Julian Baggini is the author of The Virtues of the Table (coming in 2014) and the more well-known, The Ego Trick (2012), among many other books. In this review article for The Financial Times, he looks at three different books on the common theme of our human need to social structure. The Social Animal By … Read more
When it comes to the question of the importance and relevance of philosophy, I’m not sure whether Lawrence Krauss just loves the attention of being polemic, doesn’t get just how narrow-minded and simplistic his beliefs are, doesn’t realize he’s committing some major category mistakes and some basic logical fallacies that a first-year philosophy student would … Read more
When scholars refer to you as “the philosopher” for about two thousand years, and everyone understands what that means, you’re kind of a big deal. That’s exactly what happened to Aristotle because, let’s face it, the man’s depth and breath of intellectual sophistication simply blew everyone out of the water for two millennia. If you want … Read more
You’ve most likely watched the movie at some point. I recently also read the book. Both experiences are similarly soul-hitting, thought-provoking and existentially disturbing. Enlightenment through self-destruction? Freedom through loss? Power through lack of control? Immortality through suicide? If you don’t experience some major cognitive dissonance after watching the movie or reading the book, then … Read more
If you are a Republican, you’re probably not all that thrilled with your presidential candidate Mitt Romney, what with more flip-flopping on political issues than a patient with multiple-personality disorder on meth. It looks like this guy will say anything for votes. But if you’re concerned about all the inconsistencies, fear not. The Onion reports … Read more
Apparently the title of this documentary also has something to do with Toy Story? Well, I haven’t seen that movie, but I can tell you what this documentary is about… Infinity. The most obvious way to start thinking about infinity is through numbers: take any number, and you’ll soon realize that there is no such thing … Read more
We’ve seen in previous episodes of this 60-second Adventures in Thought series, all sorts of philosophical, logical, mathematical and scientific paradoxes and all-around weirdness. To remind you, we’ve seen Zeno’s paradox concerning motion, the grandfather paradox concerning backward travel through time, John Searle’s chinese room thought experiment concerning thought and computation, Hilbert’s infinite hotel concerning … Read more
One of the recurring themes in human history has been the blindness that those in power experience with regard to those they manage to subjugate. The question of the interests of the latter seldom breach the surface of the former’s consideration. We may feel enlightened that we’re way in the process of overcoming sexism, nationalism, … Read more
What does it mean to be you? How is it that the physical matter making up the many neurons in your brain somehow produce your subjective, conscious experience? Are your neurons themselves conscious? While we’re at it, what exactly is consciousness? Where does your sense of self come from? Do you actually have a self? … Read more
Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection provides a wonderful scientific explanation of biological adaptation and diversity. The theory is wonderful. The process of evolution itself is torturous, blind, indifferent, and cruel. And when you take a ruthless process, and mix it up with some extreme political and social ideology, what you get is … Read more