Philosophy For Our Times

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes Should we seek to eradicate offence? Last year Ireland voted to get rid of its blasphemy laws, and most applauded the new right to offend the Catholic Church. Yet to avoid giving offence, student campuses are introducing no-platforming and safe spaces. Should we seek to eradicate offence to create a more tole...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes In a world obsessed with Trump, alternative facts have not had a great press. But it is a century and more since Nietzsche claimed 'there are no facts, only interpretations' - and fifty years since Thomas Kuhn argued that facts were theory dependent. Is an insistence on 'the facts' the dogmatic prejudice of b...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes Seeing is believing, yet cognitive scientists seem to have uncovered these views as incorrect. Evolution led us to perceive what is best for survival and it turns out this has little to do with what we call 'reality'. Is reality then a creative construct that helps us to live but doesn't reflect the world? In...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes The brutal mechanism of natural selection gave rise to all life on our planet. Or so the Darwinian story goes. But from mice to great whales, it now appears that animals inherit socially acquired characteristics. Is the theory of natural selection a Victorian relic, about to be replaced by a new science of cu...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes In this episode of Philosophy for our Times, Saul Kripke and Timothy Williamson discuss why language has come to dominate their field, why logic matters, and what the future for the Anglo-American tradition looks like. There are thousands of big ideas to discover at IAI.tv – videos, articles, and courses wait...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes Many philosophers have concluded that morality is a subjective human invention. Should we then simply encourage and argue for acts we support and do without morality altogether? Or is the authority of morality the tenuous thread that holds society together? In this episode of Philosophy for our Times, Justin...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes We admire achievers, from James Watt to Mandela, Marie Curie to Emmeline Pankhurst. Yet many spend their lives waiting for weekends and holidays. And does not play, both as sex, drugs and rock and roll, and as creative and physical endeavour provide us with the most memorable events in life? In this episode o...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes Talk of other universes has become fashionable amongst physicists and string theory alike. Should we recognise ours as the only universe and give up on others as fantasy science? Or is slipping through a worm hole into another universe a credible reality rather than a Hollywood fairytale? In this episode of P...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes Language is widely seen as the critical tool which has set our species apart. We assume that it is successful because our words are able to describe reality. Yet from Wittgenstein to Derrida, no satisfactory theory has been able to support this intuition. Might the problem be not with our theory of language,...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes 'Love conquers all' is a motto central to our culture and its Christian heritage. Yet Buddhists think love an obstacle to enlightenment. Nietzsche went further and called love barbaric ‘for it is practised at the expense of all others’. Is love for all an illusion? In this episode of Philosophy for our Times,...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes The self is an illusion, our passions a by-product of the brain. Or so neuroscientists and philosophers would have us believe. Is dismissing the self a mistake driven by the desire to uphold a purely material universe? In this episode of Philosophy for our Times, author of A Field Guide to Reality Joanna Kave...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes We tend to think of physical, material things as the ultimate stuff of the universe. Yet contemporary physics has largely abandoned physical things in favour of energy and fields. Should we give up on our conviction that physical stuff is the bedrock of the world, or is such talk ivory tower nonsense? In this...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes We may condemn tyrants and abhor serial killers, but we are obsessed with evil and violence. Are we fascinated by evil, violent characters because they make life more exciting? Or because they express our real nature? Should we look to end this morbid obsession, or accept it as a feature of humanity? In this...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes Reason was traditionally seen as the Enlightenment’s great legacy and the origin of our success. Yet reason is increasingly derided as just the rhetorical bluster of the educated elite, typically powerful and male. Is rationality just the prejudiced claim of those who are sure they are right? In this episode...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes Many see the search for universal truths about the world as the noble aim of philosophy. Yet our universities largely dismiss non-Western philosophy, and critics argue that British students are taught a narrow analytic approach. Are great ideas independent of time, place and tradition? Do African conceptions...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes Past and future are worlds we can never inhabit. We live of necessity in the present. But physicists and philosophers with very different outlooks, from Einstein to Derrida, claim that the present is an illusion. Are we deluded by experience into imagining the present is real? In this episode of Philosophy fo...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes Freedom is often seen as the vital oxygen of creativity. Yet Shakespeare worked within a framework of censorship, Don Quixote was written from prison and Leonardo argued that at 'lives on constraint and dies of freedom'. Can oppression help produce masterpieces or do the free always write the greatest poetry?...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes According to current theories, Dark Energy and Dark Matter make up 95% of all the stuff in the universe. Yet we still have no direct evidence for them. Might we need to rethink our account of the universe entirely? In this episode of Philosophy for our Times, String theorist Erik Verlinde, astrophysicist Cath...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes The left has traditionally seen itself as progressive, with history and morality on its side. But is history on anyone's side? And as for morality, don't all politicians think they're in the right? Should the left then give up its claim to the moral high ground and argue for policies on pragmatic grounds alon...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes Neuroscientists believe that our minds and consciousness are no more than matter and mechanism. But if they are right, is all meaning, purpose and feeling illusory? Or do the secrets of experience lie beyond neuroscience's grasp? In this episode of Philosophy for our Times, Raymond Tallis, Susana Martinez-Con...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes Once beauty was about goodness and truth, now we think it means little more than models, products and outdated art. Have practical concerns and the economy of desire made beauty trivial and expendable? Is there a difference in the feeling of pleasure one gets from looking at a Magritte painting, or at Kim Kar...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes Many think Donald Trump a buffoon and a threat to world peace. But with IS weakened, and signs of progress in North Korea, perhaps his supporters can point to some initial successes. Could a belligerent approach to foreign policy make for a safer world? In this episode of Philosophy for our Times, George Gall...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes We think that lightning strikes, and waves crash, even if there is no one to see them. Yet according to quantum physics, the observer is critical to reality. Theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg even argued that, in contemporary physics 'objective reality has evaporated'. Is a world independent of the obse...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes From Milton's Paradise Lost to bad boys and femmes fatales, we are seduced by the dark and dangerous. Why does the devil have all the best tunes? Have we sanitised the good and made it vacuous? In this episode of Philosophy for our Times, moral philosopher Christopher Hamilton, theologian and Zizek collaborat...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes From yoga retreats to mindfulness, meditation is fashionable and now even prescribed by the UK's National Health Service. Yet in some cases it can lead to depression and even psychosis. Is it a mistake to think that self-exploration and being at one with ourselves are necessarily good things? In this episode...