New additions to the Heap of Links…

1. How dire are “civilizational vulnerabilities” — such that Nick Bostrom and Matthew van der Merwe (Oxford) consider stronger surveillance & global governance as ways to avoid them?
2. “We won’t understand what imagination is—won’t be able to explain imagination—until we can write a recipe for making it out of parts we already understand” — Peter Langland-Hassan (Cincinnati) shares his recipe, and others critique it, this week at Brains
3. “Impossible colors” combine opponent colors (e.g., yellowish blues and reddish greens). They’re thought to not exist and so be unexperienceable — but philosopher Michael Newall (Kent) examines evidence that at least one of them can be experienced
4. How can philosophy offer consolation? — Daniel Little (UM-Dearborn) on the variety of things called philosophy and the nature of consolation
5. “Aristotle and Hobbes have each identified only one side of human sociality and thus of human politics” — Hans Sluga (Berkeley) on human nature
6. “Infuriating”—how a sitcom’s boy genius describes his first college philosophy course — the CBS show “Young Sheldon” has its titular character take a philosophy class, meet with the prof., & dream about Descartes (warning: infuriating amount of commercials)
7. A philosophy festival based around conversations, rather than debates or lectures — The “Happy Prisoner Festival” will take place online on March 27th

Mini-Heap posts usually appear when 7 or so new items accumulate in the Heap of Links, the ever-growing collection of items from around the web that may be of interest to philosophers. Discussion welcome.

The Heap of Links consists partly of suggestions from readers; if you find something online that you think would be of interest to the philosophical community, please send it in for consideration for the Heap. Thanks!