy, he writes, is much more than a political movement in this regard. To give an earlier example in history, Gutting reminds readers that anayltic philosophy dominated in the philosophical establishment in the 1970s and 80s. "The pluralists" of philosophy though, comprised of pragmatists, metaphysicians...

Stories To Think With

Philosophers are notorious for expressing themselves in a dry and, let’s face it, boring way. The guiding ideals for most philosophical writing are precision, clarity, logical rigor, and the sort of conceptual analysis that leaves no hair un-split. And even those philosophers who are fine literary stylists rarely stray very far from the analytical straight-and-narrow. I’ve got nothing against clarity, precision, and the like—but this isn’t the only way to do philosophy. Outside the academic journals, profound philosophical ideas are often expressed through literature, cinema, and song. There’...

Philosophy for the Young: Corrupting or Empowering?

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...

Saint Augustine

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...

'Human' is an honorific title (video)

From the Minds of Babies

  Imagine what it’s like to be a newborn baby.  For months, you’ve been all alone in this warm and cozy womb -- your every need catered to.  Then suddenly, out of the blue, you’re thrust into a chaotic world, filled with strange new sights and sounds -- and people …  lots of people  … big people.  They’re doing all sorts of things that you have no idea about.  And all you can do is lie there, looking helpless, cute, and dumb.  Fortunately,  babies are a lot smarter than they look.  They get their bearings in the world very quickly. ...