Heap of Links
- “Good in Theory” is a political philosophy podcast that recently has been producing an audio adaptation of Plato’s Republic, with commentary -- aimed at a general audience, it is hosted by writer (and former academic) Clif Mark
- “I think it succeeded in creating a blueprint for a new kind of democracy” -- Helene Landemore (Yale) talks about moving towards "a more participatory, more inclusive, more authentically democratic system" on Ezra Klein's NYT podcast
- “If we truly believed we were so much better than squirrels, why have we spent thousands of years driving home the point?” -- Crispin Sartwell (Dickinson) on the "disaster" of emphasizing our differences with other animals, rather than our similarities
- “How did a word for a philosophical ideal come to be used for an unromantic relationship?” -- Merriam-Webster's Word History column takes up "Platonic"
- “Philosophy has never been so modern” -- "La Faute Ă Rousseau," a French television show about a high school philosophy teacher, is getting good reviews
- The philosophers most retweeted in the past week by other philosophers on Twitter -- a regularly updated list from Kelly Truelove that offers a view of which tweets have resonated most with philosophers on the social media platform
- “Even if you are completely unsympathetic to Rawls and his project, you will learn so much… Rawls is worth your time” -- Lawrence Solum (UVA) on Rawls on his 100th birthday
- “The field has evolved” in terms of race, but there’s a recognition of “how far it still has to go” -- a promotional but nonetheless informative piece about Black philosophers at the University of Pennsylvania
- In honor of Rawls’s 100th birthday -- a collection of essays on Rawls that have appeared in Boston Review, and one by Rawls himself
- Parfit on Kant’s “ends-in-themselves” formulation of the categorical imperative -- audio from the first of the three 2002-2003 Tanner Lectures, with commentary from Allen Wood (via Matt McAdam)
- “Every magic show I perform is applied phenomenology” -- an interview with Larry Hass, former philosophy professor and now fulltime "philosopher-magician"
- “Sometimes we dismiss a problem as ‘not the most important thing in the world.'” What is? -- one answer from Richard Yetter Chappell (Miami)
- “Aristotle” makes an appearance on Nancy Drew show -- in which, among other things, he is called out for his sexism
- “Imagine cavemen sitting together to think up what, for all time, will be the best possible society and then setting out to institute it” -- an appreciation of a little thought experiment of Robert Nozick's
- The self, transformation, physics, and freedom -- a wide ranging and fascinating interview with Jenann Ismael (Columbia)
- “Though philosophers can come up with high-minded epistemic reasons for using thought experiments, those high-minded reasons may be covering up a more uncomfortable truth” -- Ethan Landes (St. Andrews) on why philosophers use thought experiments
- “What I know most surely in the long run about morality and obligations, I owe to football.” -- Camus played soccer. Really. He was the goalie.
- “There is more to life than what one believes, and definitely more to life than what one wants to argue for or get others to believe” -- reflections on the 10th anniversary of his quitting his job as a philosophy professor, from Bharath Vallabha
- “As I decline requests to do tenure files, referee, blurb; postpone research… lectures, and interviews; withdraw from dissertation defenses; accept intra-departmental political defeats… I also register how much stuff I pack into my ordinary self days” -- the latest in a series of reflections from Eric Schliesser (Amsterdam) on what it is like to have COVID-19
- Where the freedom of expression of scholars and other writers is most threatened -- and the patterns among who is targeted and why
- “How to get AI to respect and conform to human values is arguably the most important, if vexing, problem faced by AI developers today” -- and the incommensurability of values may throw a spanner in the works, argues Ruth Chang (Oxford)
- “I’ve never understood how polyamory is supposed to survive erotic rivalry, but I have exactly the same objection to monogamy” -- their difference "seems laughably superficial in the face of a problem situated at the molten lava core of the soul." Agnes Callard (Chicago) on jealousy
- “We know that our models are distortions of their targets… But at the same time, at least in certain instances, they are the best tools we have at our disposal” -- "So what can we do?" ask Roman Frigg (LSE) and James Nguyen (Univ. London / UCL)
- 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?
- “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
- “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
- How can philosophy offer consolation? -- Daniel Little (UM-Dearborn) on the variety of things called philosophy and the nature of consolation
- “Aristotle and Hobbes have each identified only one side of human sociality and thus of human politics” -- Hans Sluga (Berkeley) on human nature
- “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)
- A philosophy festival based around conversations, rather than debates or lectures -- The "Happy Prisoner Festival" will take place online on March 27th