News

Welcome to our archive of news stories which might be of interest to philosophers. The stories are drawn from the electronic pages of the world's media. On this page, you'll find links to those stories that have been featured on TPM Online in the current year. At the bottom of the page, you'll find links to separate archives of stories from previous years.

We're always pleased to hear about news stories that you think should be featured on TPM Online. Just contact us here, if you want to point one out to us.

A note about links

Inevitably links go out of date. We suggest, therefore, that you make hard-copies of the stories that particularly interest you.

Credit

Our news service is provided by the people at ButterfliesandWheels.com.

The TPM Online news service is available as a RSS feed.

Latest News

H E Baber on Whether Religion is Replaceable
What once was religion has already been parcelled out to a variety of different institutions and agents.
Date filed: 22-06-2009

Virtual Lecture at Second Life on Saturday
Stephen Law presenting a lecture and Q&A about The War for Children's Minds at The Open Habitat Project.
Date filed: 06-06-2009

Support Simon Singh
If he loses, it will be serious for freedom of speech, not only in Britain but throughout the world.
Date filed: 05-06-2009

The Roots of Intelligent Design
The argument is one thing, the ID movement is another.
Date filed: 03-06-2009

AC Grayling on Enthusiasm for Science
Talks by Martin Rees and Steve Jones at Hay drew huge audiences and intelligent questions.
Date filed: 26-05-2009

How the Light Gets In, Hay, May 22-31
Philosophy and music festival: Blackburn, Grayling, Malik, Neiman, Bauman, more.
Date filed: 19-05-2009

Wendy Grossman on the Terrible Judgment
Libel law balks responsible reporting; the public is deprived of knowledge they need to make informed decisions.
Date filed: 17-05-2009

Ernest W Adams Obituary
Emeritus professor of philosophy at Berkeley.
Date filed: 16-05-2009

Quantum Entanglement
Quantum theory has been used to investigate everything from free will to consciousness.
Date filed: 10-05-2009

Martha Nussbaum: Islamic Liberalism Under Fire
Liberal values are not tepid and centrist, but truly radical in a world of violence and quasi–fascist forces.
Date filed: 05-05-2009

Aristotle's School to Become Open-air Museum
The remains of the ancient school where Aristotle taught are to be turned into an outdoor museum.
Date filed: 04-05-2009

Nussbaum Receives Prize for Law and Philosophy
Martha Nussbaum has been awarded the 2009 Henry M. Phillips Prize in Jurisprudence.
Date filed: 04-05-2009

Simon Blackburn on Hume's Divine Irony
Hume said that nothing could be more artful than the Dialogues, and it is the failure to appreciate that art that is annoying.
Date filed: 04-05-2009

Cognitive Science for Teachers
Abstract thinking is not something our brains are designed to be good at or to enjoy.
Date filed: 04-05-2009

Journal Making the Virtues Interesting
The idea was to widen the discussion of virtue and make it seem less ideologically and politically charged.
Date filed: 04-05-2009

Martin Puchner on Alain Badiou
Badiou opposes the body/language doctrine not only for its political consequences, but also for its effect on the discipline of philosophy itself.
Date filed: 02-05-2009

Allan Gibbard Elected a Fellow of the NAS
One of three living philosophers to be elected to the (US) National Academy of Sciences.
Date filed: 28-04-2009

Steven Lukes on the Right to Judge Others
Who are we to apply our standards to the adherents of other moral and religious systems?
Date filed: 28-04-2009

Test the Monty Hall Puzzle Game at TPM
And tell Jeremy if there are any bugs. It's a good game; have fun.
Date filed: 24-04-2009

A C Grayling on Some Pressing Questions
One is about scientific literacy: we need more people who are excited by what's happening in science.
Date filed: 20-04-2009

School Hires Philosopher-in-residence
Pupils will learn how to construct arguments, understand reasoning and the basics of epistemology.
Date filed: 20-04-2009

Jim Holt Reads Simon Critchley
The idea that death is not such a bad thing may be liberating, but is it true?
Date filed: 19-04-2009

Jonathan Derbyshire Interviews John Gray
'Why should one think that, because knowledge has grown, human beings will be less prone to cowardice and cruelty?'
Date filed: 16-04-2009

Simon Blackburn on Hume and Sceptical Irony
Hume is much too subtle to describe himself as an atheist.
Date filed: 13-04-2009

Joshua Cohen and Thomas Nagel on Rawls
How Rawls's political philosophy was influenced by his religion.
Date filed: 12-04-2009

André Glucksmann on Postmodern Capitalism
Our age is the first to proclaim the power to reduce risk to zero simply by spreading it around.
Date filed: 12-04-2009

Robert Darnton: Google and the Future of Books
The 18th century imagined the Republic of Letters as a realm with no police and no boundaries.
Date filed: 30-03-2009

Center for Naturalism Newsletter
Hours of reading.
Date filed: 22-03-2009

Baggini Says New Atheism is Counterproductive
'The new atheism gets atheism wrong, gets religion wrong, and is counterproductive.'
Date filed: 20-03-2009

Roger Scruton on the New Humanism
The noble form of humanism has its roots in the Enlightenment, in Kant's defense of the moral law, and in the progressivism of well-meaning Victorian sages.
Date filed: 14-03-2009

Review of Nigel Warburton on Free Speech
With admirable clarity, this VSI shows us how wobbly, hazy, but unavoidable that line turns out to be.
Date filed: 13-03-2009

Leiter on the APA and Discrimination
Many universities require applicants to sign statements of ‘faith’ which discriminate on the basis of sexual preference.
Date filed: 04-03-2009

Religious Freedom and Discrimination
Christian philosophers distinguish between orientation and act, but this would not hold up in court.
Date filed: 04-03-2009

Philosophers Hate an Untenable Dualism
Is there a principled difference between memories and notebook entries?
Date filed: 01-03-2009

Philosophy's Great Experiment
X-phi wants to kick down the walls of recent philosophy and place experimentation back at its centre.
Date filed: 26-02-2009

Baggini on Polkinghorne on Science and Religion
Polkinghorne and Beale often use God to plug the spaces left by science's incompleteness.
Date filed: 26-02-2009

Michael Ignatieff: an Intellectual in Politics
How does a liberal intellectual face up to the dilemmas of liberalism during a war on terror?
Date filed: 26-02-2009

Nigel Warburton on God and the Buses
There probably isn't, there definitely is; the epistemology of advertising.
Date filed: 26-02-2009

A C Grayling on Secularist Students
'This critical, evidence-based, enquiring mindset also thinks afresh about the good for human lives and societies.'
Date filed: 20-02-2009

Baggini on Hume on Faith or Reason
Faith does not simply plug a gap where reason fears to tread; it actively goes against all that reason tells us.
Date filed: 18-02-2009

Julian Baggini on Hume the Agnostic
There is a thread of uncertainty that runs through all Hume's works on religion.
Date filed: 18-02-2009

Susan Jacoby on Darwin the Disturber
'People say natural selection is ok for human bodies but not for brain or behavior,' says Helena Cronin
Date filed: 12-02-2009

Darwin Day
For those unable to get to an event, Darwin's complete publications and 20,000 private papers are available online.
Date filed: 12-02-2009

Philosophy Bites: Chandran Kukathas on Genocide
Perhaps the received definition of genocide that emerged following the Second World War needs refinement.
Date filed: 09-02-2009

Philosophy Bites: Kate Soper on Alternative Hedonism
We need to rethink how we live, but alternative ways of living can be more enjoyable than consumerism.
Date filed: 09-02-2009

David Papineau on Scientific Realism
Do subatomic particles really exist, or are they convenient fictions? On Philosophy Bites.
Date filed: 09-02-2009

Idealism in Eastern and Western Philosophy
Keith Ward discusses the idealist traditions in Eastern and Western philosophy on Philosophy Bites.
Date filed: 09-02-2009

Roger Scruton on Forgiveness and Irony
Forgiveness and irony underlie our conception of citizenship as founded in consent.
Date filed: 08-02-2009

How to Think About Science
Ian Hacking and Andrew Pickering, Christopher Norris and Mary Midgley.
Date filed: 24-01-2009

What Philosophers Dream About
'I was standing in a hall full of people who were listening to a speaker inveighing against synthetic a priori propositions...'
Date filed: 19-01-2009

Personal Experience Makes Ethical Issue Vivid
A moral philosopher has a brain tumour, may lose her memory and self, is furious that euthanasia is not an option.
Date filed: 19-01-2009

Philosophers More Employable Than Ever
'Two of our former Essex philosophy students are firefighters, a third works at the Tate Modern; the possibilities are endless.'
Date filed: 19-01-2009

Simon Critchley on Oscar Wilde
The faith of the faithless must be a work of self-creation where I am the smithy of my own soul.
Date filed: 17-01-2009

Arne Naess 1912-2009
The Norwegian philosopher developed a theory that he called deep ecology.
Date filed: 16-01-2009

Ron Aronson on Secularism and Commitment
We don't have to believe in God to see the world as meaningful and coherent.
Date filed: 15-01-2009

BSLS: The Two Cultures in Question
24 January: Gillian Beer, Ben Goldacre, Anthony Grayling, Jonathan Miller, Alan Sokal.
Date filed: 05-01-2009

Carlin Romano at the APA Convention
Passion for their subject marks people in philosophy more than it does those in disciplines with more obvious employment options.
Date filed: 04-01-2009

The Edge Question 2009
Nicholas Humphrey, Ian McEwan, Michael Shermer, the Dysons, Irene Pepperberg, many more.
Date filed: 04-01-2009

The Guardian Chats with A C Grayling
Belief in the tooth fairy but not God is the beginning of wisdom: the tooth fairy might pay up.
Date filed: 03-01-2009

News Archive (note: these files may well be large!)

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Archive from 2005

Archive from 2004