Recent additions to the Heap of Links…

1. “When looking to identify the boundaries of species, the branches on the tree of life, or even what counts as life itself, we should be careful about assumptions that come from our very human perspective of biology” — Gunnar O. Babcock (Duke) on the fascinating questions we face once we appreciate that “life as we know it is overwhelmingly, by many orders of magnitude, asexual”
2. What if we “reject the orthodox view that the quantum universe must be described by a wave function”? — we will have a better interpretation of quantum mechanics, argues Eddy Keming Chen (UCSD)
3. “What desires are politically important?” — that was the question Bertrand Russell asked in his Nobel Prize for Literature acceptance speech in 1950
4. “Things may not be as prim and proper as they appeared to Strawson in his Oxford haven” — a philosopher’s application of natural language processing to social media in the wake of George Floyd’s murder suggests a need to expand our conception of reactive attitudes
5. “Philosophy” was a category on Jeopardy Thursday night — would you have gotten all of the questions? (link fixed–again)
6. “A relationship that ends is no more a failure or without value than a life that ends. A good breakup is like a good death” — “It exemplifies respect, dignity, careful pain management…” says Quill Kukla (Georgetown)
7. “What sort of philosophy one chooses depends on what sort of man one is; for a philosophical system is not a dead piece of furniture that we can reject or accept as we wish; it is rather a thing animated by the soul of the person who holds it” — Richard Marshall “interviews” Johann Gottlieb Fichte

Mini-Heap posts usually appear when 7 or so new items accumulate in the Heap of Links, a 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!