Philosophy Talk
Episodes
Abortion
09 Jan 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Nothing stirs up controversy like abortion.  To some, it carries the steep moral cost of destroying human life, while to others, it represents an...
The Moral Costs of Free Markets
02 Jan 2011
Contributed by Lukas
We live in a market-driven society – our day-to-day lives consist of buying and selling goods and services, and to some, our ability to do so withou...
Philosophy for Children
19 Dec 2010
Contributed by Lukas
Because of their innocent approach to things, do children make good philosophers?  Or do they lack the equipment for clear-thinking?  Is exp...
The Power of Thought
12 Dec 2010
Contributed by Lukas
Human thought is an amazing thing. It has given us not only science, literature, and morality, but also superstition, slavery, and war. Thought has ...
Disagreement
05 Dec 2010
Contributed by Lukas
Sometimes people who seem to be your epistemic peers – that is, people as experienced, as well trained, as thoughtful, and as intelligent as you –...
Reading, Narrative, and the Self
28 Nov 2010
Contributed by Lukas
Reading is a lot of fun, especially narrative fiction – everyone loves a good story. But maybe there’s more to it than that. Maybe everyone is...
The Occult Philosophy
31 Oct 2010
Contributed by Lukas
The occult is routinely dismissed in our times as the province of quacks, the irrational, and the superstitious. But during the Renaissance, many of...
Bargaining with the Devil
24 Oct 2010
Contributed by Lukas
Compromise is the condition of peace and progress.  But there are times when we should not compromise – when compromise would undermine integri...
Philosophy and the Alma Mater
19 Sep 2010
Contributed by Lukas
Scholars from Berkeley and from Stanford have played a big role on Philosophy Talk.  Sure, John and Ken are from Stanford, but many of our most f...
Meaning and the Revolution
12 Sep 2010
Contributed by Lukas
The American Revolution was saturated with meaning and ambiguity, from the words of the Declaration of Independence, to the beliefs of the founding fa...
Philosophy for the Young – Corrupting or Empowering?
05 Sep 2010
Contributed by Lukas
Socrates was executed for corrupting the youth. In America, youth below college age are usually not exposed to philosophy in the classroom. Is philoso...
Self-Deception
29 Aug 2010
Contributed by Lukas
Self-deception sounds like a contradiction: intentionally convincing yourself of something you know to be untrue.  But it is a pervasive aspect o...
Humanism
22 Aug 2010
Contributed by Lukas
Humanism as a movement arose with the Renaissance.  It took powerful expression with the Enlightenment, and deeply influenced the founding of the...
Social Reality
01 Aug 2010
Contributed by Lukas
Few things affect our lives as much as the fact that we are citizens of one country rather than another.  The government of, the economy of, and ...
Loyalty
18 Jul 2010
Contributed by Lukas
Loyalty is usually reckoned to be an important virtue; even loyalty to lost causes is often admired.  But loyalty to evil causes is no virtue....
Democracy and The Press
04 Jul 2010
Contributed by Lukas
Our founding fathers believed that a free press would serve democracy by promoting unfettered political debate and expose the actions of the governmen...
What are Human Rights?
27 Jun 2010
Contributed by Lukas
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...
The Corporation as a Person
20 Jun 2010
Contributed by Lukas
The Supreme Court recently decided that corporations had the right of free speech under the U.S. Constitution, since they are persons.  But what ...
Summer Reading List 2010
23 May 2010
Contributed by Lukas
What philosophers, philosophies, or philosophical issues do you want to read up on over the summer?  Heidegger’s Being and Time probably is...
Philosophy Talk “Live” Highlights
16 May 2010
Contributed by Lukas
It’s a Philosophy Talk highlight reel for the membership drive! In this special episode, John and Ken relive some favorite moments from Philosop...
Mental Illness and Culture
09 May 2010
Contributed by Lukas
Paranoia, depression, schizophrenia, bipolarity, and all the other ways Americans have discovered to be crazy – are they universal phenomena, rooted...
Faces, Feelings, and Lies
18 Apr 2010
Contributed by Lukas
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?&#...
The Ethics of Torture
11 Apr 2010
Contributed by Lukas
According to former Vice President Cheney, practices widely regarded as torture prevented further attack on America after 9/11.  The facts are in...
What Is a Wife?
04 Apr 2010
Contributed by Lukas
The concept of a wife has been embedded in cultures, religious practices, social customs and economic patterns of wildly different sorts. Is there a...
Fear
28 Mar 2010
Contributed by Lukas
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 the...
What is ‘Normal’?
14 Mar 2010
Contributed by Lukas
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...
The 2010 Dionysus Awards
28 Feb 2010
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Mind Reading
21 Feb 2010
Contributed by Lukas
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: w...
Philosophy in Fiction
07 Feb 2010
Contributed by Lukas
Philosophers think a lot about fiction. But do novelists think about philosophy? Do philosophers make good fictional characters? Can good stories be b...
Paradoxes
03 Feb 2010
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Nihilism and Meaning
24 Jan 2010
Contributed by Lukas
The ancients believed in an enchanted universe – a universe suffused with meaning and purpose. But with the dawn of modernity, philosophy and scienc...
Kierkegaard
10 Jan 2010
Contributed by Lukas
Philosophy usually suggests a striving for rationality and objectivity. But the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard advocated subjectivity and the l...
Is It Wrong to Wreck the Earth?
03 Jan 2010
Contributed by Lukas
There are too many people, doing too much damage to the ecosystem, essentially guaranteeing that future generations will have a damaged Earth, and wil...
How Relevant Is Jesus?
20 Dec 2009
Contributed by Lukas
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 w...
The Philosophical Legacy of Darwin
06 Dec 2009
Contributed by Lukas
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...
From the Minds of Babies
29 Nov 2009
Contributed by Lukas
Consciousness, morality, meaning and truth have perplexed and puzzled generations upon generations of philosophers. But could it be that we have been ...
200 and Counting
15 Nov 2009
Contributed by Lukas
The program that questions everything – except your intelligence – started off questioning the conventional wisdom that there would be no audience...
Health Care: Right or Privilege?
01 Nov 2009
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Schizophrenia and the Mind
18 Oct 2009
Contributed by Lukas
To be human, philosophers have often said, is to be rational. But many people, for biological reasons, are clearly not rational. Schizophrenia is not ...
War, Sacrifice, and the Media
04 Oct 2009
Contributed by Lukas
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 voic...
What are Words Worth?
27 Sep 2009
Contributed by Lukas
How do words shape our minds?  Do the French suffer because they have no word for berry or cozy?  Do we suffer because we have no word for s...
Philosophy Talk Highlights
20 Sep 2009
Contributed by Lukas
It’s a Philosophy Talk highlight reel for the membership drive. In this special episode, John and Ken relive some favorite moments from the Phil...
The Postmodern Family
13 Sep 2009
Contributed by Lukas
What is a family, and what distinguishes it from other kinds of associations?  Is the traditional role of the family merely grounded in custom an...
Pornography
30 Aug 2009
Contributed by Lukas
Is pornography an art form, or simply anything that depicts genitals in action?  Where does mere eroticism end and pornography begin?  In th...
Money and Morality
16 Aug 2009
Contributed by Lukas
Does our system of credit and money make upward social mobility possible for anyone willing to work hard?  Or is it just a big Ponzi scheme? ...
The Prison System
26 Jul 2009
Contributed by Lukas
As of June 30, 2007, the prisons and jails in the land of the free held 2,299,116 inmates; one in every 31 American adults is in prison, on parole, or...
Social Networking
05 Jul 2009
Contributed by Lukas
From online bulletin boards at the dawn of the internet to the modern mammoths of Facebook and MySpace, people have used communications technology to ...
Summer Reading List 2009
14 Jun 2009
Contributed by Lukas
Even if you’re not going to Biarritz for the summer as usual, you can relax in the sun and read.  There are a lot of readable, beach-friend...
The Mind and the World
07 Jun 2009
Contributed by Lukas
What kinds of contact can the mind have with the world?  Can we know how the world is in itself, or can we only know shadows of the world in our ...
Lincoln as a Philosopher
17 May 2009
Contributed by Lukas
More than any other President, Abraham Lincoln is known for his words, from the Lincoln-Douglass debates to the second inaugural address, as well as h...
Worship
10 May 2009
Contributed by Lukas
Worship is the feeling or expression of reverence and adoration for something.  The attitude of worship towards God or gods or ancestors is a uni...
Beliefs Gone Wild
03 May 2009
Contributed by Lukas
Our brains evolved on the African savannah, but are now expected to deal with complex statistical information and other intricate concepts every day.&...
Desire
12 Apr 2009
Contributed by Lukas
There are two ways to have your desires fulfilled: you can either get what you want (if you’re lucky enough) or change your desires. If we can f...
Too Much Information
05 Apr 2009
Contributed by Lukas
“We’re just never going to catch up,” writes David Weinberger in Everything Is Miscellaneous. That is, we’re never going to catch up wit...
The Root of All Evil?
29 Mar 2009
Contributed by Lukas
Money makes the world go around.  But what sort of thing is money?  Bits of paper and metal?  An elaborate set of IOUs to be redeemed w...
The Copyright Wars
22 Mar 2009
Contributed by Lukas
Today there is an entire generation of people who have never paid for music.  From Napster to YouTube, some of our most innovative and inventive ...
Challenges to Free Will
08 Mar 2009
Contributed by Lukas
We seem to be able to decide our behavior for ourselves – what we do is up to us. But if everything that we do can be explained by physics, does t...
Biracial Identities
01 Mar 2009
Contributed by Lukas
Many people identify strongly with the ethnic or racial group to which they belong – as Jews, or African-Americans, or Latinos.  But to which g...
Different Cultures, Different Selves
22 Feb 2009
Contributed by Lukas
Why do we do what we do? To please others? To live up to what culture expects? Or for our own reasons –- as “autonomous agents”? America...
The Movie Show
08 Feb 2009
Contributed by Lukas
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. W...
Creativity
29 Jan 2009
Contributed by Lukas
What makes an idea or work of art creative? Can creativity be measured? Can a computer be creative? What is the relationship between creativity ...
Civil Disobedience
18 Jan 2009
Contributed by Lukas
Thoreau, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King all engaged in civil disobedience, and are widely admired for doing so.  But how can democratic society f...
Philosophy of History
11 Jan 2009
Contributed by Lukas
Is history just a series of events, or an interpretation of those events?  Is there progress in history?  Can history be objective, or is it...
The Idea of the University
04 Jan 2009
Contributed by Lukas
Is a university a research institute with students, or and educational institution with research around the edges – or something in between? To wh...
John Rawls
14 Dec 2008
Contributed by Lukas
John Rawls was one of the most influential political philosophers of the twentieth century. In his book A Theory of Justice he articulated a concept o...
Bodies For Sale
07 Dec 2008
Contributed by Lukas
I can sell my house, the things I make, and the services I provide.  So why can’t I sell one of my kidneys?  What is the philosophical...
Levels of Reality
23 Nov 2008
Contributed by Lukas
Are there levels of reality, with each level emerging from the other in a way that provides a truly new aspect of reality?  The concept of emerge...
Gandhi as a Philosopher
16 Nov 2008
Contributed by Lukas
Gandhi is famous as the leader of the movement for Indian independence, which he based on his philosophy of non-violence, an important influence on Ma...
William James
09 Nov 2008
Contributed by Lukas
William James is one of the great American philosophers, historically important as a philosopher (pragmatism and radical empiricism), a student of rel...
Making Decisions
02 Nov 2008
Contributed by Lukas
When we make decisions we think we’re in control, making rational choices. But are we? This is the central question posed by Dan Ariely, Profess...
Digital Selves
19 Oct 2008
Contributed by Lukas
Second Life and dozens of other online adventures involve creating digital selves, and millions of users are taking advantage of the opportunity to de...
Overcoming the Terror of Death
12 Oct 2008
Contributed by Lukas
To many death is terrifying. But why? As David Hume pointed out, all the years we didn’t exist before we were born seemed painless enough. Why w...
The Morality of Food
21 Sep 2008
Contributed by Lukas
Veganism, freeganism, organic, sustainability, simplicity, biofuel, animal rights, worker’s rights, nutrition, preventing hunger, reducing waste...
Utilitarianism
07 Sep 2008
Contributed by Lukas
Can morality be quantified?  Can the good be calculated?  Utilitarianism says the right action is the one which leads to the most overall ha...
Global Justice and Human Rights
24 Aug 2008
Contributed by Lukas
What constitutes a just society?  What are the obligations of liberal democracies to ensure the rights and well-being of the citizens of other co...
Dualism
10 Aug 2008
Contributed by Lukas
What is the relationship between the mind and the brain?  Monists believe that there is only one substance or property in the Universe, be it phy...
Philosophy and Pop Culture
03 Aug 2008
Contributed by Lukas
From Star Trek and the Grateful Dead to South Park and Stephen Colbert, philosophical questions are everywhere in popular culture: Is time travel poss...
Giving and Keeping
27 Jul 2008
Contributed by Lukas
How should people allocate their assets – however modest or grand – ethically and effectively?  What kinds of giving should the government en...
The Luck of the Draw
13 Jul 2008
Contributed by Lukas
Sometimes it isn’t possible to distribute goods evenly. When this happens, we often leave it up to randomness – in the form of lotteries – t...
Altruism
29 Jun 2008
Contributed by Lukas
Are people genuinely altruistic, or is altruism just a type of selfish-behavior?  Are other animals altruistic? Should we strive to be altruistic...
Hannah Arendt
22 Jun 2008
Contributed by Lukas
Hannah Arendt was one of the most original and influential philosophers of the 20th century. Her work considered historical and contemporary politic...
The Problem of Evil
08 Jun 2008
Contributed by Lukas
Many religions tell us that God is perfect: all-knowing, all-powerful, and beneficent.  Why then do bad things happen?  John and Ken discuss...
Summer Reading List 2008
01 Jun 2008
Contributed by Lukas
Summer’s just around the corner – what books are you going to pack with your Speedo? John and Ken leaf through some of this summer’s phi...
Promises
11 May 2008
Contributed by Lukas
What is a promise: a prediction?  A statement of intention?  Is promising rational?  Does it create an obligation?  John and Ken p...
Experimental Philosophy
04 May 2008
Contributed by Lukas
Philosophical reasoning relies on intuitions.  John Rawls called this method “reflective equilibrium.” But where do we get our data about...
Varieties of Love
20 Apr 2008
Contributed by Lukas
Is love a single thing, or just a word we use to express any number of unrelated emotions? Is love intrinsically irrational? What have philosophers sa...
Politics and Cognitive Science
13 Apr 2008
Contributed by Lukas
Can cognitive science explain the difference between liberals and conservatives?  Do we elect our presidents on the basis of stale metaphors and ...
Philosophy of Wine
06 Apr 2008
Contributed by Lukas
The discriminating wine palate: bouquet, nose, great vintages, genius vintners.  Are these just myths perpetrated by winemakers and taken up by s...
Apologizing
30 Mar 2008
Contributed by Lukas
Can you be sorry without intending to change your behavior in the future? Without being ashamed? Do other cultures have different concepts of sorrow a...
Science vs. Pseudo-science
02 Mar 2008
Contributed by Lukas
Astronomy is science; Astrology is pseudo-science. Evolutionary Biology is science; Creationism is pseudo-science. How about cultural anthropology, ab...
Infinity
24 Feb 2008
Contributed by Lukas
 Infinity is a puzzling concept. Mathematicians say there are as many odd numbers as there are numbers altogether. That seems like saying there a...
Connectionism
17 Feb 2008
Contributed by Lukas
Does the human mind work like a computer? If so, what kind of computer? A theory known as connectionism offers a revolutionary perspective on these is...
Saint Augustine
27 Jan 2008
Contributed by Lukas
The philosopher Saint Augustine of Hippo is one of the most important figures in the history of Christianity. His efforts against the Manichean, Arian...
Persons, Selves, Souls, and Loops
20 Jan 2008
Contributed by Lukas
Can a self, a consciousness, an “I” arise out of mere matter? If it cannot, then how can you or I be here? And if it can, how does THAT wo...
Why Music Matters
13 Jan 2008
Contributed by Lukas
There is something deeply mysterious about music. Why does it affect us so powerfully? Is it like a language, telling us something? A subtle form of c...
Work
06 Jan 2008
Contributed by Lukas
Is work the curse of the working class? Or a human’s best opportunity for happiness and meaning? What is work, and what is leisure? Are you what...
Personal Identity
16 Dec 2007
Contributed by Lukas
What is necessary for a person to survive over time?  Is it the continued existence of the living body?  Or is it just the living brain?...
Concept of God
09 Dec 2007
Contributed by Lukas
What does “God” mean?  Is God a concrete thing like a chair or a human; or is it an abstract thing, like love or goodness?  Is t...
Political Correctness
02 Dec 2007
Contributed by Lukas
What is political correctness?  Has it always existed?  What’s “political” about it?  Some people think that concerns...
Islamic Philosophy
18 Nov 2007
Contributed by Lukas
Some of the many topics discussed in Islamic philosophy are the Qur’an, knowledge, dreams, justice, poetry, reality, prophethood, peace, and the...