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Letter of the Law, Spirit of the Law
21
Apr 2025
Have you ever driven 70 mph on a road where the speed limit is 65? Technically that's breaking the law; the police are perfectly authorized to pull you over and give you a ticket. But they're much more likely to use their discretion and let you go. And that makes sense: the point of the law is not to force everyone down to an exact speed but to keep everyone safe. That's the spirit of the law, and the letter isn't always the thing that counts. The problem, of course, is that discretion can be abused. Those traffic cops could decide to pull over...
Read moreThe Irreverent Peter Sloterdijk
Eliane Mitchell
30
Mar 2018
From The New Yorker, this delightful long-form piece, "A Celebrity Philosopher Explains the Populist Insurgency," discusses Peter Sloterdijk, one of Germany's most famous and celebrated living philosophers. In narrative form, the article tells of Sloterdijk's penchant for irreverence, explains how Sloterdijk has come under fire for his antipathy toward Syrian refugees, and illustrates how Sloterdijk rose to prominence as German philosopher Jürgen Habermas's foil. A philosopher who is unapologetic and outspoken, Sloterdijk infuses cheekiness and perspicacity into his work. This article...
Read moreShould Algorithms Decide?
Ken Taylor
14
Aug 2018
Our topic this week, the ethics and morality of algorithms. Strictly speaking, an algorithm is not a moral agent. It’s just a step-by-step, foolproof, mechanical procedure for computing some mathematical function. Think, for example, of long division as a case in point. From this perspective it may seem a bit like a category mistake or contradiction in terms to talk about the ethics or morality of algorithms. But what’s really relevant isn’t the strict mathematical notion of an algorithm, but a broader notion of an algorithm, which is roughly coextensive to whatever it is that...
Read moreThe Twilight Zone and the Human Condition
Eliane Mitchell
18
May 2018
In 1964, The Twilight Zone, aired its last episode, "The Bewitchin' Pool," on CBS. Some argue that the major themes of The Twilight Zone still resonate with modern audiences. What are these themes then, and how are they philosophically driven? As J.W. McCormack writes in The New York Review of Books, the show's most prevalent themes distill to the following: "'you are not what you took yourself to be,' 'you are not where you thought you were,' and 'beneath the façade of mundane American society lurks a cavalcade of monsters, clones, and robots.'” The...
Read moreAthletics and the Philosophical Life
Josh Landy
24
Aug 2018
The idea that athletics and philosophy are connected may sound strange at first, but is that just because we’re too attached to modern ideas about both? Think back, first, to a time before commercialism took over sports in a big way, and amateurism was more the norm. (That’s not to say, of course, that there was ever a golden age: the very first piece of literature in the “West,” Homer’s Iliad, already talks about a guy cheating in a chariot race! And doing so for—what else?—fame and fortune.) Think back, second, to a time when philosophy was seen by many...
Read more#FrancisOnFilm: Last Black Man in SF
24
Jul 2019
The Last Black Man in San Francisco is one of the best films I’ve seen recently. [SPOILERS BELOW!] It was my favorite from this year’s Sundance, where it won the best director award for Joe Talbot and a special jury award for creative collaboration. It deserves to be seen nationwide, not just by people in San Francisco who care about the future of a city that was once one of the country’s most diverse. The scenes of skateboarding around San Francisco are magical, and the offhand remark “you’re not allowed to hate a city you don’t love” perfectly captures the sensibilities of someone who...
Benjamin and Modern Enchantment
14
Jul 2020
Has the world lost its magic? If it has, is that a bad thing? And if so, can anything be done about it? In this week's show, we're discussing Walter Benjamin, the German-Jewish thinker from the early 20th century, who had fascinating things to say about all of this. Benjamin took seriously Max Weber’s claim that “the fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the ‘disenchantment of the world.’” Modernity is, above all, a time of disenchantment. These days a rainbow isn’t a god, as it was for the ancient Greeks, or a sign of God’s...
Read more[AUDIO] How Important is Privacy?
Spencer Giel
17
Jun 2017
The idea of a nosy hacker or government official peering into our bedrooms through our computer's webcam is likely to give anyone at least some feeling of discomfort. We have a tendency to desire at least some degree of privacy, allowing us to live part of our lives outside of the public eye. But is privacy foundational to our lives? How much does privacy deserve to be protected when greater safety often comes with its sacrifice? On this episode of Philosophy 24/7, Annabelle Lever shares her thoughts on the value of privacy and in what ways it should be protected. [AUDIO LINK] Have strong...
Read moreOn the Absence of Dogmatism
Ken Taylor
12
Mar 2005
During our episode on Religion and the Secular State Robert Audi claimed that some religions are non-dogmatic He might be right about that, I am not sure which ones he had in mind. On the other hand, John was pushing the line that many of our "secular" beliefs have pretty much the status and function of dogmatic religious beliefs. At least for some people, he might be right about that. I recall that at least one caller agreed with John's remark. I still insist that if we are to have a shared public life that reflects what ...
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 moreCulture and Mental Illness
Ken Taylor
07
May 2010
Our topic for this week is Culture and Mental Illness. Our aim is to consider the ways in which culture influences and shapes the very idea of mental illness and the also the way culture conditions the way particular mental illnesses express themselves. Start with the way culture shapes the very idea of what counts as a mental illness. Take the case of koro. Koro is mental disorder, characterized by a debilitating fear that that one’s genitals are retracting into ones body and that once they are fully retracted you will die. You don’t find many...
Read moreSHOUT OUT NOW!
Philosophy Talk
31
Mar 2007
Dear Philosophy Talkers: I'm opening this blog entry for you to shout questions and comments for our SHOUT OUT show that will air later today. We'll monitor our e-mail as usual, but we'll also monitor this blog. You can shout to us, to each other, to the world. Tell us what's on your mind? What philosophical problems keep you awake at night? Where would you like to see Philosophy Talk go in the coming year? We really are eager to hear from you. Ken
Read more'Anybody Need a Kidney?' or 'What Are the Moral Limits of Markets?'
Daniel Mullin
18
Apr 2013
I'm in the process of looking for work. In the meantime, I'm a bit low on cash. A friend of mine recently joked that I could always sell a kidney. Well, I'm not that desperate (yet), but the fact remains that I can't sell a kidney, at least not legally. This got me thinking: should I be able to do so? Most people have intuitions about what it's okay and what it's not okay to do for money. Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel has articulated some of those intuitions in What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets. Although I haven't read the book, I know he takes up the issue of...
Read more2020: The Year in Poetry
25
Dec 2020
One good thing happened in 2020: the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Louise Glück. This was a wonderful decision, and I for one could not be happier about it. It’s also a source of joy for the Stanford community generally, since we’ve been lucky enough to have Glück teaching here for a quarter over the last several years. The Nobel committee got it absolutely right, in that Glück is one of the great poets of our age; her magnificent poems are mysterious, powerful, and haunting. They have a way of staying with you for days—if not for life. That has certainly been the case for...
Read moreThe Philosophical Princess
20
Oct 2023
For the latest episode in our NEH-supported Wise Women series, we’re exploring the life and thought of 17th-century philosopher-princess Elisabeth of Bohemia. These days, she’s most famous for her correspondence with René Descartes, in which she raised several objections to his mind-body dualism. For Descartes, the body is material and extended in space, but it can’t think or feel; meanwhile the mind thinks and feels, but it’s purely spiritual and doesn’t occupy space. That brings up a pretty big question: if mind and body are totally different substances, how do they...
Read moreThe Midlife Crisis
Josh Landy
04
Dec 2017
What exactly is a midlife crisis? One way to think about it is that it’s the creeping feeling that what we’re doing with our lives isn’t worthwhile. The midlife crisis is Clarissa Dalloway wondering whether the life she has chosen is the life she should have chosen, and terrified that the answer may be “no.” Or worse: the midlife crisis can be the feeling that no choice of life could ever have been worthwhile. That nothing we could have done would have made that much of a difference in the world. That all choices of vocation are pointless, groundless, and arbitrary. The...
Read moreAre We Slaves to Technology?
Eliane Mitchell
07
Jun 2018
Smartphones are everywhere. In 2017, more than 67 percent of Americans owned a smartphone, and researchers expect that percentage only to increase over time. But how might this phenomenon, of always having our phones and access to social media at the tips of our fingers, impact the experience of being human? Should we be at all wary of technology's rapid rise? Sherry Turkle, a sociologist at MIT, thinks so, arguing that technology is "transforming what it means to be human." In this interview with Vox, Turkle worries that our extensive use of technology might make us less empathic. This...
Read moreIs Envy Always a Vice?
30
Jan 2019
At first glance, it seems hard to find anything positive in the phenomenon of envy. Someone else has something you don’t—a possession, a skill, a character trait, a relationship, a lifestyle—and that makes you feel bad. You long to have what she has; you resent her for having it; you feel bad about yourself for lacking it. Surely none of that’s is great. And it gets worse: envious feelings can lead to antisocial behavior. Maybe you’ll try to steal the object from her. Maybe you’ll try to bring her down to your level. It’s this antisocial component that makes envy not just a bad idea...
Read moreWhat Is a “Vivid” Mental Image?
23
Jan 2020
Close your eyes, and imagine a bedroom you lived in as a child. Take a moment in order to do a thorough job. Try to visualize the spatial layout of the room, the colors and textures, details of any clutter around your floor and desk. All but a few of us experience mental images when we try to do this. But what is a mental image? If you can summon one to mind, you probably already have a sense of what it is. If you don’t, it’s hard to define in any other terms. You might say it’s like a picture that belongs to the “mind’s eye.” Or you could compare what it’s like to have a mental image...
Read moreThe Mystery of the Multiverse
John Perry
22
Oct 2016
Throughout human history, every time we think we know what the universe is, it turns out that there is not just one of those things, but a lot of them. First we thought the universe was Earth, a sun and a moon, and a sky with a lot of mysterious points of lights. Then there turned out to be a number of planets with their own moons. Then a lot of suns, with their own planets: a lot of solar systems. For a while the universe was what we now call our galaxy. And then, it was a number of galaxies. Maybe five. Maybe five hundred. Maybe five million. However many galaxies we think,...
Read moreIs James Franco Rescuing Philosophy?
Truman Chen
15
Aug 2017
You might not have expected it, but the actor James Franco is promoting analytic philosophy in his new YouTube series, Philosophy Time. In relatively short videos, under 10 minutes, Franco chats back and forth with prominent philosophers such as Liz Harman and Andy Egan on issues ranging from metaphor to abortion. The videos are titled like college philosophy courses (Phil 101, Phil 102, etc.) but are presented in a way to make philosophy feel more approachable and fun to learn about. Franco listens earnestly, but engages in a light-hearted manner, and the video production adds...
Read moreNegotiating Identities: The Crash Solution
Ken Taylor
14
Jun 2005
Thanks very much to Anthony Appiah for being our guest on the show last week. You can check out the episode here. I meant to be blogging about this one awhile back, but the rest of my life intruded, unfortunately. I'm about to head off to Australia for seven weeks, where I'll be a visiting fellow at the Australian National University. I'll actually do three of the shows from down under. That's going to be tough. I'll have to be in a studio there at 4.00 AM. Now that is dedication. But back to the topic...
Read moreConfessions of a Cassandra
David Livingstone Smith
31
Jan 2017
This essay is a lot more personal than any of my previous postings on this blog—or, indeed, any my writing anywhere else. It’s personal because it concerns a topic that is so important to me that I cannot bear to shroud it in a pretense of academic detachment and so overwhelmingly significant that the thought of writing about anything else seems grotesque. On June16, 2015 Donald Trump descended the escalator to the lobby of his eponymous tower to announce that he was throwing his hat into the presidential ring. This announcement was the source of great amusement among my...
Read moreA Nietzschean Defense of Ben Carson
08
Nov 2015
How much difference does it make whether Ben Carson stretched the truth about his life story? Not much, I think. Before you dismiss me as a “right-wing nut job,” let me state for the record that I am a lifelong Democrat (whose biggest political dilemma at the moment is whether to vote for Hilary or Bernie). But as a professional philosopher (which I also am) I’m not convinced that what we have learned so far about Carson’s life story disqualifies him for the Presidency. Let’s start with what is probably one of the more minor issues. In his autobiography, Gifted Hands, Carson...
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