News
News
Is Facebook Morally Responsible?
21
Aug 2021
If you’ve been following the news, you’re aware that the Delta variant of the Coronavirus is all around us. While it only poses a very minor risk to the vaccinated, it is wreaking havoc on the unvaccinated. At the time of writing, we’re back up to around 50,000 new cases a day in the United States, the vast majority of which are unvaccinated (around 99% of those hospitalized for Delta are unvaccinated). So with the easy availability of vaccines (at least in the US), why doesn’t the remainder of the population just get the jab? There are many and various answers to that question....
Read moreMystic, Composer, Polymath
21
Aug 2024
Many people know Hildegard of Bingen for her musical compositions, which were highly innovative for the 12th century and are still being performed today. In fact in the 1990s, an electronic version of them by Richard Souther, Vision: The Music of Hildegard von Bingen, reached number one in the charts. But Hildegard also did a bit of everything: botany, medicine, theology, philosophy—she even wrote a play. It’s an allegorical drama, where a Soul gets tempted by the Devil on one side and encouraged by a host of Virtues on the other. There's something delightfully subtle about...
Read morePhilanthropy vs. Democracy
Ken Taylor
29
Apr 2019
This week we’re asking whether philanthropy is bad for democracy—which is more than a little ironic. Philanthropy pays both of our salaries. It funds scholarships for needy students. It builds libraries, hospitals, and museums. So what’s not (for us) to like? For starters, we shouldn't let those good things blind us to the corrosive harm that philanthropy does—especially to democracy. Ask yourself why we need to bribe rich people into giving their money away, using tax breaks—and I mean huge tax breaks. All that does is reduce the overall funds government has to spend on all the...
Read moreMoney Matters
27
Apr 2020
Is money the root of all evil, or is it just a technology that makes our lives more efficient? Should some things not be for sale? This week on Philosophy Talk, we’ll be discussing money: where it comes from, what it is now, and what it could become in the future. You might think that something counts as money just in case it’s a valuable commodity that everybody is willing to barter for. Some forms of money, like gold coins, certainly fit this description. Others, like deeds that entitle the bearer to gold, are valuable because they represent valuable commodities. But it’s common...
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 moreThe Culture Wars: Phase 2?
Ken Taylor
11
Nov 2015
Here is a conjecure. We are by now deep into a new phase of the so-called "culture wars." The current battles in the culture wars are ased partly on competing and apparently irreconcilable perceptions over the extent of what some see as genuine oppression and others see as merely so-called "oppression." I was prompted to this conjecture partly by recent events on various university campuses and partly by some advice I ran across on a Unitarian-Universalist website about how to be effective allies to those with marginalized identities. They offered 20 or 21 recommendations -- some of them...
Read moreWhy Be Moral?
Ken Taylor
11
Jan 2015
This week we're asking the question: Why Be Moral? But what kind of question is that? Morality is a good thing. Immorality is a bad thing. A person should always do good things and never do bad things. Doesn't everybody agree? Well, judging by people's behavior, not necessarily. But we also have to be careful not confuse 'ought' and 'is'. People do behave immorally. But they shouldn't. Everybody knows that - at least in their heart of hearts. That implies that immoral behavior is irrational or insincere or hypocritical or...
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 more