If you think about it, reality comes in many levels, each level involving different kinds of things, having different kinds of properties. Perhaps most people would think of things like dirt at the bottom level, then us at the next level, and the sky at the highest level. But philosophers have a different, more abstract concept of levels of reality. Here are some examples:
• You and I---or at least our bodies--- along with tables and chairs and cities and towns and planets. This is what philosophers call the level of medium size objects. This level of reality is what most of our lives are concerned with. The sorts of things we can perceive with our senses, and so forth.
• Contrast that with a level called quantum reality. Objects like quarks that we can’t see, having properties like spin that we can barely make sense of.
• On the level just above quantum physics, we find electrons and atoms; then there’s the level of chemical facts, where you have chemicals and bonds; then the level of biology, where you have cells.
• Higher levels too, like maybe involving minds, societies, nations…
• And there are angels and God… and numbers for that matter. So we’ve got lots of levels!
Intuitively each level has a characteristic kind of object, characteristic kinds of properties and facts, and usually a different profession for people that study or work with it: quantum physicists, solid-state physicists, chemists, biologists, psychologists, sociologists. Nearer the top, mathematicians and theologians. And then, at least according to Aristotle, at the very top: philoophers. He put philosophers there because we think about Being --- that is, the whole shebang, and we try to figure out how the different levels are related. Most contemporary philosophers feel more in the middle than at the top. And their approach to the issue of levels of reality focuses on the topic of reduction.
We can set God and the angels aside; philosophers who believe in them aren’t likely to suppose they are reducible to something else, and those who don’t believe in them don’t worry about their reducibility either. We can also set numbers aside, since neither Ken nor I have any firm ideas about them. Then, physicalists like Ken and I both tend to be, think that the rest must be one big reality, physical reality. Facts about chemicals really are just facts about atoms and electrons, and they are really just facts about subatomic particles, or whatever else turns out to be at the bottom. And the same with biology and chemistry; psychology and biology; sociology and psychology.
The divisions are based on how humans interact with the different phenomena, the tools we use, the interests we have, and, of course, the National Science Foundation budgets involved. and Ultimately, metaphysically, philohically, there is just one reality, matter in motion --- or whatever quantum physicists replace matter with, or whatever they replace motion with.
One might think of this as depressing and mysterious. I don’t feel like a complex of quarks. Of course, there is another theory. It’s the competitor to Reductionism. It’s called Emergence. That’s the idea that each level in some way emerges from the one below, under certain conditions. And when emergence happens, truly new objects, properties, and facts are involved.
One might favor reductionism over emergence on the basis that in some cases, the reductions though not yet discovered, are in principle to be had. Biologists have known since Mendel that something, which they called `genes', are responsible for inherited characteristics. But for a long time, there were debates about whether genes could really be explained by physical and chemical properties. Many biologists thought that genes could never be fully explained just in terms of physics and chemistry. They thought, in other words, genes were emergent, and not reducible. But with the discovery of DNA and the development of molecular biology, we know this isn't so. The structure that Watson and Crick discovered has allowed scientists to explain how genes work without appealing to anything but the principles and properties of physics and chemistry.
If everywhere some philosophers see emergence, scientists will eventually provide reductions, emergence will just be another idea in the dust-bin called the history of philosophy. But that grand result would require a biological understanding of consciousness and all the other mental phenomena. Should would-be physicalists like Ken and I really be so confident of that? Is it so obvious that it even makes sense?
Luckily we have an expert on all of this to help us think about it, Tim O’Connor, author of Theism and Ultimate Explanation.
I’m really happy universities exist, and that they support philosophy departments, and seem to think I do something useful.But the longer I have spent in universities, the more I've become familiar with the vast differences in schools and departments, the complexity of funding, how different things are done in other universities, particularly those in other lands… and, frankly, the less I have a feel for what universities are really supposed to be.Here are four issues around which my doubts and confusions cluster.
Research versus teaching.At Stanford we charge the undergraduates a lot of money.We draw the best students in the world --- or at least as good any others.But at Stanford, and Harvard, and the University of California, and all the other elite universities, we all know that research is the main criteria for hiring and promotion.So what is a university?A teaching institution?Or a big research lab with some students around the edges?
Academy or Laboratory?I tend to see the university on the model of the philosophy and other humanities departments.After all, our heritage goes back to Plato’s academy, perhaps the first university-like thing in the Western tradition.We think about hard intellectual problems and teach students to think.But when you’ve been around a university as long as I have, and chaired the department as both Ken and I have, and sat through countless committee meetings with colleagues from all over the insititution, you have to adopt a larger perspective.The place is a sprawling megalith, and the paradigm model is not thinkers in a library or seminar but scientists in a lab, funded by government or industry, competing with others for the next round of grants and prizes.
Who owns the university?Whose university is it, anyway?To whom do we answer?Officially, we are a corporation, so the Trustees are in charge.But as a non-profit corporation, do we answer to a higher authority?If so, what is it?The needs of the world?Of the nation?Of something more abstract, like Knowledge or Truth?And who are the final arbiters of how we conduct our mission?The faculty?The alumni?The students?And what is the administration’s job?To convey the deep wisdom of the faculty to the Trustees?The Trustees for the most part are practical people in touch with the wider world.Maybe our mission should be to translate the Trustees vision to the university’s work force --- like you and me.
Finally the future of universities like Stanford and Berkeley and all of the ones we're familiar with for that matter leaves me mystified.Traditionally, universities whatever else they are, are a place.They provide a place where books and faculty and labs and students can all be together, and reap the benefits of being together.Will that continue to be important with the changes wrought by the internet?There are already internet universities.Are they the wave of the future?Will Stanford and Berkeley and UCLA and Cal State San Francisco become dinosaurs in a great new world of distributed universities, whose libraries and classrooms are just U-R-L's on the internet?
So, we’ll have lots to talk about with our guest, the Stanford provost, the philosophy department’s very own John Etchemendy.We’ll start by asking him just how he sees the university --- a school with researchers around the edge, or a big lab with students around the edge.
Like every blog, we wage a constant war against spammers. But spammers always seem to be ahead of the game. They are able to leave hundreds of comments at once, even with the safeguards that Typepad has built into its software. The only sure way to block the spammers is to moderate comments --- something we haven't really wanted to do. But it looks like its time to finally give moderation a try. So starting now, we will moderate comments. That means that if you post a comment, it may take awhile to appear. Indeed, if it's off point, or inane, or otherwise inappropriate, it will never appear.
Many bloggers tell us that moderated comments promote much more useful discussion. So let's see.
Our topic this week is the Occult Philosophy. These days, we tend to think of those who believe in the occult as soft-minded, superstitious, new-age hippie-types who would rather commune with imaginary mystical forces than face cold, hard scientific facts. But it wasn’t always so. During the Renaissance, for example, things like Alchemy, Astrology, White Magic, Hermeticism, Cabala, Numerology were intensely studied by some of the best minds in Europe. Literature from that period is often rife with references to the occult. The works of Shakespeare are a prime example. You might even say that the study of the occult was once culturally dominant in parts of Europe. And although the occult is surely culturally marginalized as anti-scientific gobbledygook today, many historians of science believe that the study of the occult played a crucial role in the development of modern science itself. Alchemy begat chemistry and astrology begat astronomy.
That’s not entirely surprising if you think about the meaning of the word ‘occult.’ On one meaning – no doubt the most common meaning, the word ‘occult’ means “Of, relating to, or dealing with supernatural influences, agencies, or phenomena.” That, of course, is the very opposite of what science deals with. But the word ‘occult’ has another meaning --- “secret, concealed or hidden from view” as in “occult causes.” That’s a more old fashioned use of the word ‘occult’. You find it used that way in 16th and 17th century philosophy texts. Not many people use ‘occult’ to mean secret or hidden very much today. But during the Renaissance, students of the occult were very much in the business of trying to discover, understand and manipulate the hidden causes of everything in the universe. To that extent, their goals were very much in line with modern science.
Of course, their heir methods were quite weird, by our contemporary lights -- a veritable witches brew of religious mysticism, metaphysical speculation and magic. Or to put it differently, Renaissance thinkers thought that that the occult in the sense of the hidden causes of everything included agencies and phenomena that were occult in the sense of supernatural. So although the Occult Sciences and Philosophy of the Renaissance may have been forerunners of modern science, they were not scientific by today’s standards. Modern science has no truck with the supernatural.
Eventually occult practices and philosophy were driven into the shadows of Western Culture. That was no doubt partly due to the consolidation of the scientific revolution. But it wasn’t just that. There was also an intense religious backlash against the occult, especially after the protestant reformation. The Occult philosophy drew liberally not just from Christian theology, but also from pagan and eastern beliefs. Occult practice seems to have been both unorthodox and, apparently, threatening to the Church. So the occult became identified with dark and sinister forces. Its practitioners were subject to intense religious persecution. They were often tortured and executed. Some historians even refer to the numerous witch-crazes of the period as a kind of holocaust.
But let’s jump ahead to today. Despite the dismissive attitude of people who may be overly awed by science, some apparently sane people still believe in the occult. And thankfully, we don’t burn people at the stake for practicing a little witchcraft anymore. And to top it off, we’re recording this episode on a Halloween Sunday. For those reasons and more there couldn’t, I think, be a better thing for us at Philosophy Talk to be doing today than asking where our ideas of the occult came from and examining how those ideas got driven from the center of Western culture to its margins. It should be a fun and fascinating hour. But since neither John nor I is adept at either occult theory or occult practices, we’ve used the white magic of radio to conjure ourselves up some help. We’ll be joined by one the world leading experts on the history of occult theory and practice – that would be Christopher Lehrich, author of, The Occult Mind: Magic in Theory and Practice. It should be a fun and informative hour. So why don’t you join us too?
The title of our show, “Bargaining with the devil,” is supposed to bring to mind the issues of bargaining and compromise. These are good things, involved in virtually all cooperative and productive behavior. Everyone has to bargain. Even dictators need to bargain with other dictators and heads of state.
But there are times when we shouldn't compromise because basic principles are involved; and there are issues that we shouldn't bargain about. Or so it seems.
Still, even when you are completely right about an important principle, can't the situation you are in force you to compromise? Bernard Williams imagined the following. You are an anthropologist in some country wracked by revolution. One group or another comes in to the village in which you work and rounds up all 15 males. The leader says they will execute them all. You protest. He says, “Fine. If you will shoot the first one we will let the other ones go.” He hands you the gun. What do you do? Surely, in some sense, it is wrong to bargain with murderers about who gets murdered. And it's completely contrary to your principles to kill an innocent person. But if you don't bargain, and act contrary to your principles, 14 extra innocent men will die.
Of course ethical theories may dictate one course or the other. The utilitarian says shoot. The Kantian, I assume, says not to. But recently philosophers like Avishai Margalit have suggested that instead of focusing on theoretical ideals, a useful ethical and political theory needs to start by considering the rights and wrongs of compromise; Rawls may tell us what an ideal group of reasoners in an original position would come up with as a just society; Nozick may tell us who would own what in the extremely counterfactual situation in which we could start with legitimate cases of ownership. But in the real world people have things; nations control territories; societies are ruled by various combinations of laws and principles; and the political actor is never faced with choosing an ideal but rather with making the best out of a messy and unjust situation.
History abounds with leaders who had to compromise with evil. Churchill refused to negotiate with Hitler. But he did negotiate with Stalin, agreeing to the forced repatriation of dissident Soviet refugees among other things. Our nation was founded on compromise. Many of our founding fathers, not only those from the northern states, but some of the slave-holding Southerners as well, knew that slavery was wrong, about as wrong as a thing can be. They compromised away the life, liberty, and happiness of millions of Afro-Americans, in order to have a union.
Margalit distinguishes between compromise and “rotten compromise”. Rotten compromises are those that institute or perpetuate truly inhumane regimes, and such compromises are morally prohibited. By that standard it seems to me the founders' compromise was rotten. And by that standard, I guess, we shouldn't compromise with the Taliban. And Churchill probably shouldn't have compromised with Stalin at Yalta. And I suppose we shouldn't be negotiating with North Korea, and possibly not with Iran either. Inhumane regimes are a fact. Can there really be a moral prohibition against negotiating with them? And doesn't willingness to negotiate imply willingness to compromise?
We will have some help from Carrie Menkel–Meadow, professor of law at the University of California, Irvine. She's the author of What's Fair: Ethics For Negotiators.
This Sunday we kick off another series of live recordings at the Marsh theater with two new shows in San Francisco:
12 pm: The Moral Costs of Free Markets. We live in a market-driven society—our day-to-day lives consist of buying and selling goods and services, and to some, our ability to do so without government regulation is the underpinning of democratic freedom itself. Everything has a price, and pretty much everything is for sale, from concert tickets to political influence. But should it be this way? John and Ken to discuss the moral limits of the free market with Stanford philosopher Debra Satz, author of Why Some Things Should Not Be for Sale: The Moral Limits of Markets.
3pm: Abortion. Nothing stirs up controversy like abortion. To some, it carries the steep moral cost of destroying human life, and to others, it represents an inviolable bastion of women’s rights over their own bodies. Despite the polarizing nature of the debate, it covers broad philosophical ground, and touches on religious, political, social and moral considerations. John and Ken unravel the complicated issues surrounding abortion and see what can be gained by a rational philosophical approach to the discussion with UC Berkeley Journalism professor Cynthia Gorney, author of Articles of Faith: A History of the Abortion Wars.
Tickets for these shows can be pruchased through Brown Paper Tickets or by calling the Marsh box office at 1-800-838-3006.
Speaking as one of the men behind the Philosophy Talk curtain (official title: Production Coordinator), I can say that putting the program on for a live Bay Area audience is both a ton of work and incredibly rewarding. There are a lot of individual elements to line up for everything to run smoothly and coherently: tables, microphones, music, visuals, etc. Not to mention making sure everyone is in the right place at the right time with the right material. And once the tape is rolling (so to speak), I tend to focus on what'll need to happen production-wise to get the program ready for broadcast.
But what unique radio it is! And as we start our second full season of Marsh tapings, I can only hope that if you haven't yet made it out for a live event you'll make the trek to the Mission district. And if you have been to one before, we hope you'll be enticed by this year's lineup. Philosophy Talk is nothing without its audience (Ken refers to the callers on the radio broadcast as a "second guest"), so this Sunday come down and question everything -- except your desire for thought-provoking, audience-engaging radio.
A digital self isn’t really a person made out of numbers or fingers. It’s a computerized representation of a person. It can be a “VRS”---a virtual representation of yourself. Or a VRO --- a virtual representation of another person.
So, important distinction: we've got me, the real person. And then there are representations of me: My name in the paper, my image in a mirror, the picture of me on our website, even my idea of myself in my own head, and your idea of me.
Quite apart from the digital revolutions, we all encounter many other kinds of representations of ourselves. I see my name in the phonebook, or in the Stanford catalog. I hear myself talking when I listen to Philosophy Talk on my ipod. I can see myself, or a representation, when I watch a video of my grandchild’s last birthday party. I can see an image of myself in the mirror. And in all those ways, I can also have representations of others. So now what’s special about digital representations?
For one thing, given today’s technology, they can be very lifelike. If you go into Jeremy Bailenson’s virtual reality lab at Stanford, and put on some goggles, you can meet people that look and talk pretty much like real people, although they are actually just digital representations.
Another important categories of digital representations are avatars. An avatar is a representations of a real person that appears in games like “Second Life” or interacts with other avatars.
All these digital representations have something in common. They can be programmed to behave in what seems like an autonomous way, unlike a photo, or a video recording, much less like a piece of language like my name in a book. I can set up my avatar to be less responsible than I am, to live a wilder virtual life than I do in real life.
So what’s philosophical about all of virtual reality and virtual selves?
First, there is what virtual reality can tell us about belief, perception, and emotion. When you enter a virtual world voluntarily, like Bailenson’s lab, you know you’re in a plain old room, without a bottomless pit to fall into, snakes to attack you, or other people to bump into. But when you meet virtual representations, these beliefs about the real world don’t block your emotional and physical reactions to the virtual world. You’re scared of stepping into the bottomless pit in the virtual room. Even though you feel the solid floor beneath your feet.
Second, it seems to hold the promise of making philosophical thought experiments come true. How do I know whether I’m Ken Taylor at the Marsh, or Ken Taylor with goggles --- maybe goggles so small I can’t feel them --- in a virtual Marsh? Descartes would love it. We could prove the existence of a virtual God ---- or at least a beneficent webmaster.
Finally, the nagging question from philosophy and science fiction: How much does reality matter? If all our experiences can be manufactured virtually, is reality that important?
On today’s program, we have the very man whose lab I mentioned, Jeremy Bailenson, Director of the Human Virtual Interaction Lab at Stanford, to help us think through some of these issues.
The title of this week’s program makes at least three assumptions that deserve to brought into the light of critical reflection:
·That death is terror-inducing.
·That being terrified of death is a bad thing.
·And that overcoming the terror of death would be a good thing.
One can take issue with each of them.
Is death really terror-inducing?True, most people don’t want to die.But most people don’t walk around seized by the terror of death.Perhaps, people faced with the imminent and vivid prospect of death – soldiers at war, people who have fallen gravely ill, people whose aged bodies fail them more and more each day – may often be gripped by a Kierkegaardian fear and trembling and sickness unto death.But not everybody in those situations is filled with dread.Some are calm and serene in the face of death.And certainly not everybody walking around, going about their everyday lives, is filled with this dread.
Be that is it may, for most of us, on a daily basis, the terror of death manifests itself more like a low-grade, but persistent anxiety.We mostly manage not to focus on it, but it’s always there in the background of our consciousness, shaping every aspect of our lives.Sometimes events beyond our control can force this anxiety into the foreground of our thinking and awareness.And then our low-grade anxiety can become an intense horror.
Well then, is terror of death such a bad thing?It actually seems like a perfectly rational thing.Suppose a very evil, very sadistic demon was to tell you that at some unknown future moment, he would appear out of nowhere and cut your arms and legs off.Wouldn’t you be terrified?You might not be seized with intense, debilitating terror at every waking moment.Maybe your terror would mostly manifest itself as a low-level hum of suppressed anxiety.But what would be wrong with that?Something really bad is going to happen to you, something over which you have no control.Don’t you have the right to be terrified?
Still, if you allow yourself to become so terrified that you just sit there worrying about losing your arms and legs, instead of using and enjoying them while you have them, that would be utterly silly--wouldn’t it?It’s the same thing with life!If dread of death drives out your embrace of life, then you’re wasting this precious and precarious gift.Don’t waste your time dreading death, spend your time embracing life instead.So perhaps it’s rational to fear death, but irrational to let that fear get such a grip on you that you don’t enjoy life.
Our third assumption seems to suggest that denial a better attitude toward mortality than the clear-eyed acknowledgement that the boundless nothingness of death awaits us all, that at any moment the dark abyss may open beneath our feet. But isn’t it possible to simultaneously embrace life while acknowledging and facing the reality of death?
We’ve got one the world’s leading psychotherapists,Irvin Yalom, to help lead us through the thicket of issues that surround the topic of death. So tune in.
Our topic this week is Gandhi as philosopher.That would be Mahatma Gandhi, the great spiritual and political leader, father of the Indian Independence movement.The man who preached and practiced non-violence, and inspired millions around the world -- including America's own apostle of non-violence, Martin Luther King.Though one may not typically think of Gandhi as a philosopher, he was, in fact, aprofound philosophical thinker.He wasn't an academic philosopher like John and me, but he wrote a lot that could be called philosophy.
To be sure, academic philosophers would probably find his philosophical writings frustrating at times.But when you realize that Gandhi's spirituality, his approach to politics, and his philosophical outlook are interconnected, then you realize that if you really want to understand the phenomenon that was Gandhi, you have to also understand his philosophical outlook.
And we’re betting that a taste of Gandhi as philosopher and how it might help us better understand Gandhi the spiritual and political leader.Take, for example, Gandhi's views about morality.You might think that the leader of non-violent non-cooperation, as he liked to call it, would be big on moral condemnation of his opponent, and would be constantly claiming the moral high ground. After all, revolutionaries do tend to criticize the old order as morally problematic.
Just as an aside, though, I should point out that one could wonder whether it is completely fair to call Gandhi a revolutionary.He didn't lead an armed rebellion, like most revolutionaries.He and many of his followers were willing to be killed, but they weren't willing to kill. And the term 'revolutionary' does tend to connote the violent, rather than the peaceful overthrow of the old order.SoI'm not sure we have a good word for exactly what Gandhi was.
But let’s getback to Gandhi and morality.Most revolutionaries – or whatever exactly Gandhi was – are utterly and inalterably convinced that they have morality wholly on their side.Though Gandhi was a deeply principled man who constantly strove to be on the side of morality, he wasn't big on claiming to know the moral truth.And he actually thought that the ethical condemnation of one's opponent was itself a form of violence.And he rejected all forms of violence.
That can seem a little puzzling. If you have morality on your side, what's so bad about claiming that you do?Isn't that just stating what you believe to be true? But it’s worth making two points in this connection.The first one is about truth.Gandhi had very complicated views about truth.He believed there is such a thing as absolute truth.And he felt he was on a quest to know the absolute truth.But he also thought that that quest for truth was unending and uncertain.Only God actually knows the absolute truth. Gandhi, in fact, took it to be a form of arrogance to claim to have the absolute truth on your side in disputes between humans.We, humans, only know what he called relative truth.
That makes Gandhi a kind of relativist, in a way. One might reasonably suppose, then, that it must have been his relativism that led him to reject moral condemnation as a form of violence.Relativists, after all, promote tolerance of competing points of view and competing moral outlooks.Problem is that Gandhi can't really be called a straight-forward relativist. Relativists tend not to believe in absolute truth-- even as the elusive object of an unending quest.But that’s just what Gandhi did believe. Of course, Gandhi isn't straight-forward absolutist either. At least some absolutists think that they have a firm grip on the absolute truth.And under the illusion, at least as Gandhi would see it, that they alone know the absolute truth, they tend to lord it over those who disagree with them.Gandhi would never pretend to know the absolute truth and would never lord it over anyone.
I'm not sure, but Gandhi's attempt to sort of have it both ways makes things a little complicated. Suppose we follow Gandhi and say that lording it over others, under the illusion that you alone grasp the absolute truth, is a form of violence. Well then, aren’t we criticizing and morally condemning the other? But by Gandhi’s lights,moral condemnation is itself a form of violence. So don’t we have to reject even this moral condemnation?But that, it would seem, doesn’t make any sense. It prevents us from simply stating what we take to be the case -- that one shouldn't lord it over others under the illusion of having sole possession of the absolute truth. But the very rejection of that way of looking at things is built into Gandhi's own way of thinking. So it looks like Gandhi can't really declare hi sown principles, maybe.
Maybe we should turn this around, though, and look at it from the perspective of the opponent, to see what Gandhi is getting act by rejecting righteous moral criticism as a form of violence. I think he pretty clearly thinks that if you constantly criticize your opponent, that the opponent will experience your condemnation as an attack.Perhaps not an attack on his physical person but an attack on, as it were, his spiritual person.And that puts your opponent on the defensive. But if you want to win your opponent over or at least lower his resistance,that’s a bad strategy. Whether it's morally wrong is less clear, but maybe perhaps strategically wrong.
You could, I suppose,think that Gandhi is really carrying this non-violence thing too far. Moral condemnation is an attack only in a metaphorical sense and not literally and truly a form of violence.But Gandhi would insist that violence takes many forms -- not just physical.There's economic violence, cultural violence.For Gandhi,moral condemnation is just another form of violence.And he insisted that all forms of violence are to be resisted. It is certainly true that violence takes many forms and that not all of them involve the infliction of direct physical harm to the body. But I'm still not completely convinced that freedom from violence of any kind would entail freedom from moral condemnation.
I haven't unravelled, by any means, the puzzle of Gandhi. He was clearly a complicated man.And he was a complicated thinker too.It’s not at all obvious that his views really add up to philosophically speaking.But fortunately, for this episode John and I were joined bya man who has thought long and hard about Gandhi: Akeel Bilgrami author of "Gandhi, the Philosopher".
Our topic this week: Philosophy for the young – corrupting… or empowering? We asked that question in front of an audience of high school at Palo Alto High School, in Palo Alto, California. We record this program there last May, at the invitation of a teacher, Lucy Filppu, an English teacher by training, who teaches a special humanities course. We had a blast and we’d very much like to thank the students and teachers at Paly, as it is affectionately called, for having us. We’d love to go back sometime.
Now the The charge that philosophy actually corrupts the young is nearly a old as philosophy itself. Over 2,400 years ago, in one of the most famous trials of all times, Socrates, one the founding fathers of Philosophy, was condemned to death for corrupting the youth of Athens. Now I have no doubt the young men who followed Socrates all around Athens being tutored by him were royal pains for the authorities. But Socrates didn’t corrupt the young; he empowered the young. He empowered them to think for themselves, to question received wisdom, and not to be cowed by authority. No doubt, they made the authorities uncomfortable. But making the authorities uncomfortable isn’t the same as being corrupt.
Please contact Ken & John by email at ideas@philosophytalk.org if you have an angle to add to any of the upcoming topics on Philosophy Talk, or if you have suggestions for future topics. You could be a guest caller on the air!
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