PHILOSOPHERS' CORNER

The Value of Anger

Shouldn’t we get angry at injustice? Don’t some things deserve our rage? Or will rage just beget more rage? These are some of the questions we're thinking about on this week's show, "Righteous Rage."

Who Wants to Be a Stoic?

What can we learn from the Stoics about living a good life? Should we all try to become indifferent to pain, suffering, and death? This week we’re thinking about the Stoic philosophy of Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius.

Digital Persons?

Could robots ever have feelings that we could hurt? Should we hold them responsible for their actions? Or would that just be a way to let humans off the hook? This week, we’re asking “Could Robots Be Persons?”

Finding Minds in a Material World

How did minds first evolve out of matter? Could consciousness have evolved more than once? How do we tell which living things have minds? Is there something it’s like to be a crab and live a crab's life? This week we’re thinking about “Minds and Matter.”

Why We Argue About Fiction

From an evolutionary standpoint, it’s puzzling that humans consume fiction. Why waste valuable cognitive resources on information we know is unreal? But it is even more puzzling that we argue about such fictions! I explore some reasons why we do this.