Friction

Can fiction tell us genuine truths about the world and ourselves, or does it mainly invite us into a kind of structured pretense that can mislead as easily as it can illuminate? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Manuel García-Carpintero is Professor of philosophy at the University of Barcelona. His work has focused on a variety of issues in and related to the philosophy of...

What if the biggest threat to good decisions isn’t a lack of intelligence, but a lack of the right reasoning tools and habits to spot bad arguments, weigh evidence, and update our beliefs? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. His work has focused on language, cognition, socia...

Can formal semantics really explain meaning compositionally, or do intonation, context, and discourse do more of the work than we admit? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Barbara Partee is Distinguished University Professor Emerita of Linguistics and Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and her work has focused on formal semantics and language. 2. Intervie...

Is quantum mechanics a complete description of reality, or just a remarkably reliable calculation tool still waiting for a clear account of what actually exists? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Tim Maudlin is Professor of Philosophy at New York University, and his work has focused on the foundations of physics and science more generally, metaphysics, and logic. 2. Intervi...

Can we actually solve philosophical disputes if we keep treating our inherited vocabulary as fixed, rather than asking how to redesign it to represent the world better? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Herman Cappelen is Chair Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong. His work has focused on a range of topics, including semantics, philosophy of mind, politica...

When should evidence guide choice over causation, how can meaning emerge from signaling games, and why might utility comparisons quietly break the ethics we build on them? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Brian Skyrms is Distinguished Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science and Economics at the University of California, Irvine, and an Emiritus Professor of Philosophy...

When you don’t have enough evidence to believe or disbelieve, is agnosticism a rational attitude in its own right or just a temporary pause on the way to a verdict? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Avery Archer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at George Washington University in Washington, DC. His work has focused on the philosophy of action, philo...

Can abortion be wrong even if ‘personhood’ is unsettled, and what do moral realism and parental obligations imply about bodily autonomy arguments? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Christopher Kaczor is Professor of Philosophy at Loyola Marymount University and his work has focused on bioethics, theology, and more. 2. Interview Summary Christopher Kaczor argues that the abo...

What do we really mean when we say we “know” something, and why does that confidence fall apart the moment we try to explain it? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Linda Zagzebski is the Emerita George Lynn Cross Research Professor, as well as Emerita Kingfisher College Chair of the Philosophy of Religion and Ethics, at the University of Oklahoma. Her work has focused on epi...

Can perception itself, grounded in vision science, explain how the mind represents the world and still gets things wrong? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Tyler Burge is a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at UCLA. His work has spread a wide range of topics, especially mind, language, and epistemology. Check out his book, "Perception: First Form of Mind"! https://www.a...

Can neuroscience and psychology really undermine free will, or do they just force us to rethink what moral responsibility is for? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Manuel Vargas is professor of philosophy at UC San Diego, and his work has focused on moral psychology, free will, agency, Latin American philosophy, and more. His book is "Building Better Beings: A Theory of Mor...

How should we understand the forces that shape public opinion and politics, and what do they reveal about human nature, language, and power? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a major fi...

Can supervenience and functionalism really explain consciousness, or do Mary-style cases, illusionism, and mind uploading reveal a deeper gap in the physicalist picture? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Pete Mandik is professor of philosophy at William Paterson University of New Jersey, and his work focuses on philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and cognitive scienc...

Is rationality mainly about keeping your beliefs coherent with each other, or about believing what your evidence really supports—even when the two come apart? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Alex Worsnip is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His work focuses on rationality, epistemology, and more. His book, "Coherence...

What moral limits should bind warfare—on terrorism, civilian risk, and humanitarian intervention—if ‘just war’ is meant to be a real constraint rather than a slogan? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Michael Walzer is a political theorist and public intellectual, and professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and editor emeritus for the magazine Dis...

Do moral truths exist independently of our attitudes, and if they don’t, why should moral reasoning and disagreement still seem so substantive? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Don Loeb is professor of philosophy at the University of Vermont, and his work has focused primarily on metaethical issues, including moral language, methodology, debating moral realism, and more. 2...

What happens when you take the idea of “nothing” seriously—can absences be real, explanatory, and even causally important? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Roy Sorensen is professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, as well as a Professorial Fellow at St. Andrews University in Scotland. His work has covered a wide range of topics in epistemology, metaphys...

Can probability really be a “guide to life” for individuals and groups once we take seriously risk, coordination limits, and imprecise beliefs? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Paul Weirich is Curators’ Distinguished Professor Emeritus in philosophy at the University of Missouri, and his work has focused primarily on decision theory, game theory, rationality, and logic. 2....

What if many of metaphysics’ biggest disputes are “sophistry and illusion” because there is simply no fact of the matter about their answers, even when the debates are not merely verbal? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Mark Balaguer is Professor of Philosophy at California State University, Los Angeles, and his work has focused primarily on metaphysics, the philosophy of...

How much of constitutional meaning is fixed by the past, and how much is inevitably shaped by judges, precedent, and evolving standards of fairness? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Brian Bix is Frederick W. Thomas Professor of Law and Philosophy at the University of Minnesota, and his work has focused on legal philosophy, contract law, family law, and the philosophy of la...

Can anger be morally tamed and shame morally rehabilitated when different cultures teach us radically different “scripts” for what these emotions are for? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Owen Flanagan is James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Duke University, and his work has focused on mind, ethics, moral psychology, and cross-cultural philosophy. Check o...

Do paradoxes reveal deep truths about reality, or do they mostly expose the hidden ways our language and concepts misfire? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Michael Huemer is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and his work has focused on ethics, epistemology, paradoxes, politics, and a variety of other issues. 2. Interview Summary The interview...

What do our moral experiences, our best theories of meaning, and our stubborn intuitions about Newcomb-style puzzles reveal about truth, rationality, and the limits of conceptual analysis? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Terence Horgan is Professor Emeritus at the University of Arizona, and his work has covered a wide range of topics, in metaphysics, epistemology, mind, m...

Can ordinary moral talk really tell us whether morality is objective, or are surveys and “disagreement” questions mostly measuring pragmatics, ambiguity, and shifting interpretations? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Lance Bush is a lecturer at Cornell University in psychology., and his research focuses on moral psychology, metaethics, and methodological issues in experime...

Can we really use persistent moral disagreement to undermine moral realism, or do the most popular disagreement-based arguments end up undercutting their own reliability? My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy . 1. Guest Eric Sampson is Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. His research has focused on morality and metaethics, especially in regards to defending...