Philosophy Talk

Justice is a virtue and so, many claim, is forgiveness. But they seem inconsistent. Is forgiveness really a virtue? Philosopher Charles Griswold discusses the South African reconciliation process, truly evil people, and the virtue of forgiveness.

Allegedly independent radio commentators taking money to spout the government line! Fake news reports being produced and distributed by the Administration to promote a partisan agenda! Journalists abandoning neutrality and objectivity to become cheerleaders for a political doctrine! Where can this happen? Right here in the good old U.S. of A. propaganda is all around us! But what exactly is propag...

Are there genes for practically everything? For being gay? For being mean? For being a philosopher? Does modern science show that we are largely the product of our genes — or not? Join Ken and John and famed philosopher of biology John Dupre to see how trapped you are by your genes.

Arthur Schopenhauer, the great Nineteenth Century philosopher, had a pessimistic vision of the world as “will and idea.” Our will to survive serves no high purpose; the world is at best a shared illusion.   Schopenhauer influenced Nietzsche and Wittgenstein and inspired our guest, prominent psychiatrist Irv Yalom, to write the novel The Schopenhauer Cure. What truths, metaphysical or psychological...

We like to think of ourselves as enjoying unrestricted freedom of the will.  But modern science increasingly teaches us that our choices are causally determined by some combination of our genes, our upbringing, and our present circumstances.  Can the idea of freedom of the will be reconciled with the scientific outlook or is free will an illusion?  If we give up on the idea that we have freedom, w...

Progress in neuroscience may soon make possible an age of neurocosmetology: the use of drugs to let people affect the way their brains work, so as to make them more effective, more attractive, and more like their “cognitive ideal.” A world where all the women are beautiful and all the men handsome might be bearable if boring. But would a society full of type-A’s work at all? Can it be rational to...

Are there objective standards of beauty? Or is beauty in the eye of the beholder? Must art be beautiful to be great art? What is the role of the experience of beauty in a good life? John and Ken take in the beauty with Alexander Nehamas from Princeton University, author of Only a Promise of Happiness: The Place of Beauty in a World of Art.

Can committed believers and committed non-believers share a common political life in the context of a secular state?  Committed believers may want the policies of the state to reflect their deeply held religious convictions and values.  Committed non-believers may not want the state imposing religiously inspired values in the absence of any purely secular justification.  Must religion retreat from...

David Hume was a superb essayist, a brilliant philosopher, and a world-class bon vivant. His philosophical views in ethics, epistemology, aesthetics, and the philosophy of religion, though shocking to many in his own time, are enduring touchstones of modern philosophy, still required reading of every student of philosophy. Join John and Ken for a tour of a few of Hume’s most startling ideas with D...

Erotic experience is a human good. Mature, consenting adults should be able to explore the erotic realm freely, without outside interference. Pornography is illicit and destructive. But what is the real difference between the erotic and the pornographic?  Is there a bright line? In our attempts to regulate pornography do we run the risk of infringing upon the erotic freedoms of consenting adults?...

Once upon a time, student athletes were students first, athletes second; the Olympics was about amateurism and the pursuit of excellence, not the pursuit of endorsements; and professional athletes enhanced the physics through rigorous work-outs, not through performance enhancing substances. No doubt athletic excellence is at an all time high, but are ethics in athletics at an all time low? John an...

Is there such a thing as pure evil in the world? How should we confront evil? Can evil ever be finally overcome? If the universe was created by a supremely good, supremely powerful, supremely loving deity, why is there evil in the world to begin with? On the other hand, if there is no God and everything is permitted, what distinguishes the truly evil from the purely good? John and Ken weigh good a...

Aristotle’s philosophical doctrines have permeated and helped shape Western Culture in spheres as disparate as cosmology, biology, ethics, physics, politics, and logic. John and Ken take a tour of some of the greatest hits of one of the greatest philosophers of Antiquity with Chris Bobonich from Stanford University.

Modern science tells us that the mind is just the brain working. But science cannot yet tell us how consciousness, rationality, free will, autonomy, or even our sense of self arises out of the merely material processes of the brain. Could our confidence that mind is just the brain working possibly be misplaced? John and Ken delve into the mystery of the mind with UC Berkeley philosopher John Searl...

Are gender roles and differences fixed, once and for, all by biology? Or is gender socially constructed and culturally variable?  How does gender differ from sex? John and Ken explore whether men and women are really from different planets after all with Anne Fausto-Sterling from Brown University, author of Myths of Gender: Biological Theories about Women and Men.

The philosopher John Locke thought we had no innate ideas; our minds are blank slates, upon which experience writes.  Nurture is everything, nature nothing.  Modern popular genetics gives the impression that we are nothing but the stage on which a play written by our genes is performed; nature is everything, nurture nothing.  What are the facts, and what are the philosophical principles that are u...

The Americans with Disabilities Act recognizes that people with disabilities are often prevented from leading productive and satisfying lives because social, school and work environments are often thoughtlessly and unnecessarily designed with only people with the standard set of abilities in mind. In many cases “reasonable accommodation” to the ways people with disabilities need to do things is re...

Is love just a (second-hand) emotion?  Is it a feeling?  A disparate group of feelings, glandular responses, and ill-considered commitments called by a single word so that poets will have something to write about?  A poor substitute for true friendship imposed upon us by lust?  Or the deepest and most satisfying of human conditions? John and Ken question their love with Noel Merino from Humboldt S...

Is there such a thing as absolute truth, independent of who is doing the thinking, and where? Or is truth relative to backgrounds, cultures, creeds, times, and places? Can it be true that what is right for me isn’t right for you? John and Ken search for truth with Helen Longino, Professor of Philosophy and Women’s Studies at the University of Minnesota.

Time is the most familiar thing in the world, and yet philosophically one of the most puzzling. Is the present what’s left when you subtract what has already happened, and what is yet to happen? Then it seems to vanish into a mere instant. Are future events completely unreal? Or are they just the things we can’t know yet? Is time unreal, as many philosophers have thought? Columbia’s Dave Albert jo...

America prides itself on being the oldest continuous democracy in the world. But criticisms of the America system are widespread. Our system is tailored to narrow interests and wealthy elites. Our two parties lock out alternative voices. Our voting procedures discourage participation and lead to unrepresentative outcomes. Is this really the best way to run a democracy? Join John and Ken as they ex...

The ideas of Karl Marx vie with those of Rousseau, Locke and Jefferson for shaping the politics of the twentieth century. Are Marx’s ideas of real philosophical value and interest, or simply relics of interest only in trying to understand the benighted century we have left behind? John and Ken divide their labor with Jonathan Wolff from University College London, author of Why Read Marx Today?

Some feminists hold that there are specially feminine ways of knowing, and the current scientific research is flawed for not recognizing them. Some hold that philosophy itself is a thoroughly phallocentric enterprise, and deeply flawed. Other feminists vigorously reject these views. Join John and Ken as they discuss the philosophies of feminism with Barrie Thorne from UC Berkeley, co-author of Fem...

Our current way of life is unsustainable. Depletion of the ozone layer, the dwindling of the rain forest, the loss of animal habitat, and toxic runoff into lakes, streams and rivers are just a few of the environmental challenges we face. The environment is a global problem that no one nation can address on its own. Something must give, somewhere. But who will pay what costs for improving the globa...

Corporations are recognized as persons in the eyes of the law. But if they are persons, they would seem to be pathologically self-interested persons, driven by nothing but the desire for their own further aggrandizement. John and Ken ask how we can cope with such persons in our midst with Lawrence Mitchell from the George Washington University Law School.