When most people think of the value of college, these days, they tend to think in terms of dollars and cents. How much will it cost me? How much will I have to take out in loans to pay for it? Will my future earnings make college worth the cost? But is this the right way to think about it?
One person says the medical establishment pushes autism-causing vaccines on the public. Another claims the tobacco industry colluded to distort the evidence that smoking causes cancer. But is there some principled way for us to distinguish wacko conspiracy theories from those that are true and reasonable?
In our annual year-in-review show, John and Ken were joined by political theorist Margaret Levi…
Leslie Francis reviews the best, the worst, and the most controversial films of 2016. What films are on your list?
Last fall, we took the show just up the road to De Anza High School in…
Recent research concluded that racism and sexism correlated more closely with support for Trump than economic dissatisfaction did. To reach out to those racist, sexist voters, the research suggested we use empathy. But how does one conjure empathy for deplorables?
Philosophy Talk is delighted to announce a new column on our blog called “Francis on…
The eminent British philosopher Derek Parfit passed away earlier this week. Although he had never joined…
Around this time of year, many parents—God only knows how many—lie to their children about Santa Claus. But aren’t we always trying to teach our children that lying is wrong? So shouldn’t we stop lying about Santa?
As we approach the end of 2016, we are gearing up for our annual year in review show, “The Examined Year.” In this special show, which broadcasts live from our home station, KALW, we depart from our usual long-form conversation format with a single guest and instead have three different guests on three different segments. The theme we’ve chosen for our philosophical review of 2016 is “Triumph and Defeat.”
You might think that Trump is an inveterate liar, whose lies disguise the truth in a way that causes favor among gullible constituents. But here’s an alternative hypothesis: Trump is bullshitting.
Throughout human history, every time we think we know what the universe is, it turns out that there is not just one of those things, but a lot of them. First we thought the universe was Earth, a sun and a moon, and a sky with a lot of mysterious points of lights. Then there turned out to be a number of planets with their own moons. Then a lot of suns, with their own planets: a lot of solar systems.
What a weird and wonderful cosmos we live in! Here’s an astounding fact. If you take all of the ordinary objects you can see, from tables and chairs to all the stars and planets in the universe, you will have accounted for less than 5% of the universe’s total mass-energy. The other 95%? That’s invisible stuff like dark matter and dark energy.
Trust is one pattern of reliance, where the trusting person, or trustor, can’t control what the trusted person, or trustee, does, and may not even know what the trustee does at the time he does it, but plans on the trustee doing one thing rather than another. This pattern of reliance is no doubt essential to social life. But is it rational? Does trust really amount to being stupid, or helpless, or both?
Dewey was probably the most important American philosopher of the twentieth century. He died in 1952, in his nineties. He influenced not only abstract philosophical issues – he was a pragmatist – but psychology and education and political philosophy. He was a public intellectual, but also a practical intellectual, who worked tirelessly, especially to transform education.
Magical thinking happens when you have, say, firmly held beliefs based on scanty or even non-existent evidence or when you make plans in which ends and means are radically out of synch. Think of the belief that doing a certain dance can cause it to rain or that wearing a baseball cap inside out can lead to a rally. But, of course, magical thinking doesn’t show up just in outmoded superstitions or harmless rituals at sporting events. It is actually all around us.