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Philosophy Talk Holiday Treats Coming Soon!
Philosophy Talk
20
Nov 2007
Just in time for the holidays, we at Philosophy Talk will offer our listeners some holiday treats, including:THE COMPLETE PHILOSOPHY TALKUntil the end of the 2007, you will be able to purchase The Complete Philosophy Talk , the entire archive of Philosophy Talk to date -- all 147 (and counting) episodes -- for the price of $129.95. That works out to about 88 cents/episode. Buy it for yourself! Or give the gift of thought! A perfect holiday treat for your philosophically inclined friend, offspring, parent...
Read moreSelf-Deception and the Problem with Religious Belief Formation
Neil Van Leeuwen
07
Jan 2006
A quote: “He who eats the bread and drinks the cup with an unbelieving heart eats and drinks judgment upon himself.” This line is from the communion liturgy of the Church I grew up in—the Christian Reformed Church of Grand Rapids, Michigan. The word “judgment” in the quote is a way of saying "damnation to Hell". The word “unbelieving” refers to disbelief in the core metaphysical doctrines of the Church. The effect of regular repetition of lines like this in the service is to strike fear in the person who may be questioning such doctrines. Fear in turn squelches inquiry and creative thought. I...
Read moreR.I.P. Derek Parfit
Devon Strolovitch
04
Jan 2017
The eminent British philosopher Derek Parfit passed away earlier this week. Although he had never joined us on the program, his 2011 book On What Matters was the subject of the first segment on our very first year-in-review special, when John and Ken talked about it with USC philosopher Mark Schroeder. As we prepare for the live broadcast of The Examined Year 2016 this coming Sunday, check out that (mostly) uncut conversation from The Examined Year: 2011.
Read morePuzzle About Conspiracy Theorists (Part II)
Neil Van Leeuwen
06
Sep 2018
In my last blog, I examined a puzzle about conspiracy theorists. On the one hand, many conspiracy theoretic beliefs, like those of flat earthers, appear irrational. Psychological research, furthermore, shows that conspiracy theorists are typically low in analytic cognitive style, which means (roughly) they’re low in conscious deliberate rational thought. On the other hand, the researcher whose talk I had heard (Jan-Willem van Prooijen) pointed out that many conspiracy theorists do a lot of “thinking” and consider evidence contrary to their views. Accordingly, they adopt auxiliary...
Read moreWhat's In a Picture?
10
Sep 2019
Look around; I’ll bet you can see several pictures from where you sit, or stand, right now. You may see photographs of family, or drawings in advertisements. There are little pictorial icons for apps on your computer desktop and your phone’s home screen. Simplified pictures of pedestrians, cars, trucks, and deer festoon our street signs. Pictures are so ubiquitous that they often fade into the background of our conscious experience. We take them for granted. But there’s a special magic to pictures. When you see one, you don’t only see some colors on a surface, some marks jumbled...
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 more[VIDEO] Is it OK to Kill Animals for Food?
Spencer Giel
07
Apr 2017
According to a poll conducted in 2016, approximately eight million US adults are vegetarian. The reasons that many vegetarians pose for their meatless diet vary, often including environmental or health benefits. However, what about the simple reason that killing animals for food is not morally justifiable? If the entire planet could survive eating only a vegetarian diet, are we justified in killing millions of animals a year? In this episode of Wireless Philosophy, Tyler Doggett of the University of Vermont tackles this question. If we do not approve of killing other humans for...
In Praise of Reading
Ken Taylor
25
Jul 2017
We modern humans read all sorts of things and for all sorts of reasons. Reading newspapers helps keep us informed about what’s happening in the wider world. We read letters, or once did, from those still dear, but no longer near. Lovers separated by oceans and continents once routinely bared their hearts to one another in passionately composed letters, recieved and read with great delight. As humankind’s ability to travel the world increased, reading took on ever greater importance as a means of cementing and maintaining bonds of family and friendship. These days the written word...
Read moreRumor, Suspicion, and Misinformation
Neil Van Leeuwen
28
Jul 2017
I’m sometimes shocked, as a researcher, at where my investigations lead. In the course of revising a new paper on experience and belief in the supernatural (co-authored with Michiel van Elk of University of Amsterdam), I received some comments that referred us to a book on sorcery “beliefs” and the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Zimbabwe. The referred-to book was Alexander Rödlach’s Witches, Westerners, and HIV: AIDS and Cultures of Blame in Africa. It was published in 2006. But its insights about rumor, suspicion, and misinformation are relevant today—not just for understanding Zimbabwe,...
Read moreIs Every Idea Worth Engaging?
Serena Wong
28
Mar 2018
Is every idea worth responding to, or are some ideas so harmful that we should not engage at all? University of Virginia professor of philosophy Elizabeth Barnes explores this question in a recent article, arguing that it is sometimes worth it to engage with harmful ideas, such as Peter Singer's argument that the lives of disabled people are on average less valuable than the lives of nondisabled people. For her, whether to engage depends on a cost-benefit analysis. Because real harm can come from engaging with harmful ideas, the benefits of engaging must outweigh the harm. There might be some...
Read moreAbortion and Dehumanization
04
Aug 2020
From time to time, pro-life advocates argue that those who take a pro-choice position routinely dehumanize the unborn, paving the way for murder-by-abortion. Every so often, my own work on dehumanization is appropriated to make such arguments. In this essay and the next I want to show why these arguments don’t hold water. Let’s begin with a dehumanization claim, as summed up in a comment by the journalist Kathleen Parker in an op-ed for The Washington Post, “When we use language to disguise reality — whether the developing human baby is a ‘clump of cells, a ‘fetus,’ or, even, a ‘...
Read moreLiberalism and Self-Government
14
Oct 2022
This week we're thinking about the British Liberal tradition and its relationship to colonialism and self-government. Classical Liberal thinkers, like John Locke and John Stuart Mill, held that we're all born free, equal, and capable of rationality, and so we all deserve to be free and equal. So how does that square with a British Empire that denied people around the globe their autonomy for centuries, or a United States of America—whose Founding Fathers explicitly looked to those Liberal thinkers for inspiration—founded on colonialism, "manifest destiny," and slavery? Locke himself...
Read moreJustice Scalia and Judicial Diversity
Neil Van Leeuwen
15
Feb 2016
Before the imposing body of Justice Antonin Scalia was even cold, acrimonious partisan anticipation over replacing him aligned liberals and conservatives in opposed phalanxes. Fight over the man’s legacy first, bury him later. The Republican Senate Majority, as I write, stands with spears bristling in front of the confirmation process, while President Obama is determined to send a hapless nominee their way, come what may. But as The New York Times notes, Scalia in recent times wasn’t silent about what’s needed for the future of the highest Court. What did he want? In a word, ...
Read moreReview of Iris Murdoch's The Nice and the Good
14
Mar 2015
This is a review of Iris Murdoch's novel, The Nice and the Good (1968). Iris Murdoch (1919-1999) was one of the greatest English novelists of the 20th century, and also an important figure in philosophy. In fact, she was a professor of philosophy at Oxford, and her collection of essays The Sovereignty of Good (1970) continues to stimulate discussion. Her novels reflect her philosophical views, but they are largely devoid of technical terminology. (A pedantic character in this novel uses the expression “sense datum” in conversation with a friend, who immediately...
Read morePornography: Open Thread
Ken Taylor
29
Aug 2009
Blogging has been light around here as of late -- what with our gang's various and sundry summer travels and the fact that we were often not in the studio this summer. But it's time to kick this blog back into at least moderate gear. For the upcoming season, I plan to blog more regularly -- at least weekly, I hope. (Daily is way more than I can manage.) Not going to make an elaborate entry this morning, before the show. But I thought I'd give you a taste of what we're going to talk about today, Here's a little dialogue, between Joe and Blow...
Read moreStrange Behavior (Or: On Watching Sports—a follow-up to Tuesday’s show on basketball)
Neil Van Leeuwen
30
Mar 2006
Aristotle’s characterization of man as the rational animal will seem flattering, if you think about many behaviors we people engage in regularly. While many people in our society are overworked, short on knowledge, and pressed for time, many of us take time out to watch unusually tall individuals get together in groups to hurl a spherical object through a suspended ring. These tall individuals get dressed in outfits with shiny colors and are glorified for the ability to hurl the sphere through the ring. Whole buildings fill up with people who want to watch the hurling of the sphere and pay...
Read moreHow to be a Relativist
Ken Taylor
29
Apr 2005
Over at the blog Left2Right, the philosopher David Velleman has an interesting post about moral relativism. Prompted by recent news coverage of moral relativism and then Cardinal Ratzinger’s denunciation of modernity’s supposed move toward “the dictatorship of relativism,” Velleman argues that almost everyone who denounces relativism has it confused with some other doctrine. Relativism, Velleman claims, is an extremely implausible doctrine and has precious few serious adherents. Consequently, he...
Read moreTricks for Political Persuasion
Truman Chen
21
Apr 2017
In our age of political polarization, it seems hard to convince anyone of anything that they didn't already believe in. This consistent inability to reach any real mutual understanding can lead some to "agree to disagree," but when it comes to serious matters, like the question of healthcare or whether Syrian refugees should be allowed to enter a nation-state, lives are at stake. Olga Khazan of The Atlantic explores a possible "trick" to bypass this problem of persuasion. Khazan looks at how certain "moral frames" are more convincing to some people than others. In the case of...
Read moreKen's Big Announcement
01
Apr 2019
Friends, Colleagues, and Philosophy Talk Listeners, In the spirit of Plato, I am pleased to announce that I am throwing my hat in the ring for 2020! I can no longer sit back and watch as almost nothing gets accomplished in American politics. The default state of our system is inaction or reaction, because by design it rewards rather than punishes stasis and reaction. Ours is one of the few democratic—well, pseudo democratic—systems in the world in which it is false that failure is an orphan and victory has a thousand fathers. In American politics, stasis and defeat can have a...
Read morePuzzle 1: Are Beliefs Voluntary?
23
Mar 2020
Need a distraction from the incessant stream of information (good and bad) and speculation (mostly bad) about the Coronavirus? I certainly do. Well, here’s my attempt to give you one. For my next sequence of blogs—for the duration of the Corona outbreak—I’m going to post about philosophical puzzles that are either old or new. And I’m going to describe the puzzles and attempt to make them gripping—and not offer you any help in solving them. Or I won’t offer you any help until the next blog, at which point I’ll post links to philosophical papers that offer various solutions. If...
Read moreGods, Psychology, and Occam’s Razor
Neil Van Leeuwen
03
Jun 2014
What makes people believe in God? The relatively new research field cognitive science of religion is busy trying to answer this question. And it’s come up with some powerful answers so far. Importantly, its answers are psychological. They focus on the mental processes that cause religious belief—or religious credence, as I call it. But the existence of this research program raises an important philosophical question. What should understanding the psychology of belief in God do to that very belief? In other words, once we know where religious credence...
Read moreWisdom
Ken Taylor
23
Sep 2011
Our topic this week is wisdom. We hope to figure out both what it is and how we can cultivate it in ourselves and in others. And we’re also eager to think about where all the wise men and women have gone. After all, ours is an age of unparalleled scientific knowledge and technological expertise. But for all of our knowledge and expertise we don’t seem to have an excess of wisdom. Quite the contrary, in fact. Now once upon a time, especially in the ancient world, philosophers thought a lot about the nature of wisdom. In...
Read moreAi Weiwei: How Censorship Works
Mohit Mookim
05
Jun 2017
Most of us have probably heard of censorship in China, but how does it really work? And what are its effects? To what extent are ordinary citizens responsible? Who better to hear the inside scoop from other than famous Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who routinely has to deal with his work being censored. Ai Weiwei takes to The Stone, the philosophy blog on The New York Times, to make his case. Read it here: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/06/opinion/sunday/ai-weiwei-how-censorship-works.html
Read moreA Moral Case for Meat
Eliane Mitchell
20
Oct 2017
From Peter Singer's Animal Liberation to arguments offered by the ancient Greeks and Hindus, many philosophers and environmentalists have made convincing cases against the practice of eating meat. But could there be a moral case in favor of it? One animal welfare advocate offers that eating meat gives animals a life worth living. By eating meat, in essence, humans create lives of worth and purpose, since most farm animals wouldn't be alive if there weren't a demand for their meat in the first place. But as the author points out, note that this position, that "...
Read moreCan Words Kill?
Ken Taylor
12
Dec 2017
Can words kill? You might think that the obvious answer is that words don’t kill—people do! And, people don’t even kill with words, they kill with bombs and guns. But is there some sense in words can be just as deadly as a gun or a bomb? I don’t mean that in a metaphorical sense. We all can admit that words can hurt or offend. But I’m asking if they can literally kill? Consider how the words that the Nazis used to torment their Jewish victims, or the words the Hutu used on the Tutsi. They did more than merely incite violence against those targeted. Their words were instruments of...
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