Fifty years ago … on October 22, 2964 … Sartre turned down the Nobel Prize in Literature. He had been selected “for his work which, rich in ideas and filled with the spirit of freedom and the quest for truth, has exerted a far-reaching influence on our age.” But seven years earlier his fellow existentialist Albert Camus accepted the prize. He had been selected “for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times.” Which of them violated existentialism? Neither did, according to Stefany Anne Goldberg: “What matters most about Existentialism is not the validity of a decision, but following out the responsibilities and implications of that decision. Both Sartre and Camus did that. They lived out the responsibilities of being the rejector and the acceptor, respectively. In making opposite decisions, both writers affirmed the underlying creed, which is that the choice itself is far less important than the life lived according to that choice.”
Month: October 2014
Socrates considers snack mix
Dan Pashman humorously asks whether it is ethical to cherry-pick your favorite ingredient from a snack mix. Socrates, Hobbes, Kant, and Nietzsche weigh in.
What do we owe the hungry?
The United States is the wealthiest nation, has an obesity epidemic, and yet also has a very serious problem with hunger. Mike LaBossiere considers whether we have moral obligations to the hungry.
Thomas Aquinas
What can we learn from a medieval philosopher who had visions of the Virgin Mary and explained how angels speak and move. Quite a bit, it turns out. Thomas Aquinas developed “a philosophical framework for the process of doubt and open scientific inquiry.”
Both free and determined?
The more we understand about the world and especially our brains, the more it seems that our decisions are determined by forces — our genes, our neurons, our upbringing, for example — that are beyond our control. And yet we experience making choices. In “The Benefits of Binocularity,” Erik Parens explains the “better way to go about trying to understand what sorts of beings we are is to see ourselves as both free subjects and as determined objects, and to accept that we aren’t wired for seeing ourselves in both ways at once. Using either lens alone can lead to pernicious mistakes.”
More about how Aristotle invented science
Another review, this one by Henry Gee, of Armand Marie Leroi’s The Lagoon: How Aristotle Invented Science. It’s true that Aristotle make some mistakes in his investiations. But “in science, there is no shame in being wrong. Scientists are wrong all the time. Aristotle was a pioneer in that he started not with a prior scheme, but sought, as dispassionately as he could, to explain what he saw.”
Are you a moral lark or a moral owl?
Does morality depend on the time of the day? Are you more likely to cheat in the morning or in the afternoon? Jalees Rehman reviews interesting questions about “how the external time of the day (the time according to the sun and our social environment) and the internal time (the time according to our internal circadian clock) affect moral decision-making.”
Hostages, ransom, and runaway trolleys
According to Nigel Warburton, although it won’t deter kidnappers to pay a ransom, rational calculations fall by the wayside when people you love are involved.
Marshmallows and cigarettes
According to Walter Mischel, the key to self-control is learning to mentally “cool” the “hot” aspects of your environment, those things that pull you away from your goal. How does his research and personal experience with self-control fit with philosophical questions about free will, determinism, compatibilism, etc.?
Ten questions for the philosophy of cosmology
How can philosophers work with physicists to study the origin and development of the universe? Sean Carroll poses questions for the philosophy of cosmology. For example, are time and space fundamental features of the universe, or do they emerge from more basic features? Philosophers have considered time, space, and Carroll’s other questions throughout … well, over considerable time and space.
Socratically Speaking 