Are you a drifter or do you choose your life? Philosopher Ruth Chang explains in this TED talk.
Month: June 2014
Empty ideas?
Philosophy is a bunch of empty ideas. Or so Peter Unger, a philosopher who has written quite a few impressive works of philosophy, now claims.
Language and moral judgment
Moral judgments depend on whether we are speaking a foreign language. “… when people are presented with the trolley problem in a foreign language, they are more willing to sacrifice one person to save five than when they are presented with the dilemma in their native tongue.”
Biology and blame
Will contemporary science, especially genetics and neuroscience, require substantial changes to our notions of criminal responsibility? Biology and Blame is a series of very interesting articles examining historical and current influences on the notion of criminal responsibility.
The recurring myth about Nietzsche and fascism
Brian Leiter explains that when student members of the Union Council at University College London banned the Nietzsche Club, their “action betray[ed] profound misunderstandings of both Nietzsche and of universities.”
Could you have done otherwise?
The implications of the free will debate. Interesting discussion by FSU philosopher Alfred Mele of what neuroscience does and doesn’t tell us about free will. “An important implication of the free will debate – that is, the actual debate taking place in scientific and scholarly books and articles and in books and articles for the general public – is that we can easily be misled by scientific findings if we don’t interpret them carefully. When we pay attention to details, we see that the neuroscientific challenge to free will is misguided.”
Marcus Aurelius to the rescue
How Stoicism saved burnt out ad-man Jeremy Scott when he was up to his eyeballs in debt. “The wisdom of the Stoic Emperor Marcus Aurelius in his masterpiece Meditations is as effective in dealing with the problems of today as it was 1,800 years ago.”
A philosopher cuts the umbilical cord
… literally. “A philosopher on the brink of fatherhood contemplates how he got there.”
Nietzsche club banned
University College London bans its Nietzsche club. “The Nietzsche Club was barred from holding meetings at University College London after a ruling that discussions about right-wing philosophers could encourage fascism and endanger the student body.” Nietzsche all too often is linked to things he would have condemned.
Socratically Speaking 