Philosophers’ Corner

  • The Extended Mind

    If you haven’t followed certain literature, you might be puzzled by today’s topic – especially if you just go on the meanings of the individual words involved. Most people are pretty clear what the mind is. It’s the seat of thought, consciousness, emotion… Stuff like that. And we know what it means to say something is extended – it’s stretched out through space or maybe over time. But I don’ think it is obvious what it means when we combine these two things, and say the mind is extended.

  • What is an adult?

    Suppose I say an adult is someone who’s 18 years or older, unless the issue is drinking legally, in which case an adult is someone 21 years or older. That’s a start. But we’re not so much interested in legal definitions, as changing conceptions, of what an adult is. You could argue that unless we know what an adult is, we don’t really know what a person is or what a human being is.

  • Social Networking

    The basic idea is that the internet changes the shape of friendship. People with common interests, but little chance of seeing each other, can become good friends. The sorts of high-bandwdith communications, that used to be possible only with people close by, can now be conducted with people all around the world. How can this not be a good thing? But what kind of friendships are these? I like to eat lunch, have a beer, shoot pool with my friends. You can’t do that on the internet.

  • Is it All Just Relative?

    Clearly some things are relative. Tastes in food or matters of etiquette, for example. If I like single malt scotch and you don’t, there’s no basis for saying that one of us is right and the other is wrong about how good it tastes. Taste is just relative to our individual taste buds. Same thing seems true of etiquette – except that etiquette is relative to cultures or subcultures rather than to individual people.

  • Free Will

    There’s a long history of philosophers worrying about whether we’re really free. One of the first worries was whether we can be free, given God’s alleged omniscience, which seems to mean He knows what we are going to do before we do it. Take yourself back to the time when God expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, for disobeying him and eating from the apple tree. Suppose you travel back in time, and offer your services to Adam and Eve as a defense attorney. What would you say?

  • John Locke

      In America, the 17th century British philosopher, John Locke is probably best known as…

  • A dialogue on Biracial Identity

    A Black Guy (BG) and a White Guy (WG) are in a bar, having drinks. You may be tempted to think that they are John Perry and Ken Taylor — but since I’m putting words in both people’s mouths, don’t hold John responsible for any of this. BG: I’ve been thinking a lot about biracial identities, lately because I see that my favorite radio show, Philosophy Talk is about to do an episode on it. WG: I wonder what they’ll talk about. I mean thanks to Obama, biracial is the new cool, BG. But I don’t really see that there are deep philosophical questions connected with the topic of bi-racial identities raise. Do you?

  • Lights! Camera! Think!

    We’re in the thick of award season – that time of year when just about everybody and her brother is honoring and celebrating the film industry. But besides the fact that movies are fun to watch and fun to talk about, we should we here at Philosophy Talk jump on the already overcrowded Awards bandwagon? It starts with the fact that movies, at their best, are really cool things.

  • Too Much Information?

    I can hear someone wondering, “Too much information for what?” To answer that question, we need to go back in time. Some of you will be too young to remember, but once upon a time, if you wanted to find a book, for example, you went to this place called a library. And you searched in this ancient artifact — a thing called a card catalog. The card catalog gave you a number that was assigned to the book. And the books were all shelved in order in dusty old library stack.

  • Procrastination

      This week we talk about procrastination.   Now I am not only an expert practitioner…

  • Derrida and Deconstruction

    Derrida was one of the most widely revered—and widely reviled—thinkers of the mid-to-late twentieth century. Many people in a variety of disciplines—especially in the literary humanities—regard him as an absolutely seminal figure. On the other hand, many philosophers would strongly disagree with that assessment.

  • Abortion

    We need to distinguish two questions in considering abortion: Why is abortion morally objectionable, if it is? Is it because we violate the rights of the fetus? Or is it some other reason, like that it expresses a cavalier attitude towards human life? if we interfere with a woman’s choice to have an abortion, have we wronged the woman? Do we, or does government, have the right to interfere with the exercise of that choice?

  • The Moral Costs of Markets

    Free markets are, on balance, wonderful things, I think. When they’re truly open and free and not monopolized by a few big players, or overly regulated by excessively intrusive governments, markets are amazingly efficient ways of providing people with the things they want and need. They’re the chief engines of economic progress, and are singularly conducive to human happiness. But my enthusiasm for free markets is not unlimited.

  • The Philosophy of History

    There are different ways the word ‘history’ might be defined, so we had better start out by defining our terms. For example, you could define history as the sum total of past events. But that’s not how historians or even philosophers of history would define it. The problem with that definition is that it encompasses every single event that has so far happened in the Universe – from the big bang to the emergence of humankind and everything in between. We do sometimes talk about history in this broad and inclusive sense, but that’s not what we’re talking about today.