Philosophers’ Corner

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.”

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.

The First Amendment to the US Constitution protects our right to say and publish whatever we think, but doesn’t in general guarantee the right to do any more than that. I can believe that people shouldn’t wear fedoras, and I can publish my view. But I can’t go around knocking fedoras off the heads of those that wear them, and I may get in trouble if I fire employees for wearing fedoras. But it seems to go further with respect to religion. In addition to ruling out the establishment of a state religion, it also guarantees “the right to the free exercise of [religion].” You cannot only preach what you believe, you can practice what you preach. But just what does this mean? Do we really treat religion in a special way? Should we?

Happy Labor Day from your friendly neighboorhood producer. This weekend we present our first Election Special, a pre-produced…

In many countries around the world, people are living longer. At the same time birth rates are declining—sometimes rapidly. The result? More old people, fewer young people. Combine that with the world’s highest average life expectancy, and the result is a population that’s rapidly shrinking and rapidly aging. Now that’s dangerous demographics.

They say that the Big Bang gave birth to the entire universe. So you might think that the Big Bang must have been one hell of an explosion. But technically speaking, the Big Bang wasn’t actually an explosion at all. It couldn’t have been.