To challenge your own point of view. An interview with philosopher and novelist Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, author of Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won’t Go Away.
Ethics
Should we redesign humans?
… or, for that matter, monkeys? “Say you did create a human-chimp chimera that was like a dog, but much, much smarter. It loved you unconditionally and did what you wanted and was a sort of slave, but it enjoyed it. Does that being have a complaint against you? If it hadn’t been created in that way, it wouldn’t have existed. In that sense, it’s not harmed.”
It’s hard to change your mind
“The New Atheist Sam Harris recently offered to pay $10,000 to anyone who can disprove his arguments about morality. Jonathan Haidt analyzes the nature of reasoning, and the ease with which reason becomes a servant of the passions. He bets $10,000 that Harris will not change his mind.” Why? Because “people deploy their reasoning powers to find support for what they want to believe.”
What’s unique to humans?
Are we really as unique as we like to think? Stephen Cave considers the evidence. The biological evidence suggests it’s cooperation, “the distinctively human practice of putting heads together.” Does this undermine Hobbes’ view of human nature … or in a way confirm it?
We are puppets … but are we free or not?
Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett are determinists who agree that our thoughts and acts are completely determined by prior states of the universe and the laws of nature. But Harris is a hard determinist who thinks free will is simply an illusion while Dennett is a compatibilist who thinks we do have free will even though we are determined. In a review of Harris’ Free Will, Dennett says the book is veritable museum of mistakes. Harris replies with a lament that Dennett’s review is “a strange document—avuncular in places, but more generally sneering” and is itself a collection of distortions and mistakes. The review and reply are both lengthy, but a fairly quick look will give the student an idea of the differences between hard determinism and compatibilism.
Aid in dying
Aid in dying v. assisted suicide. Is this the difference between killing and letting die? “In a Gallup Poll conducted in May, for example, 70 percent of respondents agreed that when patients and their families wanted it, doctors should be allowed to ‘end the patient’s life by some painless means.’ Yet in the same 2013 poll, only 51 percent supported allowing doctors to help a dying patient ‘commit suicide.’”
The dangers of certainty
A lesson from Auschwitz. “We always have to acknowledge that we might be mistaken. When we forget that, then we forget ourselves and the worst can happen.”
Can ancient philosophy help people lead better lives?
Five books on ancient philosophy and modern life. Jules Evans “explores philosophy lessons of the ancients relevant to our globalised, information age – by way of cognitive behavioural therapy, and government measures of happiness.”
Socratically Speaking 