Friction

If humans are as irrational and “automatic” as some psychologists suggest, why does explaining what people believe and want still feel like the best way to understand what they do? 1. Guest Emma Borg is Professor at the Institute of Philosophy, School of Advanced Studies, University of London, although before that was for a long time Professor at the University of Reading. Her work focuses on the...

How can Nyāya philosophy teach us to argue better, spot bad reasoning, and still live well amid uncertainty? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Malcolm Keating is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Smith College. His work focuses primarily on Indian philosophy. In this interview, we focus on his book, "Reason in an Uncertain World: Nyāya Philosophers on Argumentation and L...

Can anything be genuinely about the world, or is intentionality just a useful way of organizing our thoughts and talk? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Amir Horowitz is head of the PPE program and professor at the Open University of Israel. His work covers a range of topics, but especially the philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and language. Check out his recent book,...

Can ethics be fully naturalistic while still explaining why moral reasons genuinely have authority over us? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest David Copp is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of California, Davis, and his work has focused on moral and political philosophy. Check out his new book, "Ethical Naturalism and the Problem of Normativit...

Craige Roberts explains how formal semantics and pragmatics model meaning by tracking context, presupposition, and modality to show why what we say depends so deeply on discourse structure. My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Craige Roberts is Professor Emerita at the Department of Linguistics of Ohio State University. Her work has focused on the philosophy of language, prima...

Can sentence meaning be built up locally from the meanings of words and their modes of combination, without positing a separate intermediate “logical form” to do the interpretive work? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Polly Jacobson is Professor of Linguistics at Brown University, where she has been a professor for many years. Her work focuses on linguistics and formal sem...

What really makes a behavior a social norm, and how can measuring people’s expectations about what others do and approve of help us change it? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Cristina Bicchieri is the S.J.P. Harvie Professor of Social Thought and Comparative Ethics in the Philosophy and Psychology Departments at the University of Pennsylvania, professor of Legal Studies i...

A probing conversation with Graham Oppy on why classical arguments for God often fail to establish their intended conclusions, and on how pragmatics, metaphysics, and Bayesian reasoning shape debates in philosophy of religion. My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Graham Oppy is Professor of Philosophy at Monash University, and specializes in Philosophy of Religion. 2. Intervie...

Can getting more information ever make a rational agent worse off, not better, once you factor in real-world costs, group disagreement, and the way inquiry can change the very decision you face? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Ted Seidenfeld is Herbert A. Simon University Professor of Philosophy and Statistics at Carnegie Mellon University, and his work focuses on decisio...

Can we keep everything that makes mathematics rigorous by treating it as the study of possible structures, without committing to a mysterious realm of abstract objects? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Geoffrey Hellman is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota. His work focuses on the philosophy of mathematics, logic, science and metaphysics. 2. Interview S...

How did a little-known 17th-century physician help shape Cartesian philosophy after René Descartes by trying to complete its account of the mind, the body, and their union? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Steven Nadler is Vilas Research Professor and the William H. Hay II Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His work focuses on 17th century phil...

How far can arguments like the Grim Reaper paradox, divine conceptualism, and the problem of evil really take us in deciding whether theism is philosophically credible? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Alex Malpass's work focuses on philosophical logic, philosophy of time, philosophy of physics, and more. His website is https://useofreason.wordpress.com/, and he runs the T...

Can the strange “odd universe” result be defused by rethinking how parts, wholes, and counting fit together, rather than by giving up on common-sense mereology? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Meg Wallace is Associate Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at the University of Kentucky, and specialize in metaphysics and ontology. Check out her book, "Parts and W...

What makes a scientific category more than a convenient label, and when do our classifications really track the causal structure of the world? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Muhammad Ali Khalidi is Presidential Professor of Philosophy at City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center. His work focuses on the philosophy of science, particularly cognitive science and s...

What does it take for a theory of being to earn its ontological commitments, and can we make sense of nonexistence, properties, and possibility without bloating our inventory of what there is? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Peter van Inwagen is John Cardinal O'Hara Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the University of Notre Dame, and is Research Professor of Philosophy a...

Can a stripped-down naturalism really match theism’s explanatory ambitions, or does it secretly inherit the very mysteries it’s meant to avoid? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Graham Oppy is Professor of Philosophy at Monash University, and specializes in Philosophy of Religion. 2. Interview Summary Oppy opens by stressing that debates about God rarely turn on a single kn...

How can sentences still represent the world if their meanings are grounded not in reference but in the practical rules that govern how we use and accept them? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest José Zalabardo is a Spanish-British philosopher who works on epistemology, metaphysics, and related areas. He is a professor of philosophy at University College London. Check out his...

Why do people sometimes refuse to update on clear evidence, and what would a properly functioning epistemology say we ought to believe when the evidence is right in front of us? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Mona Simion is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Glasgow where she is also deputy director of the COGITO Epistemology Research Centre. Her work focuses o...

Can chemistry really be reduced to physics, or do concepts like elements and the periodic table show that it has its own irreducible structure? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Eric Scerri is a lecturer at UCLA, and focuses on chemistry, the philosophy of chemistry, and science more generally. 2. Interview Summary Eric Scerri argues that philosophy of chemistry arrived rel...

Can we keep the predictive power of mathematics in science while refusing to believe in mathematical objects at all? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Mary Leng is a professor at the University of York, specializing in the philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of science. 2. Interview Summary Mary Leng begins by laying out her ‘mathematical functionalist’ (or fictionalis...

Can quantum “spookiness” be explained without nonlocal action if we take seriously the idea that later measurement choices can constrain earlier physical states? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Huw Price is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Bonn and an Emeritus Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. His work has covered a wide range of topics, includi...

What if the biggest mistakes in debates about gender come from treating “gender identity” as one unified thing, instead of a cluster of different feelings, traits, and social norms that can come apart? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Ray Briggs is professor of philosophy at Stanford University, and their work has focused on a range of topics, including chance and decision...

Can mathematics be indispensable to science without forcing us to believe in a realm of abstract objects? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Michael Resnik is Professor Emeritus at UNC Chapel Hill, and his work has focused on the philosophy of mathematics, logic, decision theory, and more. 2. Interview Summary Michael Resnik begins by discussing the indispensability strategy...

What does it mean for something to be “true in a fiction,” and why might even the category of “art” be a historically contingent way of organizing aesthetic practices? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Kendall Walton is Emeritus Charles Stevenson Collegiate Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Art and Design at the University of Michigan. His work has focused on the phi...

How should philosophers understand “information” in the digital age, and can thinking of ourselves as informational organisms reshape ethics, privacy, and the self? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Luciano Floridi is John K. Castle Professor in the Practice of Cognitive Science and Founding Director of the Digital Ethics Center at Yale University. 2. Interview Summary Flor...