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Educated Insolence
Guest Contributor
27
Feb 2006
by Tony Veale Stand-up comics often bemoan the fact that "everyone's a f**king comedian!", and its true: every one appreciates humor (to some degree) and most are capable of generating some form of spontaneous humor. But this very ubiquity makes humor harder, rather than easier, to understand formally, since humor assumes many guises and operates with subtle differences in myriad contexts. A whole host of philosophers and other thinkers have proposed theories of humor throughout history, though none are wholly successful, since each tends to emphasise one favored aspect of humor over others....
Read moreNehamas to Guest Blog
Philosophy Talk
09
Mar 2005
We here at Philosophy Talk: The Blog are please to announce our first guest blogger, the distinguished philosopher of art, Alexander Nehamas of Princeton University. Alexander will be our guest on next week's episode. We think it'll be a fun show and we look forward to hearing from Alexander. We hope that Alexander is the first in a long line of distinguished guest bloggers. Enjoy!
Read moreAbortion
John Perry
08
Jan 2011
We need to distinguish two questions in considering abortion: Why is abortion morally objectionable, if it is? Is it because we violate the rights of the fetus? Or is it some other reason, like that it expresses a cavalier attitude towards human life? if we interfere with a woman’s choice to have an abortion, have we wronged the woman? Do we, or does government, have the right to interfere with the exercise of that choice? The answer to the first question only partly determines the answer to the second. If there’s nothing morally objectionable about abortion...
Read moreThe Place of Scepticism and Sceptical Arguments
Ken Taylor
14
Mar 2009
Today's show will be about scepticism. Our guest will be John Greco of St. Louis University. I don't really know John or his work, but I see that he has written a book called Putting Sceptics in their Place. That's sort of what I want to talk about in this warm-up to the show post. I should start with a confession about my philosophical tastes. I tend not to find epistemology the most gripping of philosophical subjects. Roughly, epistemology has to do with the nature of knowledge. And a big part of epistemology historically has been devoted to answering the sceptic who...
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 moreCollective Immortality: Living on Through Others
Ken Taylor
02
Nov 2015
This week we're talking about Collective Immortality – living on through others. Collective immortality refers to the fact that although each of us individually is going to die, the species as a whole will endure – if not forever, then at least for a very long time. The subtitle is a little misleading, I have to admit, since we’re not really talking about the continuation of your individual life through the species. That would be a sort of pseudo-immortality – not the real thing, in any case. As Woody Allen puts it ...
Read moreAge, Ageism, and Equality
02
Dec 2021
Is age discrimination always wrong? How do we take people's age into account without being ageist? These are the questions we’re asking this week, in an episode called “Should All Ages Be Equal?” Clearly we don’t want to discriminate, say, against 50-something Brits when it comes to hiring. (I’d be out of a job at Philosophy Talk!) But at the same time, we equally clearly don’t want to let a five-year-old drive a car, a 15-year-old buy a bottle of whisky, or a 40-year-old compete against kids in a spelling bee. So how do we draw the lines? And are we currently drawing them in a fair...
Read moreScience and Gender
Ken Taylor
03
Mar 2014
Our topic this week is Science and Gender. Science used to be seen as a thing for boys only. Back in the 1980’s when students were asked to draw what a scientist looks like… forty eight percent drew a scientist with facial hair; twenty-five percent gave their scientist a pencil protector. Only eight percent drew a woman. Of course, back then the perception that science was a boy thing, pretty much matched the reality. Science really was pretty much an all boys club back in those days. The august New York Times recently published an...
Read moreThe Language of Responsibility
John Perry
10
Jun 2011
By the language of responsibility, we mean the way we report events for which someone might be held responsible --- events for which someone might be blamed, or praised. For example, in reporting a famous event witnessed by millions of people on TV, I might say "Justin Timberlake ripped off Janet Jackson’s blouse, revealing her naked – uh --- chest." Well, actually, her right breast, not to be overly euphemistic. I’m describing an action for which Timberlake might be held responsible, and with him CBS, for exposing the young, innocent Super Bowl watchers...
Read more#FrancisOnFilm: I Am Mother
06
Jun 2019
Sci-fi thriller I Am Mother is due out on Netflix tomorrow. My husband and I saw it at Sundance this year and it’s a fantastic philosophical movie. It raises all kinds of philosophical questions about abortion, reproduction, enhancement, population policy, and many others. After we’d seen it, my husband and I couldn’t stop talking about it. I don’t want to spoil the film for anyone, especially by revealing the ending, but one set of core issues posed by the film concern what makes for ideal mothering. What is ideal mothering? Can there be a plausible ideal theory...
Can Philosophy Help in a Crisis?
20
May 2020
As I write this, we’re months into a pandemic that has claimed at least 300,000 lives around the world; healthcare workers are risking their safety every day; and many of the rest of us have been feeling isolated and alone after social distancing for so long. It has been a challenging time. So for the next two weeks, we’re talking to different Stanford scholars who find roads to comfort, connection, and a sense of common purpose in literature, philosophy, and music. But can the arts and humanities really help in these difficult times? In particular, can philosophy? Just to be...
Read moreMillennials and Social Media, a Deadly Mix?
Sun Lee
09
Feb 2018
Millennials are taking part in a dangerous and bizarre activity. The "Tide Pod challenge" has gone viral across social media since January and involves young people filming themselves biting on a Tide Pod. Meanwhile, the numbers don't show a dramatic increase in reported cases of actual consumption. Perhaps a far more interesting and real hysteria is the moral panic that ensued among the public in reaction to the challenge. The US Consumer Product Safety Commision issued a warning against consuming Tide Pods, Tide recruited football player Rob "Gronk" Gronkowski in their newest advertisement...
Read moreOne Person, One Vote?
Ray Briggs
29
Jun 2018
In 1880, trade unionist George Howell published a pamphlet titled “One Man, One Vote”. Since then, versions of the slogan “one person, one vote” have been used in a variety of settings to express a democratic ideal: elections should provide every citizen with an equal say in governance. But in America, the reality still falls short of the ideal. One Person, Zero Votes? One problem is that many Americans do not vote. According to the Pew Research Center, only 56% of voting-age Americans participated in the 2016 presidential election, as compared to 80% in Denmark, 83% in Sweden,...
Read moreShould Belief Aim at Truth?
Laura Maguire
13
May 2017
Should your beliefs aim at the truth? Or should you just believe whatever makes your life better, whether it’s true or not?These are the questions we’re thinking about in this week’s show.You might think that the answer is obviously that our beliefs should always aim at the truth. But consider this—sometimes it’s actually to your advantage to have some false beliefs. Psychologists study a phenomenon called “positive Illusion,” happy beliefs that can have powerful effects, despite not being true. For example, imagine you’re competing in a race...
Read moreTheodor Adorno [VIDEO]
Mohit Mookim
11
Sep 2017
We are posting this thought-provoking, yet entertaining summary of Theodor Adorno's work on his 114th birthday, although he's not around to celebrate. Adorno was the influential founder of the Frankfurt School, a now prolific philosophical powerhouse. His writings on culture, capitalism, and fascism are as timely as when they were written. Enjoy the video! A link to it can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YGnPgtWhsw
Evolutionary Psychology: A Defense -- Sort of!
Ken Taylor
24
May 2005
It's amazing how divided opinions are about evolutionary psychology. Some very fine philosophers and cognitive scientists are really big fans of the genre. Other equally fine philosophers and cognitive scientists appear to see little of merit in it. The philosopher of biology John Dupre, who was a guest on our show a few weeks back talking about genetic determinism, says the following about the evolutionary psychology of sex and gender: ... [it] offers us mainly simplifications and banalities about human behavior with...
Read more[VIDEO] What Is Evil?
Spencer Giel
11
Feb 2017
When hearing about human-inflicted tragedies, you have probably wondered at some point or another: How could someone possibly commit such a horrendous act? Evil frequently befuddles us, leading us to picture evildoers as bizzare cases of humanity, completely apart from the typical population. But how accurate is this depiction of evil? The video below, "What is Evil?" examines Hannah Arendt's thinking as she tries to understand the nature of evil, after witnessing the trial of Nazi Official Adolf Eichmann. Video courtesy of 8-Bit Philosophy. To learn more about evil,...
Read moreHannah Arendt
John Perry
05
Jun 2010
Today’s topic is Hannah Arendt. All the philosophers we talk about have interesting thoughts. But many of them have relatively dull lives. Hannah Arendt is not one of them. She led a very interesting life, and the events in her life had a lot to do with her philosophy. Arendt wrote about totalitarianism, the human condition, and fundamental issues in political theory. She wrote an influential book about the trial of the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem -- a book that made the phrase “the banality of evil” famous. She died in the...
Read moreSixty-Seconds -- Really?
Merle Kessler
08
May 2007
Recently, we had a couple of Program Directors -- the gate keepers of the public radio airwaves -- listen to some episodes of Philosophy Talk and tell us what they liked and didn't like. We won't bore you with the details, but just to give you a feel for what we're up against with these folks, we thought we'd share a few comments they made about Ian Shoales, the sixty-second philosopher. One PD says the following: If he was the 60 Second Philosopher, his segment was 2:20. That in and of itself is a problem. Another says: − The 60- Second Philosopher lasted 2....
Read morePeople with Guns
Neil Van Leeuwen
30
Mar 2016
What do August 8, July 23, July 16, and June 17 have in common? Answer: these are dates in 2015 (among others) in which mass shootings took place in the United States. August 8, David Ray Conley broke into a house in Houston and killed his ex-girlfriend, her husband, and six children. July 23, John Russell Houser killed two and injured nine before shooting himself at a presentation of the movie Trainwreck in Lafayette, LA. July 16, Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez shot and killed four marines and caused fatal wounds in a sailor, who died two days later, before police killed him in a...
Read moreThe Bone that Changed China
15
Apr 2015
The Famen Buddhist Temple (in what is now Shaanxi Province, in the People’s Republic of China) has been an important center for Buddhism since it was built near the end of the Six Dynasties period (220-581 CE). The temple is particularly famed for housing a Buddhist religious relic, an alleged finger bone of the Buddha. The relic had the reputation of producing miraculous cures, and several times during the Tang dynasty (618-906) it was brought to the royal palace, in nearby Chang’an (present-day Xi’an), when the emperor or empress was ill. During one procession from Famen to Chang’an, the...
Read moreWhose Fault Is It Anyway?
14
Nov 2020
Who’s to blame for big problems like racism, factory farming, or climate change? Isn’t it time we held governments and corporations accountable? Or would that just let individuals off the hook? This week on Philosophy Talk, we’re talking about collective responsibility. If you’re reading this, then in a way, climate change is partly your fault. You’re using electricity, and you probably get around using fossil fuels. That little bit of energy use might not make the difference between healthy ecosystems and environmental destruction, but everybody’s contribution together adds...
Read moreThe Gender Box(es)
18
Jun 2023
Gender is a controversial topic these days. To some, gender is an oppressive system designed to keep women down: people go around saying "girls are made of sugar and spice and boys are made of snips and snails," and pretty soon you’re making 80 cents on the dollar. To others, though, gender is an important part of their sense of self. They identify as a woman, as a man, as non-binary—and that helps them live the life they want to live. And to do that, you don't have to endorse all the discrimination. You can identify as a woman and be a feminist; you can be out there marching for equal...
Read morePhilosophy as Therapy
John Perry
23
Oct 2014
A lot of philosophers I know need therapy. I can’t think of too many I know I would want to be my therapist, however. What do philosophers know about therapy? But leave philosophers aside for a minute. How about philosophy itself? We must grant that people have a lot of irrational beliefs, and that these beliefs can lead to unhappiness of all sorts: anxiety, fear, depression, and the sorts of things for which therapy is needed? So if philosophy can undermine those irrational beliefs, and thereby remove the anxiety, fear,...
Read morePantheism
Laura Maguire
23
Feb 2012
Pantheism is the view that the world is either identical to God, or an expression of God’s nature. It comes from ‘pan’ meaning all, and ‘theism,’ which means belief in God. So according to pantheism, “God is everything and everything is God.” This may sound like a familiar Judeo-Christian concept, namely God’s immanence, which is the idea that God pervades or is ever-present throughout the universe. However, pantheism differs from traditional theistic religions in two important ways. First, pantheism rejects the idea that God is transcendent....
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