Religion offers us a comforting and inspiring vision of human existence. In the Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Islam and Christianity, a just but loving and merciful God created the universe. He’s in charge. And he’s got a plan — not just for the universe as a whole, but for each of us. Seems like it would be nice to wake up in the morning as a part of all that.
What gives nations the right to control who can cross their borders? That’s the…
I just listened to the Philosophy Talk episode with Father Andrew Pinsent, Good, Evil, and…
Jean-Paul Sartre was one of my favorites when I was an undergraduate. I enjoyed his novels and plays, and his great essay “Existentialism as Humanism. “ And I once even read a good bit of “Being and Nothingness,” his 700 page magnum opus. So what did Sartre mean by saying that we are radically free, and that we are condemned to be free? And what is existentialism?
Because of some very harsh mandatory minimum sentencing laws, the U.S. incarcerates a huge number of people, many of whom are serving life without the possibility of parole. This country now has about one quarter of the world’s prison population, which is remarkable, if you consider that we’re not even 5% of the total world population. And our prison population is also rapidly aging, which means that it’s a population with more and more health issues.
Perhaps the most remarkable (and, for many, alarming) political event in 2015 has been the…
Happy new year from your friendly neighborhood producer. With John and Ken taking a well-deserved…
Some people think Aristotle basically had it right when he said, “To say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true”. I take it he meant that, for example, if I say this apple is red, what I say is true if this apple actually has the property of being red. If I say this apple is not red, what I say is true if this apple does not have the property of being red. What more is there to say?
The question is: if God knows all, is all-powerful, and is benevolent, why did He create a world with suffering, evil and injustice in it? That’s what philosophers call “The Problem of Evil”. It is a problem for religions, like orthodox Christianity, that posit a perfect God. Such a God should be all-powerful or “omnipotent,” and all-knowing or “omniscient”. And he should be benevolent, since being mean and uncaring is an imperfection. But as the quote from Epicurus shows, the problem predates Christian philosophy and theology.
Sometimes people want a place where they’ll be free from identity-based insult. But sometimes people…
Lao-Tse, the founder of Taoism, said “Those who know do not speak, and those who speak do not know” So, by that criterion, I can say a something about Taoism, since I know very little.
Questions about the nature of the self are questions of metaphysics. When we ask such questions we want to know what exactly a self is and what distinguishes one self from another. On the other hand, when we talk self-presentation, we seem to be talking psychology or politics or marketing. Self-presentation has to do with how people present themselves to others.
Suppose that the Center for Disease Control (CDC) funded research which found that individuals who…
Psychological research reveals a lot of deeply troubling facts about human perception and memory that should make us very skeptical of eyewitness testimony. Of course, we don’t need science to tell us that if we witness something from too far away, or if it’s too dark, or if we’re intoxicated, then our testimony is not going to be very reliable. That just seems like common sense. But common sense may also lead us astray when it comes to the reliability of eyewitness testimony, and that is what a lot of the research on this topic is telling us.
When you do the moral thing, you’re doing the right thing. Violating morality is doing the wrong thing. It’s good to do the right thing; bad to do the wrong thing. You will always do better and live better when you do the moral thing. But imagine the following scenario. Suppose you live in a country full of tax cheats, but you’re honest to the bone and you dutifully pay your taxes. What does that make you — a saint among sinners, or a sucker? How does doing the right thing improve your life?
Arguably, the single greatest threat to our continued existence on this planet is climate change. And we would not be facing this threat were it not for human ingenuity. After a mere two centuries or so of industrialization, our innovative activity on this planet has produced such a quantity of greenhouse gases that we are perilously close to the tipping point when climate change will accelerate on its own power, and nothing we do anymore will be able to stop it. Provided, that is, we don’t have a global nuclear meltdown first.