Can you reason your way into being a good person? Or are your feelings a better guide for doing the right thing? This week we’re thinking about German enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant and his view of a universal morality based on reason.
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.
One Sunday in the spring of 2007, John and I walked into the back room of KALW to find Ken singing. Back then I was both Ken’s PhD student and the director of research for Philosophy Talk, so it was always a treat to catch my advisor and boss being playful. He was coming up with different lyrics for Sinatra’s classic “Love and Marriage.”
Classic theories of choice posit that our preferences are transitive. But in a recent blog, I wrote about how sacred values have the puzzling feature of violating transitivity. So how should we interpret the fact some people seem to violate transitivity, when it comes to sacred values?
What makes people susceptible to fake news? Does reasoning tend to lead to less bias or more distorted beliefs? In other words, are people who are reflective more or less likely to be suckers for fake news? This question has resulted in a wide-ranging debate with two camps.
Why do some people have a strange desire to do weird things for no (good) reason? There's something fascinating about kids who eat laundry soap as part of a “challenge,” or people who deliberately... Read more
Making a better world would be a great thing—but do we need philosophers to help us do that? Famously (or infamously), not all philosophers have been such great people. So are they the folks we... Read more
In her time—the 4th century CE—Hypatia was one of the most famous philosophers in Alexandria, and indeed in the ancient world. She studied and taught mathematics,... Read more
Mexican philosophy is full of fascinating ideas, from Mexica ("Aztec") and Mayan thought to Sor Juana’s feminism and Emilio Uranga’s existentialism... Read more
Your friendly neighborhood Senior Prodcuer here, once again stepping out from behind the mixing board to bring you some bonus content from this week's 17th (!) annual Summer Reading special.... Read more
Gender is a controversial topic these days. To some, gender is an oppressive system designed to keep women down: people go around saying "girls are made of sugar and spice and boys are made of... Read more
Fascism is on the rise, new infectious diseases keep cropping up, and we’re on the verge of environmental collapse: how on earth could art possibly save us? The arts are may be nice distraction,... Read more
Some say the world is full of contradictions, like “parting is such sweet sorrow.” Parting is sweet, but parting is also sad; and sweetness and sadness are opposites. But logicians would say that... Read more
Our minds are amazing prediction machines—and sometimes they can even make their predictions come true!
Does reading that strike you as something out of The Secret—like if you... Read more
Derek Parfit was a really interesting thinker when it came to identity and the self. He had a particularly cool thought experiment involving tele-transportation.
Suppose you’re on your... Read more
When philosophers talk about perception, they tend to focus on what we see and hear, and rarely on what we smell. But olfaction is a strange sense that deserves greater philosophical scrutiny. For... Read more
A caller in this week's episode nominated "Women Talking" for a Dionysus Award. Guest co-host Jeremy Sabol takes that as a springboard to blog about movies and... Read more
This week we’re thinking about Cancel Culture, which some consider a real problem: people losing their jobs, being harassed online, their home addresses being shared—all because they said... Read more
This week we’re asking why we should trust science—which may sound like a weird question. After all, why would we doubt the method that helps us build bridges and skyscrapers, formulate life... Read more
Following up on last year's not-so-new experiment, here's a little behind-the-scenes look into the brief audio montages (produced... Read more
This week we’re asking what it’s... Read more
This essay also appears at the website of Oxford University Press, publisher of Josh's new book,
"The World According to Proust."
... Read more
This week we’re thinking about how to create a world in which our leaders are not just effective legislators, but also good people.
Some might think there are not enough leaders like that... Read more
This week we're thinking about the British Liberal tradition and its relationship to colonialism and self-government. Classical Liberal thinkers, like John Locke and John Stuart Mill, held that... Read more
This week we’re thinking about Collective Action and Climate Change. With floods and fires getting more frequent and intense, and with the summer just ended shattering heat records around the... Read more
This week we’re thinking about cultural appropriation and asking who owns culture—which may be a weird way of thinking about it. It's easy to see how somebody can own the rights to a song they... Read more
This week we’re questioning Effective Altruism. That’s Peter Singer’s idea that you should do the most good you can, and you should figure out what that is by doing your homework and choosing the... Read more
This week we're asking what Political Inequality is. Sounds easy to define, right? That’s when some people don’t get an equal voice in society, because they’re not represented in government, or... Read more
This week we're asking whether it's rational to be optimistic—which seems like bit of a crazy question if you've been reading the news lately. After all, what could possibly justify the belief... Read more
This week we're thinking about the Changing Face of Antisemitism—a program recorded last month at the Stanford Humanities Center for our first live, in-person event in 2-1/2 years.
... Read more