News
News
Privacy and the Internet of Things
Ken Taylor
16
Oct 2017
This week, our topic is "The Internet of Things." What will life be like when every road you travel, every device you own, every building you enter is connected to the internet? Will these developments transform our world in ways that enrich our lives? Or will they just create more opportunities for hackers, corporations, and governments to pry into every aspect of our lives? Now in one way the internet of things can seem like it can’t be all that big of a deal. The internet has been around for several decades. And while the internet has already affected our lives in many ways, it’s not...
Read moreToppling the Dehumanization Thesis
Eliane Mitchell
30
Apr 2018
Often, the perpetrators of the worst atrocities in human history have used rhetoric that labels the group they oppress as animals or objects, like "vermin" or "roaches." In turn, philosophers, such as Philosophy Talk's featured contributor David Livingtone Smith, argue that dehumanization enables the infliction of widespread violence since the perpetrators think of their victims as "nonhuman." While this "dehumanization thesis" certainly sounds intuitive, is it correct? In this article from The New Yorker, Paul Bloom argues that the dehumanization thesis is limited....
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 moreThe Examined Year: 2015 - Uncut
Devon Strolovitch
02
Jan 2016
Happy new year from your friendly neighborhood producer. With John and Ken taking a well-deserved break, I thought I’d offer a look behind the scenes at some of what it takes – radio-wise – to examine the year that was. Pre-production on this year’s show started in late October with some brainstorming about what newsworthy events (to that point) might have philosophical angles worth exploring – things that made us challenge our assumptions and think in new ways, as they say. For the first segment (which we generally pitch as “The Year in Philosophy and/or Academia”), we decided to focus on ...
Read more[VIDEO] What Is Metaethics?
Spencer Giel
14
Apr 2017
Most of us probably have some ideas about what constitutes our personal brand of ethics: questions about what is morally right and wrong pervade philosophy and everyday life. But what about metaethics? What is the difference between a moral realist and anti-realist? Between a moral absolutist and cultural relativist? Which one are you? Examining these broader categorizations of ethical thought could help you gain a better grasp of some of your underlying metaethical beliefs, your beliefs about what morality is. In this episode of Crash Course Philosophy, we are given a brief...
Camus and Absurdity
Laura Maguire
27
Feb 2015
Many people believe that the most fundamental philosophical problem is this: what is the meaning of existence? That’s a question that Albert Camus dug into in his novels, plays, and essays. His answer was perhaps a little depressing. He thought that life had no meaning, that nothing exists that could ever be a source of meaning, and hence there is something deeply absurd about the human quest to find meaning. Appropriately, then, his philosophical view was called (existentialist) absurdism. What would be the point of living if you thought that life was absurd, that it could never have meaning...
Read more#FrancisOnFilm: Is Wonder Woman a Feminist Movie?
Leslie Francis
28
Jun 2017
Wonder Woman is a wonderfully engrossing movie, but is it a feminist one? The answer depends on what you think it means to be a feminist and what you make of the beauty of Gal Gadot. Here are three reasons why you might think it’s feminist—or maybe not. 1. Wonder Woman is very strong. Very, very strong. She’s taught to be self-confident and tough. She comes up on top in some of the best movie fight scenes ever. Her super powers are truly impressive and she looks gorgeous using them. Indeed, one of her super powers just may be her beauty. It captivates a lot of people in the movie,...
Read moreMeaning from Meaninglessness
Ken Taylor
05
Apr 2005
Irv Yalom was a great guest. We had a fun, lively conversation that went back and forth between philosophy, biography, and psychotherapy. You can hear the archived version of the episode here. I want to expand on a topic that we just barely touched on during the episode. I discussed it briefly but not in great detail in my pre-show post. I'm thinking about where values and meaning come from and whether a metaphysics anything like Schopenhauer's has the resources to make room for value and meaning. I think that the answer is yes. ...
Read moreWe Don't Decide Who We Love
Jack Herrera
02
Mar 2017
We often think of a love as something natural and powerful—a mysterious feeling we experience spontaneously, deep in the recesses of our essential selves. But our love, and our capacity to love, may have a lot more to do with our society than we acknowledge. Recently on Verso Books's blog, Dalia Gebrial published a powerful critique of how colonialism complicates love. For Gebrial, love—like any other interaction between people in society—is encoded within existing power structures. Gebrial writes: Embedded within the constituent discourses of love—of desirability, emotional labour,...
Read moreCorporations and the Future of Democracy
John Perry
09
Oct 2014
Our topic this week is Corporations and the Future of Democracy. That title suggests that corporations are a potential threat to democracy. So we should start off by getting clear on what exactly a corporation is, and how it might threaten democracy. There are lots of ways that corporations threaten democracy. But they’re all, I think, rooted in one basic concept -- the idea of limited liability. That’s the concept that the individuals behind a corporation can shield themselves from full financial responsibility for risks they take. The thinking...
Read moreThe 2012 Dionysus Awards
John Perry
09
Feb 2012
This week it's our Dionysus Awards show. The Dionysus Awards are presented to the most philosophically interesting movies of the year. And sometimes, when we feel like it, we also honor philosophically notable movies from the past. Unlike your average awards show, we accept nominations from the floor. So we’ll be talking to some of our listeners who wrote in with their suggestions, and to some special guests as well. To win a Dionysus Award, a movie has to be interesting from a philosophical point of view. It could present a morally complex vision of human...
Read more2021: The Year in Sound
Devon Strolovitch
25
Dec 2021
As Senior Producer, every once in a while I like to step out from behind the mixing board to give a behind-the-scenes look at some aspect of the program—especially when the Philosophers themselves are off on their holiday breaks. For this week's annual end-of-year special, "The Examined Year" (because the un-examined year is not worth reviewing!), we tried something a bit different, though not unprecedented. As a modular episode featuring three different conversations, it's often a challenge to come up with a "Roving Philosophical Report" that satisfyingly captures the sounds and...
Read moreBeyond the Turing Test
05
Feb 2025
Is there anything computers can't do—or at least won't be able to do at some future time? They have already gotten pretty powerful: we've developed cars that drive themselves, protein-folding software that discovers new medicines, and massive encyclopedias you can fit in your pocket—not to mention all those tools to help students cheat on their papers. The way things are going, ten years from now we may all be obsolete. And yet there are still plenty of things humans can do that computers can’t, like feel emotions, fall in love, or hold a real conversation. That's why many of us think it's...
Read moreLetting Go of Human Nature
11
Jun 2019
We human beings have been fascinated with ourselves for a very long time. In particular, we’ve been interested in what’s called “human nature.” But the idea of human nature is also riven with controversy. Some scholars—often those in the humanities—argue that there’s no such thing as human nature, while others—often those in the social and biological sciences—regard the “denial” of human nature as an egregiously retrograde, anti-scientific move. I think that a lot of the human nature enthusiasts have gotten things backwards. Rejecting human nature isn’t necessarily anti-scientific, because...
Read moreDemonizing Black Men
02
Jun 2020
As I write these words, my new book, On Inhumanity: Dehumanization and How to Resist It is poised to be released by Oxford University Press. This would normally be a joyous, exciting time for me. Ten years of painstaking research distilled into one, short, accessible volume is an accomplishment of which I can legitimately be proud. But in reality, this is not a happy time for me, and not just because of the Covid pandemic. Pandemics come and go, but racism persists. Now, once again, the terrible things that I describe and try to analyze in the book have been thrust into the forefront...
Read moreIs Yoda a Stoic?
Eliane Mitchell
15
Feb 2018
It might surprise you, but according to philosophy professor William Stephens, “The code of the Jedi is Stoicism 101.” In Ancient Greece, around 300 B.C., Stoic philosophy gained an appreciable following. The Stoics taught that “true power is self-mastery.” To live a good life, they also believed that one must live in harmony with nature. Yoda and the Jedi impart similar lessons, says Stephens, by teaching Luke to discipline his mind to harmonize with the logic of the Force. “To find the good, the Light Side of the Force,” Stephens summarizes Yoda’s advice to Luke, one has to remain...
Read moreFaith and Humility
Ken Taylor
06
May 2018
For better or for worse, believers and non-believers are unlikely to fully agree about the relationship between faith and humility. Indeed, some non-believers may insist that there is an inherent conflict between the two. Faith can make the believer appear stubbornly dogmatic, impervious to reasoned argument and willfully blind to the truth. People of faith sometimes seem to claim to have a direct pipeline to God. And having a pipeline to God too often frees them to ignore the protestations of the rest of us mortals. And that doesn’t look like humility, at least not to outsiders. To them, it...
Read moreNominations open for the Third Annual Dionysus Awards!
Philosophy Talk
22
Dec 2010
We're gearing up to record our third annual Dionysus Awards Show. This will be the third year in a row that we have given out Dionysus Awards for the most philosophically interesting movies of the year. We're seeking nominations from you, our listeners. Submit a nomination to comments@philosophytalk.org, along with information on how to reach you, in case we want to include you and your nomination on our final broadcast. Please submit your nomination by January 9th, so that we have ample time to sort through them all and decides which ones we want to include in...
Read morePhilosophy Talk and the Paradoxical Facebook Contest
Ken Taylor
13
Jan 2009
So we're approaching 1,000 fans on our Philosophy Talk Facebook Page and we say to ourselves, "We ought to have a contest. Maybe we could give the 1,000th fan and the person, if any, who invited the 1000th fan to become a fan some really cool philosophy related prizes." Sounded like a fun idea at first. But after we thought about it for, oh, a few seconds, we realized that there's a catch! Facebook pages publicly display the number of fans who have subscribed to that page. That means that if we were to announce that we were holding such contest anybody who wanted to win the...
Read moreThe Philanthropy Trap
Laura Maguire
16
Jun 2016
Is philanthropy an unalloyed good? Or does philanthropy have its downsides too? If you’re wondering what could be wrong with individuals voluntarily giving to charitable causes that serve the public good, let me just narrow the scope of my criticism to giving from the ultra wealthy—fat cats like Bill Gates or John D. Rockerfeller, who set up these huge foundations worth billions of dollars. It’s not that I think the world would be a better place if these billionaires simply blew all their money on frivolous luxuries. My concern is that these foundations set up billionaires to decide...
Read moreDoes Science Advance?
28
Jul 2015
Does science progress in a cumulative way? In other words, do later scientific theories build upon earlier ones by keeping older established truths about the world, and adding us more truths? The standard answer, familiar from Whiggish history and brief historical asides in scientific textbooks, is that it does. Aristotelian-Ptolemaic astronomy predicted the motions of the planets; Copernican-Galilean astronomy did a better job of prediction and was simpler; Newtonian physics explained how force and mass accounted for the motions studied by Galileo; Relativity Theory adds an explanation of...
Read more[VIDEO] What Makes for a Good Life?
Spencer Giel
02
Jun 2017
It's one of philosophy's greatest and oldest questions: what makes for a good life? Regardless of what specific areas of philosophy we might be interested in, this question affects every one of us. So, how should we live our lives? Seeking pleasure? Knowledge? Self-actualization? Is there meaning to be found in this life? Must we create it ourselves? The stances we take on all of these questions have the potential to shape how we think and act everyday. This episode of Crash Course Philosophy examines a number of takes on this long-pondered question, including the views of Camus,...
Which Statues Should Go?
Neil Van Leeuwen
18
Aug 2017
A large hunk of metal in the shape of a human occupies a public space—maybe a park. Thousands of statues around the United States and world fit this description. Many depict people who have done hideously immoral things. Almost all depict morally imperfect people (with baby statues, perhaps, being the exception). It’s intuitive, I think, that some statues should be left in place and some should be torn down. This statue of Victor Hugo should stay, in order to commemorate the man and his great works; the Hitler statue whose remains are captured here, however, deserved destruction. But what...
Read moreFiction and Belief
John Perry
13
Oct 2005
When The Old Curiosity Shop was approaching its emotional climax -- the death of Little Nell -- Dickens was inundated with letters imploring him to spare her, and felt, as he said, "the anguish unspeakable," but proceeded with the artistically necessary event. Readers were desolated. The famous actor William Macready wrote in his diary that "I have never read printed words that gave me so much pain. . . . I could not weep for some time. Sensations, sufferings have returned to me, that are terrible to awaken." Daniel O'Connell, the great...
Read more