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Cruelty in American Politics
Truman Chen
29
Mar 2017
In response to recently newfound liberal sympathy for the white working class upon Trump's ascension to the presidency, The New York Magazine columnist Frank Rich recently published an article with the title "No Sympathy for the Hillbilly." Rich's basic point is that we should gladly accept the fact that the recent policy proposals from the Trump Administration look like they will deeply harm the very constituency that voted for these possibilities in the first place. All this with the understanding that only by letting them suffer, say, with the loss of healthcare, will they...
Read morePhilosophy Talk Moves to Sunday
Philosophy Talk
25
Jul 2006
We're back in the studio after our trip to DC. DC was great fun and we had a great time doing our show in the Capitol Building. There wasn't exactly a huge turn-out. Unfortunately, invitations to the event didn't go out until pretty late in the game, and of those who RSVP'ed that they were coming, there were a fair number of no-shows. But still, the audience was quite engaged and engaging. Kathleen Sullivan was a truly dynamite guest. The program will probably air in November, the Sunday before election day. It was...
Read moreCognitive Bias
Ken Taylor
15
Jul 2017
Aristotle defined humans as the rational animal. But he was wrong! The human mind is riddled with cognitive biases. At last count, there are something like 150 named cognitive biases—confirmation bias, in group bias, loss aversion, the Ikea effect, the halo effect, endowment effects. And every time you turn around, some clever psychologist is naming a new one. But whatever you name them, cognitive biases are a problem. They distort gender relations, racial relations, employment, education, politics, even science. And we’re mostly not even aware of them! That makes them very hard to correct....
Read moreFree Will
John Perry
26
Mar 2005
The term "free-will" has been used in philosophy and theology to formulate a number of different problems. Here are some of them: 1) If there is an omniscient God --- that is, a God who knows everything --- can we act freely? How can what we do be up to us, if God already knows what we are going to do? 2) If every event, including human actions --- events that consist of a human being doing something --- is caused by the events that lead up to the event, can human actions be free? If the past determines what we do, how can what we do be...
Read moreFree Speech on Campus
John Perry
25
Feb 2017
I will no doubt learn many things from our program on free speech on campus. But going into the program, here are some things I believe.
1. The first amendment said Congress shall make no law “… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press….” This was extended to the states after the Civil War, as I understand it.
2. If another institution abridges freedom of speech, it may be unwise or wrong, but it is not a violation of the first amendment.
3. All speech is action, and so may fall under rules prohibiting...
Sexism Versus Misogyny
Eliane Mitchell
20
Feb 2018
The words "misogyny" and "sexism" are often used interchangeably. But do they really mean the same thing? In an interview with Vox, Cornell philosophy professor Kate Manne draws a distinction between the two words. She argues that sexism is "a body of ideas that exists to justify social relations," whereas misogyny enforces patriarchal social relations when they come under threat. In this way, misogyny exists as the "moral manifestation" of sexism, for it punishes women who subvert male expectations and do not "serv[e] male interests in the ways they're...
Read moreStop Silencing Sex Workers
Ray Briggs
23
Apr 2018
The popular imagination typically pits feminism and free speech advocacy against each other. But in reality, they often align. The new SESTA-FOSTA bill is a case in point. Both feminists and free speech advocates should strongly oppose this law, and for closely related reasons. Let’s start with some basic factual information. FOSTA (the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act), which incorporates parts of the Senate’s earlier SESTA bill (the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act) was signed into law on April 11th. This bill makes website owners liable to both criminal...
Read moreTackling Sexual Violence
07
Mar 2022
How do we achieve justice for victims of sexual assault? Can we change the legal system to make it more effective? Or should we turn to social media instead? This week, we're thinking about "#MeToo: Retribution, Accountability, and Justice." Rape and sexual abuse are long-standing problems in our society that are slow to change, but are slowly beginning to get the attention they deserve. Activist Tarana Burke coined the #MeToo hashtag in 2006, but it gained greater mainstream recognition in the US in 2017, as Hollywood came forward about famous men who had sexually abused them. ...
Read moreThe Philosopher-Novelist
08
Apr 2025
Along with Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, and Mary Midgley, Iris Murdoch was one of the "Oxford Quartet" of moral philosophers. Most famous for her novels like The Bell, The Black Prince, and The Sea, The Sea (which won the Booker Prize in 1978), Murdoch also made hugely important contributions to moral philosophy. Murdoch believed that morality is objective—that is, that there are truths about it, regardless of what anyone thinks or does; the only problem is that it’s hard to grasp. Even with the best will in the world, we don't always perform the best actions....
Read moreRemixing Reality: Art and Literature for the 21st Century
Ken Taylor
17
Aug 2014
This week, it’s s Remixing Reality – Art and Literature for the 21st Century. Remix is all the rage, these days. Some people claim that absolutely everything is a remix. Of course, if that were literally true, it would imply that nothing new is being created anymore. But in one sense, a remix is a new thing. A remix is a new thing that that results from the creative transformation of the old. Though people tend to think of remix as a distinctively 21st century thing, great creators have been producing remixes practically forever. Think James Joyce. Oscar Wilde. Or even Shakespeare. Every...
Read moreTo Forgive and Forget
Ken Taylor
10
Dec 2011
This week’s episode is about “Forgetting and Forgiving.” Frankly, though, the ‘forgetting’ part is sort of throw-away. You should never forget the wrongs done to you. Why would you want to? Forgiving, though, is another thing entirely. When somebody wrongs us, negative emotions can eat away at us. If we let go of our anger and resentment, we experience healing and reconciliation. One could, I suppose, think that there are times and situations when forgiveness just isn’t called for. Suppose somebody...
Read moreElection Special 2016 – Uncut
Devon Strolovitch
02
Sep 2016
Happy Labor Day from your friendly neighboorhood producer. This weekend we present our first Election Special, a pre-produced epsidoe taking a (mostly) Trump-free look at some of the deeper issues raised by this year's presidential campaign. Once again I thought I'd offer a behind-the-scenes look (and listen) into the show's production. The idea of an election-related episode actually came up at a production meeting early in the year. Our student researchers had proposed a multi-segment show focusing on the moral duty to vote, the role of money in elections, and...
Read moreDance as a Way of Knowing
Laura Maguire
30
Sep 2015
The title of this week’s show might sound a little mysterious. How can dance, of all things, be a way of knowing? Most things we know, we know either through perception or through thinking and reasoning. But on the surface of things, it doesn’t look like dance is either a form of perception or a form of thinking. So, in what sense is dance a way of knowing? We might want to start by saying more about what knowing is. The traditional philosophical conception says that to know something, you must have a justified true belief. You can’t know...
Read more#FrancisOnFilm: Once Upon a Time...
26
Aug 2019
Quentin Tarantino’s highly entertaining new film, Once Upon a Time….in Hollywood, retells the story of the murders committed by members of the Manson “family.” Charles Manson led a cult of followers who lived at the Spahn Ranch, a site in the hills of Los Angeles County where western TV shows such as The Lone Ranger were filmed. Members of the Manson clan committed nine murders during the summer of 1969. The most famous of the murders occurred at the home of Sharon Tate and her husband, the film director Roman Polanski. Tarantino’s retelling of the story has one of the cult killers say...
Why Self-Deception Research Hasn’t Made Much Progress
Neil Van Leeuwen
01
Sep 2010
I’d like to talk frankly about why research on the topic of self-deception hasn’t made much progress—as far as I can see—despite a steady-stream of on-going interest. There’s been some excellent work, but it doesn’t seem to me that the topic on the whole has moved forward all that much. In both philosophy and psychology there has been a tendency to talk about self-deception as if it were one thing. If it’s one thing, we can just figure out what that is. Right? The philosopher’s approach is to try to solve the paradox of self-deception and come up with an analysis of self-deception in...
Read moreWhy Music Matters: Open Thread!
Ken Taylor
12
Jan 2008
I'm in the airport at Tucson. I'm listening online to our episode on "Why Music Matters" which we recorded in front of live audience at a locale in San Francisco. David Harrington, of the world famous Kronos Quartet is our guest. Since my flight is about to board, I won't have time to listen at length. And I've been too wrapped up in the conference to blog about the topic. But I thought it might be fun just to open up an entry to comments from listeners about the show and the topic. I'll add my own two cents worth in a separate entry when I get some time --hopefully later this week. For now,...
Read moreDoes Work Give Our Lives Meaning?
Truman Chen
19
May 2017
The possibility of a world without work is making plenty of people nervous: what would it look like, will it actually be good for us, will life even be meaningful anymore? In a recent editorial for The Guardian, Yuval Noah Harari has made the case that we don't need to fret, at least not when it comes to having meaningful lives. As Harari sees it there are already enough examples of meaning-making in the world—ranging from religious belief to Pokémon to consumerism—that we'll be able to impose meaning onto the world even if we're rendered obsolete as workers. What do you...
Read moreHate! Hate! Hate!
David Livingstone Smith
01
Sep 2017
The last thing that I do every night is watch the news shows on TV, and listen to the pundits discuss and debate the issues of the day. And the first thing that I do in the morning, after pouring myself a mug of coffee, is sit down in a comfy chair and read the news. I’ve noticed that ever since the abortive “Unite the Right” protest in Charlottesville, during which members of the so-called alt-right, kitted out with swastika flags and Ku Klux Klan regalia, marched through that little college town chanting neo-Nazi slogans, the topic of hate has been high on the media agenda....
Read moreCaring
John Perry
29
Jul 2005
It was terrific to have Martha Nussbaum on Philosophy Talk. Martha is one of those philosophers, like Robert Nozick, John Searle, David Lewis and a few others, who seem to produce more interesting philosophy than seems humanly possible, and not just by repeating themselves, but in virtue of a steady stream of original insights. In the program I was skeptical about Nussbaum's rather cognitive take on the emotions, and I used some such phrase as "primitive caring." Ken mentions this in his blog, and seems not quite sure of what I meant. Well, I'm not quite sure either, but I'll play...
Read more#FrancisOnFilm: What is a Documentary?
Leslie Francis
25
Jan 2017
Is it a film that records (i.e. “documents”) events? Re-tells them? Or shapes them? Sundance is a film festival renowned for its documentaries and this year is no exception. Documentaries don’t always obtain widespread public distribution, although some at Sundance later appear on PBS, Netflix, or other outlets. Already, I’ve seen at least three documentaries that I hope are widely seen by general audiences. One of these is Al Gore in An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, being distributed by Paramount. Two others are Joshua: Teenager vs. Superpower and Icarus—both now Netflix...
Read moreIs Killmonger to Blame?
Serena Wong
06
Mar 2018
Note: SPOILERS AHEAD! Marvel's newest superhero movie, Black Panther, has been setting records left and right since its release on February 16, 2018. In many ways, it is a classic superhero movie, with a clearly defined and often one-dimensional super villain that eventually loses to our hero. But many are questioning who is to truly blame in Black Panther. Other Marvel villains are easy to root against, lacking compelling motives or backstories—but Killmonger is different, a character some are rallying behind. Killmonger seeks to arm oppressed black people all over the...
Read moreGaining Knowledge without Learning
01
Jan 2021
If I asked you to name some ways of knowing, you might mention a few familiar ones. You can come to know something by observation using your senses: you can come to know that it’s dark by looking out of your window. You can come to know something by testimony: you can come to know that there’s a sale on at Barney’s right now by hearing your friend tell you just that. You can also come to know something by working it out in your head: you can figure out that 68 + 57 is 125 just by adding 68 and 57. In each of these cases, you’re coming to know something that was already a...
Read moreIs It Real or Is It Simulated?
13
Sep 2023
Have you ever wondered—even if just for a second—whether we might all be in the "Matrix," hooked up to machines and fed a non-stop computer-generated illusion? Or maybe we’re in a version of The Truman Show, where the objects we see are real but the people are just actors pretending to be our friends. How we could ever know for sure? What’s to say you’re not a figment of my imagination, cunningly crafted by our robot overlords? What's to say I'm not a figment of your imagination? It's true that I don’t feel like a figment of your imagination. And Descartes, of...
Read moreThe Dark Side of Science
Ken Taylor
24
Oct 2013
This week we're stepping over to the Dark Side of Science. Of course a skeptic might ask, what dark side? Without modern science, we’d still be bleeding the sick, travelling by horseback, and using carrier pigeons for long distance communication. But there are no unmixed blessings. Like everything else in life, science has its downsides too. The same science that gives us modern medicine, also gives us germ warfare. Modern transportation is ruining the environment. And modern communication enables governments to spy on us and terrorists to plot against us....
Read moreJohn Locke
John Perry
28
Feb 2011
In America, the 17th century British philosopher, John Locke is probably best known as one of the inspirations for the Founding Fathers. His Two Treatises of Government argues against the divine right of kings, and in favor of government by the consent of the governed. His views were admired greatly by Jefferson and the other Founders. Locke was a political activist as well as a philosopher. He lived through the last half of the seventeenth century, exciting times in England. Charles the first was beheaded, Oliver Cromwell governed for a while, followed...
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