Author: Philosophy Talk

Howdy folks; Troy Jollimore here. Ken and John were kind enough to invite me to be their…

posted by Carrie Jenkins Hi all – and thanks Ken and John for the invitation…

posted by Alex Miller During the program on Sunday July 1st I drew a distinction…

Dear Philosophy Talkers: I’m opening this blog entry for you to shout questions and comments…

A Philosophical Shout-out, April 1st For pledge week at KALW we’ve decided to do something…

posted by Phil Clayton Dear Ken, Thanks for your post this morning about reasons for…

We’re back in the studio after our trip to DC.   DC was great fun and…

Stand-up comics often bemoan the fact that “everyone’s a f**king comedian!”, and its true: every one appreciates humor (to some degree) and most are capable of generating some form of spontaneous humor. But this very ubiquity makes humor harder, rather than easier, to understand formally, since humor assumes many guises and operates with subtle differences in myriad contexts.

The question “what is science?” always becomes more pressing when debates about evolution and creationism are going on. Even though the question is actually a bit of a mess, it suddenly becomes tempting to try to offer a short, concise description of science that can be used to guide decisions about what should and should not go onto high school curricula. Often, the first thing people draw on is Karl Popper’s account of science, based on the idea of falsifiability.

Why did human beings develop traditions of storytelling? Of course, any answer to this question is going to be speculative. But it might be reasonable to assume that the capacity for imagination is adaptive (I need to be able to predict what is going to happen as a result of different courses of action), and that engagement with fictions helps to hone the relevant skills.