Philosophy For Our Times

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes Madness is understood as the opposite of reason. Yet as Van Gogh and Nietzsche attest, madness can also be an inexplicable source of insight. Might madness be a strange form of wisdom rather than its diseased opposite? Or is this to make light of a condition that requires treatment? Author of Madness Explaine...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes We want "I love you" to mean forever. But neuroscientists claim three years into a relationship and romantic activity in the brain has ceased. Can love only be known in short doses? Should we accept romance as fleeting and abandon long term commitments, or can we outwit evolution and make love last? Scre...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes From Aristotle to Einstein humans have tried to make sense of the world. Yet despite huge advances a final explanation looks ever distant. What makes our lives and the world so puzzling and inexplicable? Is it the limitation of the human brain or is language not able to describe reality? Or is it to...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes We all want a better world, and we seemingly make progress, with more technology and less prejudice. Yet ideals and utopias are strangely difficult to imagine, let alone achieve. Is it that we just lack imagination or are leaders inherently corrupt? Or is there something impossible in the very idea? Philosoph...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes Philosophy as therapy is an ancient idea. Endorsed by Wittgenstein and popularized by self-help books. But isn't philosophy about understanding even if the insights are uncomfortable? Can philosophy be a dynamic force changing how we think and what we can do? Or does it serve only as a guide to everyday life?...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes More women MPs, more women CEOs, women it would seem are on the move. Yet the gap between successful women and the rest is growing. Might feminism's success paradoxically harbour the end of the sisterhood as we swap one inequality for another? Or are female care workers and CEOs still on the same side? Americ...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes Designer babies and human enhancement were once confined to fiction. Now biotechnology allows designer genetics, and many already choose the sex of their children. Where will this technology lead the human race? Should we be nervous of the ability to enhance ourselves or embrace an exciting new future for hum...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes If we have rights and ownership of anything it is surely of our own body. Yet we cannot dispose of it as we please, intoxicants are outlawed, and selling our body for sexual pleasure or organ donation is restricted. Is our body strangely not our own after all? Should we insist on our rights and freedom o...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes We structure our lives on the flow of time. Yet physicists since Einstein have argued that all time, past, present and future, is like space provided in a single block. Is the flow of time an illusion? Are we deceived when we feel time passing, or is it time to strike the strangeness from our science? Author...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes We all want to do the right thing. But from suicide bombers to Catholic priests, we have never been able to agree on what the right thing is. Should we give up on morality and see it as a fiction designed to justify beliefs? Or, despite our disagreements, is it still the most important tool we have to measure...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes We think we've grown out of the belief in evil. It's not in our genes and people don't get possessed. But across media and culture, from Star Wars to Isis, evil still holds us strangely captive. Why does the devil seem to have the best tunes? Is the battle between good and evil an essential part of being huma...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes We want news to accurately reflect the real world. But in an age when competing channels with different perspectives are instantly available should we recognise this goal as an illusion? Should we accept that journalists set the world's agenda with their own fictions and fantasies, or is there a framework of...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes We think science is based on facts and evidence. But from gravity to dark matter, string theory to parallel universes, its theories are curiously bereft of hard evidence. Is evidence less important than we think and conjecture alone capable of leading to greater understanding? Or has science dangerously drift...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes Many neuroscientists believe disorders of the mind will be solved when we understand the differences between the male and female brain. Yet is is frequently argued that men and women are not born but made. Are mental differences between the sexes real? Or is this just sexism dressed up as science? Cambridge p...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes Evil artificial intelligences are luckily confined to fiction. Yet leading scientists claim that intelligent machines are 'the most serious threat facing mankind'. Are they right or could a mind free from human prejudices create a better world? Or is all talk of artificial intelligence a deluded fantasy? Phys...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes As Romeo and Juliet showed, love is a wild and unpredictable force even when faced with reason and control. But we join online dating sites to increase our probability of finding it. Are emotions and intimacy rational choices that can be measured and explained, or is this the sort of reductionist thinking tha...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes Nearly twenty years have passed since scientists first proposed a mysterious force, Dark Energy, pushing our universe apart. Yet there is no direct evidence for it or any idea what it might be. Might our theories of the universe be profoundly mistaken or is an explanation of Dark Energy around the corner? M-T...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes While the world turns we think ideas, right or wrong, are eternal. Yet meaning changes over time and context. Should we conclude that, like the material world, ideas are transient and knowledge and morality passing stories? Or is the eternal in our grasp after all? New York Times columnist and author of The T...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes At a time of uncertainty and doubt, we often suppose that science alone can uncover the truth. Yet a recent paper found that 90% of scientific studies are not reproducible. Should we see science as a flawed method and look elsewhere for our truths, or is it the only direct line to reality we’ve got? Outspoken...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes Western values have been extraordinarily successful. Yet now we seem on the back foot, unsure of ourselves and sometimes embarrassed at our own past. Beset with postmodern doubts, do we need to revive belief in the values and importance of our ideals? Or is the age of the West at an end? Eminent Indian activi...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes We think empathising with others is the route to a better world. But studies show that empathy encourages us to help one named child over ten anonymous others. Is morality perhaps not about empathy at all? Does the moral way to act have more to do with thinking than feeling, or is empathy a vital force for go...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes 'God does not play dice with the universe' Einstein famously argued. Yet contemporary physics embeds just such dice playing at the core of its account. Is the universe really unknowable even to itself? Or as Einstein implied is this misguided and its secrets remain to be uncovered? Oxford Constructor theorist...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes Our life is made up of experiences. But what experience is remains a mystery. Heidegger thought it inexplicable and neuroscientists cannot find its location. Do we just need a better theory to uncover its secrets? Or is experience somehow both all that we have and yet not part of this world? Formulator of the...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes Few take anarchism and the abandonment of organised government as a viable political goal. Yet in economics, capitalism is just such a leaderless anarchic system. Might a radically decentralised political system be more credible than we think? Or is centralised government necessary in politics...

Looking for a link we mentioned? It's here:  https://linktr.ee/philosophyforourtimes We believe democracy leads to a fairer world. Yet almost all governments claim to be democratic including China, Russia and Syria. And 50 years after the abolition of hanging, UK polls still show a majority in favour. Is democracy illusory and troublingly incoherent? Or is an ideal democracy yet to be fully r...