February 2012
February 2012
Pantheism
Laura Maguire
23
Feb 2012
Pantheism is the view that the world is either identical to God, or an expression of God’s nature. It comes from ‘pan’ meaning all, and ‘theism,’ which means belief in God. So according to pantheism, “God is everything and everything is God.”
Read moreOn Being Normal
John Perry
16
Feb 2012
There seem to be two related senses or uses of `normal’. There’s what we might call the statistical sense: here normal is the average, the mean, or perhaps the median, or the typical. Then there’s the normative sense of normal. Normative means that what’s normal is what lives up to the norms, the standards. But which norms? There’re lots of norms, that it’s not normal to live up to.
Read moreThe 2012 Dionysus Awards
John Perry
09
Feb 2012
I saw a number of movies I liked this year, some of which have gone on to be nominated for Academy Awards. Films like The Artist, which I loved, Moneyball, War Horse and The Help. Some of these touched on philosophical themes, but that wasn’t what they were about. Fine for the Oscars, but not for Dionysus Awards.
Read moreBlack Solidarity
Ken Taylor
05
Feb 2012
February is Black History Month. So we thought it might be a good time to do an episode on Black Solidarity. Now I admit that this topic may seem to be a bit, shall we say, 20th century. When this country still suffered from rampant racism, it made perfect sense for black people to band together on the basis of their shared history and experience to fight it. But now, in the 21st century? in the age of Obama? Why should we bother with matters racial anymore?
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