Philosophy Talk

Our founding fathers believed that a free press would serve democracy by promoting unfettered political debate and expose the actions of the government to the harsh scrutiny of an informed and engaged populace.  Today, however, large media conglomerates have become part of the entrenched power structure and are driven as much by profit as by a sense of public mission.  Is it still possible to beli...

According to the Declaration of Independence, the basic human rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are God-given. Whatever the role of God, rights must be recognized by the society in which one lives to be of any use. Are rights universal? God given? Philosophically justified? Or a matter of custom and culture? John and Ken welcome back Helen Stacy, author of Human Rights For the 2...

The Supreme Court recently decided that corporations had the right of free speech under the U.S. Constitution, since they are persons.  But what does it mean to say corporations are persons?  Why should they have rights?  If they have free speech, should they have the vote?  What sorts of duties do they have?  Where did the idea of a corporation as a person come from, and should it be retired?  Ke...

What philosophers, philosophies, or philosophical issues do you want to read up on over the summer?  Heidegger’s Being and Time probably isn’t the obvious choice to take on vacation, but there are a lot of readable, beach-friendly classics and non-classics to add philosophical depth to your vacation reading. Not to mention new and classic fiction books with a philosophical bent.  You are invited t...

It’s a Philosophy Talk highlight reel for the membership drive! In this special episode, John and Ken relive some favorite moments from Philosophy Talk episodes recorded in front of live audiences around the country. We start at the Marsh theatre in San Francisco with psychologist Alison Gopnik and political philosopher Judith Butler, followed by philosopher-poet Troy Jollimore in Portland, pop cu...

Paranoia, depression, schizophrenia, bipolarity, and all the other ways Americans have discovered to be crazy – are they universal phenomena, rooted in human biology?  Or are they cultural kinks, rooted in one society’s peculiar pressures and institutions?  Are Americans inducing the rest of the world to be crazy like us, so we can market the appropriate cures?  Ken and John maintain their sanity...

According to Proverbs, lying lips are an abomination to the Lord.  But lies on human lips are as common as fleas on a dog.  What is a lie?  Are all untruths lies?  Is lying always immoral?  Do our faces inevitably betray our lies?  Join the hosts as they uncover the concept, practice, and detection of lies with pioneering psychologist Paul Ekman, author of Telling Lies: Clues to Deceit in the Mark...

According to former Vice President Cheney, practices widely regarded as torture prevented further attack on America after 9/11.  The facts are in dispute.  But suppose he is correct – can torture be justified on such utilitarian grounds?  What is the philosophical basis of our aversion to using torture?  Is the moral principle not to torture absolute or circumstantial?  Ken and John consider the e...

The concept of a wife has been embedded in cultures, religious practices, social customs and economic patterns of wildly different sorts.  Is there a core concept of what it is to be a wife?  Is it a good concept, or one that deserves to be thrown on the trash heap of intellectual history because it perpetrates corrosive stereotypes of women?  What conceptions of being a wife do Americans have tod...

Fear is an emotion, but it is one with a long history in both political theory and politics in the real world. In many versions of social contract theory, it is a fear of the state of nature that leads to government in the first place. From McCarthy to post-9/11 politics, fear has played a leading role in American public discourse. Ken and John examine fear as theme in politics and political philo...

What does it mean to be normal? And abnormal? Who gets to decide, and what are the repercussions? When do we applaud deviations from the norm, when do we condemn them, and why? Ken and John take a look at the uses and abuses of making judgments about normality with Charles Scott from Vanderbilt University, author of Living With Indifference.

Movies play a large role in modern life. We enjoy watching them; we idolize the actors and actresses who appear in them; we analyze the directors. But how well do movies tackle bigger philosophical questions? With the help of listeners, John and Ken present their second annual Dionysus Awards for the most philosophically-rich films of the past year.

We base many decisions every day not only on the belief that other people have minds, but on detailed beliefs about what is going on in those minds: what these other people believe, feel, hope, and fear. The basis of our ability to “read” the minds of others is a lively area of research in psychology and the philosophy of psychology. Ken and John discuss mind-reading with Shaun Nichols from the Un...

Philosophers think a lot about fiction. But do novelists think about philosophy? Do philosophers make good fictional characters? Can good stories be built around philosophical problems? When awarding its Genius prize to philosopher-novelist Rebecca Goldstein, the MacArthur Foundation said “[her] writings emerge as brilliant arguments for the belief that fiction in our time may be the best vehicle...

A paradox is a persuasive argument that something, which we judge must be false, is true. Zeno’s Paradox, for example, is a convincing argument that it’s impossible to move. Paradoxes are valuable in philosophy because they help us become aware of forms of argument that are deceptively convincing yet logically fallacious. John and Ken are joined by Roy Sorensen from Dartmouth College, author of A...

The ancients believed in an enchanted universe – a universe suffused with meaning and purpose. But with the dawn of modernity, philosophy and science conspired together to disenchant the universe, to reveal it as entirely devoid of meaning and purpose. Must any rational and reflective person living in the 21st century accept such nihilism? Or is there a way to re-infuse the disenchanted universe w...

Philosophy usually suggests a striving for rationality and objectivity. But the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard advocated subjectivity and the leap of faith—his conception of how an individual would believe in God or act in love. Kierkegaard, whose best-known work is Fear and Trembling, is often considered the father of Existentialism. Ken and John explore the life and thought of this passion...

There are too many people, doing too much damage to the ecosystem, essentially guaranteeing that future generations will have a damaged Earth, and will have to invest incredible amounts of time, money and labor to repairing what can be repaired. But future generations are made up of people who don’t yet exist – what obligations do we have to them? And what obligations, if any, do we have to our fe...

Some people think Jesus was the son of God, though many who are skeptical about that still think he was a great moral teacher. But if we really knew what Jesus would think about moral issues that he didn’t confront while he lived – abortion, terrorism, euthanasia, gay marriage or the destruction of old-growth redwoods – would it be that helpful? Would his moral vision have any implications for the...

More than a century and a half after On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution continues to shape our thinking, not only in biology, but also in psychology, economics, and all other attempts to understand human beings including philosophy. Ken and John delve into Darwin’s theory and its implications for philosophy with Daniel Dennett from Tufts University, author of Darwin’s D...

Consciousness, morality, meaning and truth have perplexed and puzzled generations upon generations of philosophers. But could it be that we have been looking in all the wrong places to solve these imponderable mysteries? Could the minds of babies hold the key to philosophical progress? John and Ken are joined by renowned developmental psychologist Alison Gopnik, author of The Philosophical Baby: W...

The program that questions everything – except your intelligence – started off questioning the conventional wisdom that there would be no audience for a radio show about philosophy.  One hundred and ninety-nine programs later, Ken and John are hanging in there with large loyal audiences in the Bay Area and Oregon, outposts at over fifty stations across North America, and a huge internet following....

Do we have a right to healthcare, and to good high quality healthcare, in any precise and defensible sense?  Or is the “right to healthcare” just a nice way to say it would be very nice if everyone had healthcare?  John and Ken take a philosophical lens to the alleged right to healthcare and health insurance with Laurence Baker from the Center for Health Policy at Stanford University.

To be human, philosophers have often said, is to be rational. But many people, for biological reasons, are clearly not rational. Schizophrenia is not only a malady, it is also a window on how the human mind works, and what it means to be human. Ken and John examine schizophrenia and its lessons for philosophers with John Campbell from UC Berkeley, author of Reference and Consciousness.

The media often present a sanitized and one sided narrative of war, torture and other forms of violence that blots out the faces and silences the voices of many of the main victims: the refugees, the victims of unjust imprisonment and torture, and the immigrants virtually enslaved by their starvation and legal disenfranchisement.  John and Ken probe the limits of the media representations of war a...