In “What Art Unveils,” Alva Noë says that art makes things strange. “Art unveils us ourselves. Art is a making activity because we are by nature and culture organized by making activities. A work of art is a strange tool. It is an alien implement that affords us the opportunity to bring into view everything that was hidden in the background.”
Philosophy
Thought experiments
In “5 Thought Experiments That Will Melt Your Brain,” Evan Dashevsky says that because “some science is too big, dangerous, or weird to happen in the lab,” thought experiments “may be the most valuable experiments of all.” But notice that all five of his examples are from philosophers.
Why the world does not exist
Well, if by “world” you mean the true nature of the whole of reality, that does not exist as something we could possibly know. But everything else except the world does exist. In his review of Markus Gabriel’s Why the World Does Not Exist, Richard Wolin explains all this and more.
Sometimes we expect the truth, sometimes we don’t
“Why is it wrong for Volkswagen to lie (if it did lie) about whether its cars meet emission standards, but uncontroversial for HBO to lie (if it is lying) about whether Jon Snow is dead?” In “Companies Lie. Some Get Away with It,” Stephen Carter explains that sometimes we expect people to lie and sometimes we don’t.
No theory of everything
In “There Is No Theory of Everything,” Simon Critchley reminisces about his teacher Frank Cioffi. Along the way there are amusing anecdotes, distinctions drawn between explanation and interpretation, warnings about the twin dangers of scientism and obscurantism, and reflections on the value of philosophy (it scratches an itch!). “We don’t need an answer to the question of life’s meaning, just as we don’t need a theory of everything. What we need are multifarious descriptions of many things, further descriptions of phenomena that change the aspect under which they are seen, that light them up and let us see them anew.”
What philosophy is necessary
In “Philosophy in Our Schools a Necessity, Not a Luxury,” Robert Grant outlines the value of studying philosophy. Its value lies not only in teaching students how to think, but also in teaching them the important things to think about.
Pascal’s wager revisited
Understood as making a rational gamble that God exists, Pascal’s wager is vulnerable to several objections. But in “Pascal’s Wager 2.0,” Gary Gutting addresses these objections with a distinction between denying that God exists and doubting that God exists. This opens the way for “religious agnosticism.”
Hume and Buddhism
In “How an 18th-Century Philosopher Helped Solve My Midlife Crisis,” Alison Gopnik explores fascinating links among Hume’s “bundle of perceptions” theory of self-identity, the European Enlightenment, Buddha, Tibetan monks, Siamese kings, Jesuit missionaries … and her own midlife crisis.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy … a model for the rest of the internet
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy “has achieved what Wikipedia can only dream of.” Lovers of wisdom have set a standard for the rest of the internet. “The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy may be the most interesting website on the internet. Not because of the content—which includes fascinating entries on everything from ambiguity to zombies—but because of the site itself. Its creators have solved one of the internet’s fundamental problems: How to provide authoritative, rigorously accurate knowledge, at no cost to readers. It’s something the encyclopedia, or SEP, has managed to do for two decades.”
John Malkovich reinterprets Plato
… with the help of Yoko Ono, OMD, Placebo. Like a Puppet Show is an album to be released November 27 on which John Malkovich read Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” against an eerie musical landscape.
Socratically Speaking 