2008 news archive
The news stories below featured on TPM Online during the year 2008.
Review of Grayling's The Choice of Hercules
Essays on what constitutes the good life, and whether both pleasure and duty have something to teach us.
Date filed: 31-12-2008
Philosophers Weigh In on God
Contemporary Christian philosophers often content themselves with pulling up the drawbridge.
Date filed: 28-12-2008
Grayling on Ideas That Could Save Humanity
Good ideas should be stashed somewhere so that we don't have to keep reinventing them.
Date filed: 28-12-2008
Darwin Commemorations Celebrate Free Inquiry
Darwin's ideas remain startling in their implications for prescientific modes of thinking.
Date filed: 26-12-2008
Roger Scruton Says Mary Midgley is Underrated
'Midgley's view is that philosophy, in leaving the question of human nature to the biologists, has betrayed its mission.'
Date filed: 25-12-2008
Conservative Theists Outbreed Secular Types
Religious people have more babies than non-believers--and not just for the obvious reasons.
Date filed: 20-12-2008
The Epistemology of the DSM-V
'In psychiatry no one knows the causes of anything, so classification can be driven by all sorts of factors.'
Date filed: 18-12-2008
Peter Singer on the Cost of Mbeki's 'Beliefs' About HIV
Had South Africa's government provided the appropriate drugs, it would have prevented 365,000 premature deaths.
Date filed: 17-12-2008
Adam Phillips on 'The House of Wittgenstein'
Philosophers must resist the temptation to become mandarin philosopher-kings, and stick instead to the ruthless, undeflectable curiosity of childhood.
Date filed: 08-12-2008
Julian Baggini on 'The Philosopher and the Wolf'
A macho, misanthropic dipsomaniac and a wolf are not the most obvious fonts of philosophical wisdom.
Date filed: 08-12-2008
Grayling on the Hard Truth About Animal Research
As knowledge increases, so do doubts about the ethics of using any mammal for research.
Date filed: 08-12-2008
Study Shows Physical 'Self' is a Trick of the Mind
Neuroscientists induced 'out of body' experiences; will help researchers understand how the brain constructs a sense of physical self.
Date filed: 04-12-2008
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
A C Grayling notes that the UDHR has already made a real difference to our world.
Date filed: 03-12-2008
Adam Kirsch on Slavoj Zizek
It might be worthwhile to consider Zizek's work as if he means it - to ask what his ideas really are, and what sort of effects they are likely to have.
Date filed: 02-12-2008
Voices of Disbelief Off to the Publishers
Essays from 52 atheists including Baggini, Clark, Dacey, Grayling, Namazie, Edis, Law, Randi, Singer, Tatchell, Stenger.
Date filed: 01-12-2008
Science as a Way of Knowing
We need both: sound basic knowledge and the ability to discuss complex ideas that have a global impact.
Date filed: 27-11-2008
Tom Clark on Epistemology
Religiously inspired anti-empiricism, populist anti-intellectualism, disdain for 'elite' expertise have gained ground.
Date filed: 23-11-2008
Peter Singer on Obama’s Ethical Challenges
The biggest impact that Obama can make is beyond America’s borders.
Date filed: 21-11-2008
Slavoj Zizek on Obama's Election
All the skepticism displayed behind closed doors even by many worried progressives was proven wrong.
Date filed: 21-11-2008
Philosophy Bites: Roger Crisp on Virtue
What is a virtue? Is ethics a matter of cultivating appropriate virtues, patterns of behaviour prized by particular people at a particular time?
Date filed: 19-11-2008
Raymond Geuss on Real Politics
Geuss explains why he believes philosophers such as Robert Nozick and John Rawls were fundamentally misguided in the way they approached political philosophy.
Date filed: 19-11-2008
Alexander Nehamas on Friendship
Nehamas maintains that understanding a friend can be like understanding a work of art.
Date filed: 19-11-2008
Christopher Shields on Personal Identity
The question of what, if anything, makes an individual the same person despite change over time is an idea that has interested philosophers since antiquity.
Date filed: 19-11-2008
A C Grayling on Bombing Civilians in Wartime
Grayling explains why he believes the Allies' deliberate targeting of civilians during WWII was morally wrong.
Date filed: 19-11-2008
Anne Phillips on Political Representation
Should the representatives of democracy reflect the variety of those they represent?
Date filed: 19-11-2008
Does Religion Make You Nice?
Outsider status can have a corrosive effect on morality.
Date filed: 18-11-2008
Daniel Drezner on Public Intellectuals and Blogs
'The growth of the blogosphere erodes the barriers erected by a professionalized academy.
Date filed: 12-11-2008
The Philosopher and the Wolf
A spur-of-the-moment decision to buy a wolf cub changed Mark Rowlands’s life. From then on he found human company never quite matched up.
Date filed: 10-11-2008
CFI London: Science and Religion
Simon Singh, Mary Warnock, Jack Cohen, Stephen Law, 25th April, Conway Hall, Red Lion Square.
Date filed: 09-11-2008
Interview With BHL
Universalism is based on principles which are valid, and fortunately so, regardless of their geographical origin
Date filed: 03-11-2008
CFI London Has a Website
Coming up: 'Weird Science' with Ben Goldacre, Stephen Law, Richard Wiseman, Chris French.
Date filed: 28-10-2008
Mary Warnock Urges: Legalize Assisted Suicide
We have a moral obligation to take other people's seriously reached decisions with regard to their own lives equally seriously.
Date filed: 25-10-2008
Take the Moral Sense Test
The researchers especially want people with philosophy degrees to take the test so that they can compare philosophers' and non-philosophers' responses.
Date filed: 23-10-2008
Ronald Aronson on Choosing to Know
To choose to know is to encounter the world in a specific way.
Date filed: 22-10-2008
Review of 'Philosophy and Real Politics'
To introduce a note of realism into philosophical debates about justice, by force if necessary.
Date filed: 22-10-2008
Susan Neiman on Morality and Religion
Whatever the source of moral judgment is, it isn't divine authority.
Date filed: 22-10-2008
Ronald Aronson on Undercounting Secularists
Surveys on religion in America ask questions that maximize belief and minimize nonbelief.
Date filed: 20-10-2008
Anthony Appiah on Philosophers
With responses from Michael Walzer and Michael Sandel.
Date filed: 15-10-2008
Steven Poole on 'Don't Get Fooled Again'
The author hopes to give us the tools to avoid being fooled by 'pseudo-news' and pseudo-experts.
Date filed: 12-10-2008
Tom Clark on 'Misrepresenting Naturalism'
Naturalism is perfectly supportive of moral responsibility, human flourishing and an open, democratic society.
Date filed: 12-10-2008
Times Higher on Academic Blogging
Many philosophers seem quite happy to post early drafts of their research papers online.
Date filed: 12-10-2008
Stephen Law's 'The God Delusion' Book Club
Dawkins marshals empirical work on the evolutionary roots of morality to defend godless morality.
Date filed: 11-10-2008
Anthony Appiah at Philosophy Bites
One on experiments in ethics, another on cosmopolitanism.
Date filed: 11-10-2008
Religion v Science Round 4,857
Strident secularists, fanatical fundamentalists, Dawkins, Beattie, Reiss, Baggini, etc.
Date filed: 11-10-2008
Claudia Roth Pierpont on Machiavelli
Machiavelli no more invented political evil by describing it than Kinsey invented sex.
Date filed: 07-10-2008
Philosophers Need to Get Off Their...Chairs
An armchair in flames has become the informal symbol of the experimental-philosophy movement.
Date filed: 03-10-2008
Adam Gopnik on Richard Reeves on Mill
Aristides the Just was banished from Athens because people were fed up with hearing him called Aristides the Just.
Date filed: 03-10-2008
Julian Baggini's Sound Philosophy on Radio 4
Baggini explores the recordings of the sound archives to illustrate how our relationship to the past and present is changing.
Date filed: 30-09-2008
Interview With Slavoj Zizek
From Kant’s notion of the sublime, to racist jokes with a moral purpose.
Date filed: 29-09-2008
'Philosophy Bites' Passes 2 Million Mark
More than 2 million downloads of philosophy interviews. Not bad!
Date filed: 28-09-2008
Philosophy Bites: Barry Smith on Neuroscience
The impact of recent discoveries in neuroscience on our understanding of the mind and our senses.
Date filed: 28-09-2008
Adrian Moore on Kant's Metaphysics
An accessible account of the main themes of the book and what might have been motivating Kant's approach to metaphysics.
Date filed: 28-09-2008
Peter Cave on Paradoxes
In this episode of Philosophy Bites Nigel Warburton interviews Peter Cave about paradoxes and their relevance to philosophy.
Date filed: 28-09-2008
Christopher Janaway on Nietzsche on Morality
The Genealogy of Morality presents a highly original account of the sources of our values. Janaway discusses Nietzsche's influential book.
Date filed: 28-09-2008
Christopher Hitchens Reviews Bernard-Henri Lévy
Against anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism BHL counterposes the values of the Enlightenment, the France of the Dreyfusards, of Camus rather than Sartre.
Date filed: 20-09-2008
Aaronovitch on a Web of Sinister Untruths
The MMR panic was aided by a boneheaded refusal to discriminate between better and worse arguments.
Date filed: 16-09-2008
Havi Carel: 'Can I Be Ill and Happy?'
'Since my condition has no immediate prospect of a cure, I had to learn to live with it. Moreover I wanted to live well with it. This is where philosophy came in.'
Date filed: 15-09-2008
David Foster Wallace 1962-2008
The novelist and essayist had a background in philosophy.
Date filed: 15-09-2008
Fellows Demand Royal Society Sack Reiss
'The thing the RS does not appreciate is the true nature of the forces arrayed against it and the Enlightenment.'
Date filed: 14-09-2008
Why We Evolved to be Superstitious
Better to interpret a rustle in the bushes as a threat just in case it is a bear or another real danger.
Date filed: 11-09-2008
Thomas Nabel Wins Balzan Prize
For his fundamental and innovative contributions to contemporary ethical theory.
Date filed: 09-09-2008
Review of Ron Aronson's Living Without God
We need a morality which, without belief in a supreme being, allows us to confront the daily problems of our lived lives.
Date filed: 08-09-2008
Sue Blackmore on Opening Minds
If someone really understands how natural selection works, all previous ideas are thrown up in the air.
The key is not evidence but understanding.
Date filed: 06-09-2008
AC Grayling Reads Steve Fuller
Fuller seems to forget Popper’s killer point, namely, a theory that explains everything explains nothing.
Date filed: 05-09-2008
Julian Baggini on Free Speech and Mockery
While comedy speaking truth to power is funny, the powerful laughing at the weak is not.
Date filed: 04-09-2008
Carlin Romano on Bernard-Henri Lévy
It's that openness to being shaken in his beliefs that makes Lévy more appealing than many of his detractors.
Date filed: 04-09-2008
Our Brains Do Not Intuitively Grasp Probabilities
Thanks to confirmation bias, we remember the coincidences and forget the vast sea of meaningless data.
Date filed: 04-09-2008
Julian Baggini on Philosophy and the Art of Living
Self-help promises more than it delivers. For philosophy to do better, it cannot afford to make the same mistake.
Date filed: 02-09-2008
Bristol Festival of Ideas Podcast [mp3]
Julian Baggini talks about atheism, religion and agnosticism.
Date filed: 02-09-2008
What Does Humanism Mean?
Nigel Warburton asks Andrew Copson. One thing it's not is some sort of quasi-religion.
Date filed: 31-08-2008
Nigel Warburton Talks to Ray Monk on Philosophy and Biography
Can understanding the biographical context of a philosopher and the type of person that they were help us understand their philosophical writing?
Date filed: 31-08-2008
Clare Carlisle on Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling
What is faith? Are human beings capable of it? What part does reason play in life? Carlisle discusses on Philosophy Bites.
Date filed: 31-08-2008
Like Everything Else, It's About 'Choice'
If parents have the right to believe what they like, their children have the right learn that some things are wrong.
Date filed: 30-08-2008
Giordano Bruno
He had three personalities: Scholastic—strict, system-building; 'a Platonist’s poetic exaltation'; a dark wit.
Date filed: 30-08-2008
Carl Elliott in Defense of the Beta Blocker
Especially good performance enhancers when the performance involves an anxiety-producing public setting.
Date filed: 30-08-2008
Voices of Disbelief
Russell Blackford says it will be a strong book.
Date filed: 26-08-2008
Peter Singer on the Hidden Costs of Money
Why does money makes us less willing to seek or give help, or even to sit close to others?
Date filed: 26-08-2008
Susan Neiman on Idealism and Mockery
Obama’s speech gave Europeans a chance to hear the difference between optimism and idealism.
Date filed: 25-08-2008
How to Deal With That Latest University Strategy
If you plan to be obstructive, you need not only to wash and to stay awake but to smell of something expensive.
Date filed: 25-08-2008
Finding Equality Through Logic
Philosophy gave me permission to use my mind and the inspiration to aim high in my goals for myself.
Date filed: 25-08-2008
Just Think - It's Important
Pondering reason and logic is a normal part of the day at Calamvale Community College in Brisbane
Date filed: 25-08-2008
Review of Murray Bail's Novel 'The Pages'
Bail makes philosophy seem worth cultivating, especially in the outback in the company of 10,000 Merino sheep.
Date filed: 25-08-2008
Philosophy Bites: MM McCabe on Socratic Method
MM McCabe explains the significance of Socrates' impertinent questioning and contrasts his approach with present day university teaching.
Date filed: 24-08-2008
Aaron Ridley on Nietzsche on Art and Truth
Ridley explores Nietzsche's changing views about the relationship between art and truth including his views about the dionysian and appollonian aspects of existence.
Date filed: 24-08-2008
AC Grayling Reviews Richard Holloway
A rounded picture of the moral life must take in not only the banality of evil, but human sociality.
Date filed: 20-08-2008
Roger Scruton on Solzhenitsyn
Solzhenitsyn showed the way in which, once accountability has been set aside, it is not 'orruption' that leads to the triumph of evil.
Date filed: 18-08-2008
Something to Say for Dissatisfaction
Stephen Cave reviews John Naish, Eric Wilson and Julian Baggini.
Date filed: 15-08-2008
Simon Blackburn Reviews Alan Sokal
When the philosophers explained the right way to live, everyone would fall happily into line. Innocent times.
Date filed: 15-08-2008
Habermas Wins European Prize of Political Culture
Habermas' theories have greatly contributed to the evolution of modern social sciences, said the Hans Ringier Foundation, patrons of the €50,000 prize.
Date filed: 15-08-2008
Daniel Dennett Autobiography Part One
'It came as a pleasant surprise to me when I learned that not all the delicious and unspeakable thoughts of my childhood had to be kept private.'
Date filed: 12-08-2008
Debating Democracy Promotion in China
Daniel Bell and Michael Walzer on whether liberalization and democracy should be imported.
Date filed: 11-08-2008
Philip Anderson Reviews Alan Sokal
When attacked, fans of pseudoscience defend themselves by referring to postmodernist philosophers.
Date filed: 08-08-2008
Cognitive Science Meets Moral Philosophy
When subjects form deontological judgments, emotional processes override controlled cognitive processes.
Date filed: 03-08-2008
Danny Postel on Reading Habermas in Tehran
The speeches and writings of Akbar Ganji, Iran’s leading dissident, are peppered with references to Kant and Mill.
Date filed: 01-08-2008
Julian Baggini Reports From World Congress of Philosophy
The official line seems to be that the world somehow needs philosophy if it is to deal with its great problems.
Date filed: 30-07-2008
New Humanist Newsletter
Trevor Griffiths on Tom Paine, Kenan Malik on culture, Mark Juergensmeyer on religious violence.
Date filed: 28-07-2008
Michael Shermer on a Habit of Human Cognition
We have evolved brains that pay attention to anecdotes because false positives are usually harmless.
Date filed: 24-07-2008
Olivia Judson on Recent Evolutionary Change
Start with the evolution of beak size in finches in the Galápagos archipelago.
Date filed: 24-07-2008
Tom Clark Reviews Austin Dacey on Secularism
How can secular liberals best defend an open society against the authoritarian and absolutist opposition?
Date filed: 15-07-2008
TPM-sponsored Podcast of Interviews [mp3]
Interviews with Susan Greenfield, Ray Tallis and Alan Sokal.
Date filed: 14-07-2008
TPM-sponsored Podcast of Interviews [itunes]
Interviews with Susan Greenfield, Ray Tallis and Alan Sokal.
Date filed: 14-07-2008
New Legal Threat to School Science in US
Barbara Forrest says Louisiana's 'Science Education Act' is designed to slip ID in through the back door.
Date filed: 13-07-2008
Hitchens on How to be a Public Intellectual
An intellectual is someone who does not attempt to soar on the thermals of public opinion
Date filed: 13-07-2008
Denmark Happiest, Zimbabwe Least Happy
Survey finds personal freedom even more important to happiness than prosperity.
Date filed: 04-07-2008
Bernard-Henri Lévy on Darfur and the Left
The decision for genocide is never announced on CBS News or in AFP.
Date filed: 29-06-2008
Theodore Dalrymple Reviews Julian Baggini
Dalrymple is not sure that the intellectually sophisticated and critical are the most balanced complainants.
Date filed: 23-06-2008
Sally Baker Reviews Julian Baggini
Complaint is a positive, constructive force that has lain at the root of all social change, and can do so again.
Date filed: 23-06-2008
What Darwin and Wallace Thought
150 years ago next week, a notion, more radical even than Marx's, was set loose on the world.
Date filed: 23-06-2008
Margaret Talbot on Irene Pepperberg and Alex
In the past decade, dozens of studies have buttressed Pepperberg’s claims about avian intelligence.
Date filed: 16-06-2008
Nussbaum on Rawls's 'Political Liberalism'
We can argue for political principles using ethical notions that are separable from controversial religious doctrines.
Date filed: 12-06-2008
The Reality Tests
The world is real, but we don't perceive it as it exists fundamentally.
Date filed: 09-06-2008
Roger Scruton on Cities for Living
Léon Krier presents the first principle of architecture as a deduction from Kant’s Categorical Imperative.
Date filed: 08-06-2008
K. Anthony Appiah Reviews Susan Neiman
If you're a philosopher, the easiest way to introduce yourself is not by elaborating a doctrine, but by telling a story.
Date filed: 07-06-2008
World Science Festival in New York City
Daniel Dennett, Marvin Minsky and others discuss free will at one panel of many.
Date filed: 05-06-2008
Connecting Philosophy, Sondheim and Seurat
Actor Daniel Evans is also a philosophy student.
Date filed: 05-06-2008
Mark Pagel on Kenan Malik and Marek Cohn
Our ability to co-operate with unrelated others enables us to move beyond the politics of race.
Date filed: 03-06-2008
Good and Bad Ad Hominem Arguments
An ad hominem is valid when the claims made about a person’s character or actions are relevant to the conclusions being drawn.
Date filed: 03-06-2008
Jane O'Grady Reviews Raymond Tallis
Tallis uses meditations on the head and its functions as his entrée into what we are.
Date filed: 03-06-2008
Kenan Malik Reviews Raymond Tallis
Tallis can digress entertainingly on anything from Heidegger to hiccups, from Beckett to the basilar membrane.
Date filed: 03-06-2008
Jeff Sharlet Reads Martha Nussbaum
The overlapping consensus model fails when it rests too easily on assumptions about just what good faith is.
Date filed: 27-05-2008
Austin Dacey Rejects the Gag Order on Ethics
By shying away from fundamental moral debate, secular liberalism has abandoned the field to religious voices.
Date filed: 25-05-2008
Julian Baggini on Ways to Decide Ethical Issues
Democratic politics in a pluralist age requires, not that people set aside their fundamental commitments, but that they discuss their differences in a common language.
Date filed: 23-05-2008
'God Lab' to Search for Evidence for ID
'The same ID creationists whose work has already been critiqued and discredited,' says philosopher Barbara Forrest
Date filed: 18-05-2008
Wittgenstein and Market Forces
University of Melbourne Business School hires philosopher-in-residence.
Date filed: 16-05-2008
Foreign Policy's List of Top 100 Intellectuals
Appiah, Chomsky, Dennett, Finkielkraut, Habermas, Ignatieff, Nussbaum, Savater, Sen, Singer, Taylor, Walzer, Zizek.
Date filed: 16-05-2008
A Philosophical Approach to Illness
Havi Carel: 'I am a philosopher and I use philosophy to make sense of my illness.'
Date filed: 16-05-2008
Petition to Save PhD Program at U of Florida
Philosophy programs should not be seen as expendable.
Date filed: 16-05-2008
Can U Read Kant?
To Mark Bauerlein, the present is a good time to be young only if you don't mind a tendency toward empty-headedness.
Date filed: 14-05-2008
Review of Why Truth Matters
Reviewer much cleverer than authors.
Date filed: 13-05-2008
Should Philosophy Talk to Non-philosophers?
Jonathan Barnes, Myles Fredric Burnyeat, Raymond Geuss, Barry Stroud discuss.
Date filed: 13-05-2008
Raymond Geuss Remembers Rorty at Princeton
Over the years, I did my best to set Dick right about Gadamer.
Date filed: 12-05-2008
Alan Wolfe on J S Mill
He was both a journalist and an MP, neither of which activities would have counted for tenure.
Date filed: 12-05-2008
Steven Pinker on the Stupidity of Dignity
Leon Kass has a problem not just with longevity and health but with the modern conception of freedom.
Date filed: 12-05-2008
Real Humans Are Lazy, Busy, Impulsive, Biased
That's why they can be nudged in socially desirable directions.
Date filed: 12-05-2008
Scott McLemee on Neil Gross on Rorty
What tools does a sociologist bring to a book about Rorty that an intellectual historian wouldn’t?
Date filed: 10-05-2008
Socrates in the classroom changes the distribution of power
The students develop their thinking skills in a cooperative and investigative atmosphere.
Date filed: 10-05-2008
Extract from Neil Gross's Richard Rorty
Rorty concluded that there is no position outside historically situated language games from which to distinguish mind from world.
Date filed: 10-05-2008
Nussbaum on Philosophy and Shakespeare
Philosophers often try to write about Shakespeare. Most of the time they are ill-equipped to do so.
Date filed: 05-05-2008
Slavoj Žižek Interview
Whenever I see myself, like there on the screen, I’m tempted to adopt the position of an observer and ask myself, if I were to have a daughter, I would never allow that guy to take me to a movie theater.
Date filed: 05-05-2008
Does science make belief in God obsolete?
Templeton foundation asks; Pinker, Hoodbhoy, Midgley, Hitchens, others answer.
Date filed: 30-04-2008
UCL Withdraws Fellowship from Holocaust Denier
'Let us hope the schoolchildren visitors are properly taught about the elegant swimming-pool at Auschwitz...'
Date filed: 29-04-2008
UCL Statement on Nicholas Kollerstrom
Fellowships are awarded to researchers with whom UCL wants to associate; UCL doesn't want to associate with Kollerstrom.
Date filed: 29-04-2008
Simon Blackburn on Eight Myths
What is usually known as culture is a set of symbols enabling people on the inside to recognise and dislike those on the outside.
Date filed: 28-04-2008
A.D. Woozley 1912-2008
The well-known legal and political philosopher Anthony D. Woozley co-taught the first law and philosophy class at Oxford in 1951.
Date filed: 25-04-2008
Mary Warnock on The Politics of Religion
Society is not a religious organisation like a church. Laws must as far as possible be made in the interests, far wider than matters of faith, of all members of society, whether or not they hold any religious views.
Date filed: 23-04-2008
Daniel Dennett Debates Robert Winston
The more we use science to explore nature, the more we find things we do not understand and cannot explain.
Date filed: 23-04-2008
Michael Walzer on Tibet
While the Tibetans are pragmatists, at this moment the Chinese are rigid ideologues.
Date filed: 23-04-2008
Bill Moyers Talks to Martha Nussbaum
If we use the language of fair play and equality, we can understand why we don't want certain kinds of manifestations of Christianity in public life.
Date filed: 22-04-2008
Philosophy on 'Start the Week'
Raymond Tallis; Daniel Dennett; Carole Seymour-Jones on Sartre and Beauvoir.
Date filed: 22-04-2008
Raymond Tallis on Neuroscience and Literary Criticism
In approaches that purport to be neuroscience-based, the consciousness of the writer is reduced to neurophysiology.
Date filed: 11-04-2008
Habermas Backs Archbishop Over Sharia
Argues that Europe must adopt an inclusive discussion on religion in public life through a dialogue in which all parties cooperate as equals.
Date filed: 10-04-2008
Avishai Margalit on Sectarianism
The idea of the sacred describes what is indivisible and hence not subject to compromise.
Date filed: 09-04-2008
Grayling and Monk Debate Education
The appetite for finding out, and thinking about what is learned, grows by feeding.
Date filed: 08-04-2008
Philosophy More Popular in US Universities
'A lot of students are in it because they find it intellectually rewarding.'
Date filed: 08-04-2008
Grayling on 'Explaining Religion'
The concept of religiosity is going to need all the historical and anthropological clarification it can get before a computational model of its dynamics becomes possible.
Date filed: 06-04-2008
Grayling on Murphy-O'Connor
'Judaeo-Christian' ethics were taken over from Stoicism and Cicero.
Date filed: 03-04-2008
NCSE on California Creationism Case
The University has a legitimate interest in evaluating the adequacy of high school courses to prepare students for study.
Date filed: 02-04-2008
Carlin Romano Reviews Susan Jacoby
The Age of American Unreason feeds the notion of American anti-intellectualism as a no-brainer truth.
Date filed: 31-03-2008
Project to Inquire into Religion
Experiments to look at the mental mechanisms needed to represent an omniscient deity.
Date filed: 28-03-2008
Martha Nussbaum on America's Puritanical Streak
All of us, with the exception of the independently wealthy and the unemployed, take money for the use of our body.
Date filed: 28-03-2008
Michael Walzer on the Value of Voting Twice
Mill proposed giving a double vote to university graduates; a very bad idea.University graduates are as likely as anyone else to be hasty, prejudiced, and self-regarding.
Date filed: 25-03-2008
What Would Mill Advise on Wilders's 'Fitna'?
The problem with the Wilders film is that we do not know whether the situation of the corn dealer applies.
Date filed: 25-03-2008
John Gray on Atheism
'It is not necessary to believe in any narrative of progress to think liberal societies are worth resolutely defending.'
Date filed: 16-03-2008
Antony Flew at Westminster Chapel
Flew will join Bishop of Durham in 'giving evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.'
Date filed: 11-03-2008
Flew Impressed by Evidence for Resurrection
'I am very much impressed with Bishop Wright's approach. It is absolutely wonderful, absolutely radical, and very powerful.'
Date filed: 11-03-2008
Grayling on Smolin on Physics
It is the fact that string theory makes no testable predictions that gives Smolin his greatest concern.
Date filed: 10-03-2008
Brain Enhancement - Useful or a Cheat?
What if your boss tells you to take speed?
Date filed: 10-03-2008
Jane O'Grady Reviews Revolution in Mind
It is widely accepted that the notion of the unconscious was not originally Freud's, but (philosophically) hatched by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche from its germ in Hume and Locke.
Date filed: 07-03-2008
'Philosophy Bites' Interviews Anthony Appiah
How is it possible to combine ethical universalism with acknowledgement of difference?
Date filed: 05-03-2008
Meera Nanda: Rush Hour of the Gods
What motivates educated, well-to-do urban sophisticates to continue to believe in miracles and supernatural beings?
Date filed: 04-03-2008
Ideas are all the Rage
The success of idea books has signified to cultural commissars a thirst for good ideas clearly expressed.
Date filed: 29-02-2008
Alan Sokal on Taking Evidence Seriously
The implications of taking seriously an evidence-based worldview are far more radical than most people realise.
Date filed: 29-02-2008
BHL on the Re-branding of Anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism, to pass under the radar, must draw from anti-Zionism, Holocaust denial, and victim competition.
Date filed: 29-02-2008
John Patrick Diggins Reviews Charles Taylor
Taylor seeks to prove that God is still very much present in the world, if only we look at the right places.
Date filed: 28-02-2008
Biologists Join Philosophers in Moral Thinking
Marc Hauser, David Sloan Wilson, Samuel Bowles look at trolleyology, altruism, and moral behavior.
Date filed: 27-02-2008
Seyla Benhabib on Turkey's Hijab Legislation
Unfortunate that reform of Article 301 (on 'insulting Turkishness') was dropped.
Date filed: 27-02-2008
Multi-secularism: The New Agenda
Multi-secularism seems to be the best strategy: adapting secular values to the societies in which they arise.
Date filed: 26-02-2008
Conservatives are not Attracted to Academe
'The personal priorities of those on the left are more compatible with pursuing a Ph.D.'
Date filed: 23-02-2008
Julian Baggini on Žižek on Violence
Whatever the received wisdom is, Žižek postulates the opposite. And repeat.
Date filed: 23-02-2008
Scientific Study of Religious Belief Launched
Oxford researchers have received a Ł1.9 million grant for study of the cognitive science of religion.
Date filed: 21-02-2008
Nigel Warburton Interviews James Garvey
Climate change presents us with a host of moral problems. Getting those in plain sight is part of the point of the book.
Date filed: 18-02-2008
The Internet Links Philosophy With its Roots
Mark O'Connell recommends philosophy blogs: Talking Philosophy, Virtual Philosopher, Stephen Law.
Date filed: 18-02-2008
Carlin Romano on Socrates
Isocrates practiced the philosophical study of ethics without the dogmatism of Plato's Socrates.
Date filed: 18-02-2008
Roger Scruton on Secular Law
The Roman vision of sovereignty as exercised through secular law survived into modern times.
Date filed: 16-02-2008
David Edmonds and Nigel Warburton: Ethics Bites
Each week they talk to a philosopher about issues like death, censorship and historical blame.
Date filed: 16-02-2008
Ethics Bites Interviews Peter Singer
Ethics Bites spoke to Peter Singer about how humans treat animals.
Date filed: 16-02-2008
What Would Socrates Make of Podcasting?
Nigel Warburton talks about the making of Ethics Bites.
Date filed: 16-02-2008
Colin McGinn on Point of Inquiry
McGinn explores skepticism and concerns about radical fallibilism and post-modern critiques of knowledge.
Date filed: 02-02-2008
How Not to Get Duped
Two general types of fallacies that are generally ubiquitous in political debates and other discourse.
Date filed: 29-01-2008
Two Forms of the Straw Man Argument [pdf]
The straw man works if the audience is inattentive.
Date filed: 29-01-2008
Philosophy Said to Make Religion More Credible
There is a tension between advocating something religion-neutral and a curriculum where one religion is privileged.
Date filed: 21-01-2008
David Papineau Reads John Searle
He remains suspicious of the pretensions of philosophical argument to overturn everyday opinion.
Date filed: 20-01-2008
Two Philosophers Feud Over a Book Review
The view from Cornell, The Philosophical Review’s home, is that the fuss is overblown.
Date filed: 19-01-2008
What Kind of Philosophy Gets in the News?
'Hot New Account of Autonomy Founders on Noumenal Mysteries'? Not so much.
Date filed: 17-01-2008
Carlin Romano on John Gray
His opinion is not entirely favourable.
Date filed: 16-01-2008
Nigel Warburton on 'The Grasshopper'
A brilliant and witty book, superbly written and with serious and original contributions to make.
Date filed: 16-01-2008
Philosopher Goes Into a Pub and Says
'Everybody loves my baby, but my baby don't love nobody but me.' From this, it logically follows that 'I am my baby.'
Date filed: 11-01-2008
Is Slavoj Žižek Serious?
Which produces the greatest terror, action or inaction?
Date filed: 11-01-2008
Rebecca Goldstein on Falsifiability
Scientists don’t, and shouldn’t, jettison a theory as soon as a disconfirming datum comes in.
Date filed: 07-01-2008
BHL on Grieving for Benazir
We should have seen many heads of state, to make the funeral a global demonstration for democracy and peace.
Date filed: 06-01-2008
A C Grayling on the Importance of Autonomy
Are individuals capable of overcoming limitations to achieve by will and endeavour what they identify as good?
Date filed: 04-01-2008
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