36 Arguments for the Existence of God
posted by vronsky on Nov 23, 2009 - 160 comments

Since the Goldsmith's Conference of 2007 (which saw the formal embrace of the name), the movement known as Speculative Realism has, by some accounts, "revivified" philosophy. Led by the young philosophers Ray Brassier and Quentin Meillasoux, the movement is becoming known for its two-pronged critique of both the continental and analytic philosophical traditions. Speaking crudely, the goal is to fashion a "transcendental materialism" that puts the continental tradition in a better position to engage with the evolving insights of experimental science (particularly cognitive science, biology, and physics), while revising the analytical tradition's tendency to a "scientistic" and "naive" materialism. On the whole the philosophy tries to be less human-centric, acknowledging a world indifferent to human knowing and human being, while still acknowledging the problem of epistemic contingency. Brassier is also a leading proponent or investigator of nihilism, which will please Big Lebowski fans. [more inside]
posted by macross city flaneur on Nov 17, 2009 - 79 comments

Tim Nicholson, a UK former executive, believes he was fired for his environmental views. He has sued his former employer for discrimination on grounds of the Employment Equality act, which states that employees may not be discriminated against for religious or philosophical beliefs. His former employers argue that his views were political, and thus do not fall under the act. [more inside]
posted by mccarty.tim on Nov 3, 2009 - 28 comments

We think it’s normal to work all day every day at a dead-end job. It’s normal to fight with our spouses and our children. It’s normal to eat and drink and drug ourselves to escape, to veg out and stare at a screen for hours a day just to dull the pain. It’s normal to hate our lives and be miserable, it’s normal to be lonely, it’s normal to feel hollow. The Freak Revolution Manifesto.
posted by fiercecupcake on Oct 2, 2009 - 97 comments

Michael Sandel's "Justice" has long been one of the most popular courses at Harvard. Now for the first time the class is being broadcast online. The site for "Justice." [more inside]
posted by grobstein on Sep 27, 2009 - 25 comments

Extropy
How did life arise? What is information? In his recent dispatches from The Technium, Kevin Kelly would say extropy (cf. negentropy & Prigogine). [previously 1|2]
posted by kliuless on Sep 20, 2009 - 70 comments

Collapse IV , "Concept Horror." The fourth issue of Urbanomic's "journal of philosophical research and development," Collapse, focuses on the relationship between modern philosophy and horror fiction and features essays by and about authors such as Thomas Ligotti, China Miéville and Michael Houellebecq and of course H.P. Lovecraft. Having sold out its print edition, Urbanomic has made the issue available for download as a 200 + page PDF. Some disturbing images (and ideas) within the download.
posted by Bookhouse on Sep 17, 2009 - 24 comments

Take three kids and a flute. Anne says the flute should be given to her because she is the only one who knows how to play it. Bob says the flute should be handed to him as he is so poor he has no toys to play with. Carla says the flute is hers because it is the fruit of her own labour. How do we decide between these three legitimate claims? [more inside]
posted by lucia__is__dada on Aug 21, 2009 - 193 comments

"Humanity craves but dreads autonomy." – Without Guilt & Justice by Walter Kaufmann argues that decidophobes employ ten strategies in order to avoid indecisive dizziness. He cites Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn as an individual who demonstrated autonomy through "the most awesome courage".
posted by ageispolis on Aug 11, 2009 - 30 comments

Marcus Aurelius: Was He Quite Ordinary? [Via] [more inside]
posted by homunculus on Jul 24, 2009 - 32 comments

Leszek Kolakowski, a distinguished Polish philosopher who critiqued the Communist system and helped inspire the Solidarity movement, passed away last Friday in Oxford, UK. [more inside]
posted by orrnyereg on Jul 22, 2009 - 13 comments

Why We Must Ration Health Care by Peter Singer.
posted by grouse on Jul 19, 2009 - 93 comments

The Guardian's How to Believe series summarizes some great philosophical works in the reversed-date format we all know and love. Giles Frasier evaluates the lasting value of Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals, Julian Baggini tells us what to believe about Hume's critique of religion, Mary Midgeley begrudgingly accepts the majestic contributions of Hobbes' Leviathan, and Simon Critchley throws himself into the hermeneutic circle of Heidegger's Being and Time. [more inside]
posted by anotherpanacea on Jul 1, 2009 - 63 comments

Parts 1, 2, 3 of a 1959 interview with philosopher, mathematician and peace campaigner Bertrand Russell (1872-1970). Works and pictures online include Anti-suffragist Anxieties, Why I am not a Christian, the Russell-Einstein Manifesto against nuclear weapons and the book The Conquest of Happiness. Russell is also known for his pithy quotes, his teapot and was the subject of poem Mr Apollinax by T.S. Eliot.
posted by TheophileEscargot on Jun 8, 2009 - 59 comments

Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid has been recorded as a series of video lectures for MIT's Open Courseware project.
posted by loquacious on May 30, 2009 - 74 comments

Atheistic Materialism in Ancient India. Interesting piece on the ancient Indian philosophical school of Carvaka.
posted by homunculus on May 25, 2009 - 12 comments

Earlier this month, to mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of Edmund Husserl (born April 8, 1859; yesterday marks the anniversary of his death in 1938), the Husserl Archives in Leuven, Belgium, hosted a conference (audio files of the keynotes are available: here's Robert Sokolowski on "Husserl on First Philosophy") in his honor. Husserl's influence on philosophy is difficult to overstate, and continues to this day: as the founder of phenomenology, his contributions to logic, philosophy of mathematics, psychology, philosophy of mind, epistemology, existentialism, and many other areas of thought, has been immense.
posted by ornate insect on Apr 28, 2009 - 15 comments

The philosopher Marjorie Grene died last month at the age of 98. Author of over 30 books, pioneer in the philosophy of biology and one of the first interpreters of existentialism, Grene was an iconoclastic thinker fondly remembered by many. Her contributions span the whole of philosophy, and her long career began with a bachelor's in zoology from Wellesley; from there she studied with Whitehead and C.I. Lewis at Harvard, with Jaspers and Heidegger in Germany in the 1930s, and alongside Carnap, Hempel, and Polyani in Chicago. Hence she was one of the few modern philosophers who was as conversant in existentialism as she was in logical positivism.
posted by ornate insect on Apr 14, 2009 - 10 comments

The PhilSci Archive is an electronic archive for preprints in the philosophy of science. The goal of the Archive is to promote communication in the field by the rapid dissemination of new work.
posted by aniola on Apr 7, 2009 - 4 comments

Julian Baggini, British philosopher and author of Atheism: A Very Short Introduction, on the destructiveness of the New Atheist movement.
posted by Roach on Apr 2, 2009 - 93 comments

Meet the Islamic Philosophers. Arabic philosophy sought to reconcile the science and empiricism of Aristotle, the metaphysics of Neoplatonism, and the revelations of the Holy Qur'an. From the first thoughts of Abū Yūsuf Yaʻqūb ibn Isḥāq al-Kindī, to the 20,000 pages of Abū 'l-Walīd Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Rushd, the influence of these Muslim polymaths profoundly shaped Western thought. [more inside]
posted by ageispolis on Mar 31, 2009 - 12 comments

Wired.com is really pimping the Terminator franchise right now. With the success of the television series and the upcoming fourth installment hitting the big screens at the end of May, is the continuing appeal simply science fiction geekdom or is the concept really a deep philosophical metaphor? [more inside]
posted by Drainage! on Mar 25, 2009 - 101 comments

I both loved and resented that wealth of warmth which Elisabeth brought to me in those unexpected hours of the night. I was usually in the midst of a sound sleep when she got into my bed, and thrilling as I found the ministrations of her fat little fingers, it also meant my being kept awake for hours and hours. Besides, though in my conscious nature I knew nothing about what was going on, I must have had a feeling that my sister was bringing to my life as accomplished facts sensations whose real value to a boy was in their being discovered as part of the experience of growing up. She was presenting me with triumphs I should by right attain only by my own efforts in a much more restricted world… [more inside]
posted by Joe Beese on Mar 20, 2009 - 11 comments

Fantasy Meets Reality. The very best works of science fiction illuminate controversial current events and the intricacies of human nature. So, it's no surprise that the United Nations Public Information Department and the Sci Fi (SyFy?) Channel co-hosted a panel yesterday evening on "humanitarian concerns" at the UN, with the creators and actors of Battlestar Galactica -- a show which regularly explores those themes. A 2-hour video webcast is archived here. (RealPlayer video). Entertainment Weekly has an additional write-up. [more inside]
posted by zarq on Mar 18, 2009 - 57 comments

What You Can Learn from Reinhold Niebuhr.
posted by homunculus on Mar 16, 2009 - 11 comments

Actor Rainn Wilson has launched a community-driven discussion blog focused on life's big questions, such as do we get what we pray for?, why do we spend so much time talking about other people?, and do the imaginations of adults need a serious kick in the balls?
posted by Roach on Mar 15, 2009 - 30 comments

Society for German Idealism. Kant on the Web. North American Kant Society. North American Fichte Society. Hegel Society of America. Hegel Resource. Hegel. More Hegel. Schelling. Kant. Herder. Schiller.
posted by ornate insect on Mar 13, 2009 - 39 comments

Less Wrong is a community blog devoted to "the art" of rationality. It revolves around discussion of short essays. Less Wrong is a project of Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute and a companion site to Overcoming Bias (previously; how to read). [more inside]
posted by grobstein on Mar 6, 2009 - 36 comments

Philosophy’s great experiment. "Philosophers used to combine conceptual reflections with practical experiment. The trendiest new branch of the discipline, known as x-phi, wants to return to those days. Some philosophers don’t like it." [Via]
posted by homunculus on Mar 4, 2009 - 45 comments

Explore the History of the Ancient Greek World from the Neolithic to the Classical Period. Covering important topics, such as Art and Architecture, Mythology, Wars, Culture and Society, Poetry, Olympics, History Periods, Philosophy, Playwrights, Kings and Rulers of Ancient Greece.
posted by netbros on Feb 21, 2009 - 3 comments

Sparks of Life. "That the electric 'spark of life' figured prominently in debates over the nature of life in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is well known. Less well known is the fact that prior to this period, gunpowder was often identified with the substances that were necessary to life, if not as a vitalistic spirit, then as an essential element in the animation of the body. The idea of a spark of life went back to ancient times, likening living beings to the glowing embers of a fire. In the Old Testament, for example, the wise woman of Tekoah begs for the life of her son, pleading 'they will stamp out my last live ember.' But from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, this vital flame was often equated with gunpowder. There was fire in the blood: not electric, but pyrotechnic fire."
posted by homunculus on Feb 20, 2009 - 11 comments

Free Will versus the Programmed Brain. Shaun Nichols discusses some recent experiments relating belief in free will to moral behavior. [more inside]
posted by voltairemodern on Feb 14, 2009 - 42 comments

Thought For The World is an alternative to the BBC's much mocked Thought For The Day. [more inside]
posted by ninebelow on Feb 12, 2009 - 4 comments

"It doubtless seems highly paradoxical to assert that Time is unreal, and that all statements which involve its reality are erroneous. ... I believe that time is unreal. But I do so for reasons which are not, I think, employed by any of the philosophers whom I have mentioned, and I propose to explain my reasons in this paper." ~McTaggart, The Unreality of Time, 1908. (Bonus: The Kant Song.)
posted by voltairemodern on Feb 10, 2009 - 96 comments

The Right to Walk Away Has panarchist thinking finally come of age in 2009? With world leaders of big governments failing to find any new solutions to old problems, should we have the right to walk away from those governments?
posted by stuffedspacedog on Feb 2, 2009 - 35 comments

On Truth and Reality. Despite several thousand years of failure to correctly understand physical reality (hence the current postmodern view that this is impossible) it is actually very simple to work out how matter exists and moves about in Space. The rules of Science (Occam's Razor / Simplicity) and Metaphysics (Dynamic Unity of Reality) require that reality be described from only one single source existing, as Leibniz wrote: "because of the interconnection of all things with one another." [more inside]
posted by netbros on Jan 30, 2009 - 46 comments

Dave Chalmers has just launched PhilPapers, a directory of nearly 200,000 online papers in philosophy. This is a jawdropping and amazing resource for philosophical research. For evidence of the scope of this project and the care that has been given to it, see the taxonomy of philosophy that was developed for the site.
posted by painquale on Jan 28, 2009 - 28 comments

How Google Is Making Us Smarter: Humans are "natural-born cyborgs," and the Internet is our giant "extended mind."
posted by homunculus on Jan 15, 2009 - 50 comments

The Revolutionary Pleasure of Thinking for Yourself
posted by divabat on Jan 3, 2009 - 30 comments

What Will Change Everything? - the 2009 Edge Annual Question [more inside]
posted by Gyan on Dec 31, 2008 - 25 comments

"Courage is the ennabling virtue for any philosopher," says Cornel West in this clip from The Examined Life, a film by Astra Taylor. Peter Singer talks about the morality of consumption and how we should spend our money, as he did in this NY Times Magazine essay published two years ago today. Given the internecine violence in the Congo, for example, Singer's 1971 essay, Famine, Affluence, and Morality is worth a second (or first) look. The film features several other contemporary philosophers, including Judith Butler, Kwame Anthony Appiah, and Slavoj Zizek. Of course, people looking for a more musical version of philosophy, could forgo the film and just watch this Monty Python bit.
posted by cal71 on Dec 17, 2008 - 11 comments

Consider the Philosopher. The early metaphysical investigations of David Foster Wallace.
posted by homunculus on Dec 14, 2008 - 83 comments

John Taylor Gatto's newest book, Weapons of Mass Instruction, is out today. Gatto, a former New York State "Teacher of the Year" (1991), is a critic of state education and compulsory schooling in general: "When you take the free will out of education, that turns it into schooling." [more inside]
posted by symbollocks on Dec 10, 2008 - 129 comments

Towards responsible use of cognitive-enhancing drugs by the healthy - a commentary in Nature that says, "we call for a presumption that mentally competent adults should be able to engage in cognitive enhancement using drugs". Farkesque debate here. [more inside]
posted by daksya on Dec 8, 2008 - 57 comments

Idle Theory: Life Does The Least
posted by kliuless on Dec 6, 2008 - 28 comments

Human, All Too Human
posted by cthuljew on Dec 3, 2008 - 26 comments

The philosopher and the wolf. "A spur-of-the-moment decision to buy a wolf cub changed Mark Rowlands’s life. From that moment on he found human company never quite matched up." [Via]
posted by homunculus on Nov 14, 2008 - 50 comments

First Person Plural. "An evolving approach to the science of pleasure suggests that each of us contains multiple selves—all with different desires, and all fighting for control. If this is right, the pursuit of happiness becomes even trickier. Can one self bind another self if the two want different things? Are you always better off when a Good Self wins? And should outsiders, such as employers and policy makers, get into the fray?" [Via]
posted by homunculus on Oct 25, 2008 - 27 comments

Giordano Bruno: Philosopher, Heretic, Troll.
posted by homunculus on Oct 24, 2008 - 23 comments

Waggish would be one of the choicest blogs around if he updated more, but I suppose I can settle for what there is. If you've never read it, you'll know how good it is when I tell you about a few of the coolest posts: an inquest on "left-brained" literature, a short review of John Williams' Stoner, an appreciation of the great Shohei Imamura and three part coverage of the ultimate film, Béla Tarr's Sátántangó.
posted by colinmarshall on Oct 19, 2008 - 23 comments