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A Neglected Philosophical Pessimist — For Our Times? (guest post by Sean Schifano)

The following is a guest post * by Sean Schifano, a graduate student in philosophy at the University of South Carolina. He is editing an English translation of On the Tragic by Norwegian philosopher Peter Zapffe, known for his pessimistic views.

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November 22, 2016 12 4

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The park in Athens that is home to the site of Plato’s Academy is getting a makeover -- the plan, which includes a new archaeological museum, "fully respects the history of the space and revives the spirit of the Platonic Academy for the simultaneous education of mind and body," says Greece's culture minister
“I think imagination can do much more than philosophers often give it credit for” -- an interview with Amy Kind (Claremont McKenna)
29 philosophers agree: enough with the repugnant conclusion already! -- in Utilitas. (Editorial note: ok, but let's stop framing Parfit's problems as *about* population; his "population problems" are no more about population than trolley problems are about trolleys)
What should you do as the commenter on a philosophy paper? -- some common and not-so-common options, from Jonathan Ichikawa (UBC)
What’s the use of impostor syndrome? -- Stephen Gadsby (Monash) thinks it may be motivating
“He is much more than an intellectual, he is an adventurer of ideas” -- “Voltaire in Love” is a new four-episode Franco-Belgian mini-series
“Pro-choice advocates have deliberately avoided engaging moral or ethical questions about abortion” -- they shouldn't, argues Nathan Nobis (Morehouse) and Jonathan Dudley (JHU)
“All I knew was that it was interesting” -- Stephen Darwall (Yale) interviewed by Connie Rosati (UT Austin) about his life and work in philosophy in PEA Soup's "Mentees Interviewing Mentors" series
“A surprisingly underexplored question is whether many people have thoughts” — so they did a study. The good news is “The results were consistent with everyone having thoughts,” but there might be worries about the methodology
“Social robots might change the social moral order by changing the metaphors that humans use to understand themselves” -- with the upshot that we will be more likely to think in utilitarian ways, argues John Danaher (NUI)
“There is no evidence that… induced change in free will beliefs has any effect on morality, such as antisocial behavior, cheating, conformity, or willingness to punish” -- findings from a meta-analysis of nearly 150 studies with over 26,000 participants
The fertile philosophy of mind of William James -- an interview with Alexander Klein (McMaster)
Music to my ears: careful distinctions, carefully deployed -- an informative and well-reasoned examination of the analog-digital debate in audio, from Michael Thomas Connolly, a very thoughtful musician and recording engineer
Do lessons that encourage students to try out virtues like Confucian filial piety or Lakotan quietness involve objectionable cultural appropriation? -- Jean Kazez (SMU) takes up the question
Metaethics and experimental philosophy -- the Cognitive Science of Philosophy at the Brains blog continues with contributions from Pascale Willemsen (Zurich) and Bianca Cepollaro (Vita-Salute San Raffaele)
“Where the crowning moment of our identity we hoped to achieve in the pinnacle of success turns out not to be the thing we were looking for after all, and we’re thrown back upon the thinness of our bare self’s existence” -- Mary Townsend (St. John's) reviews "Soul," the recent Pixar movie
“His academic year stipend was $15,000 throughout graduate school, yet he finished with about $35,000 in savings” -- an interview (featuring helpful financial tips for graduate students) with philosopher Trevor Hedberg (Ohio State), who completed his PhD in 2017
Is consciousness located in the brain’s electromagnetic field? -- the idea of the "conscious electromagnetic information" (cemi) field is a kind of "scientific dualism"
“The fall into conspiracy theories is an epistemic form of death-by-a-thousand-cuts. The tragedy is that rationality may not guard against it” -- Kevin Dorst (Pitt) on the surprising rationality of "belief perserverance"
Marx, his Africana legacy, and black women Marxists -- a conversation between Vanessa Wills (GW) and Peter Adamson (LMU)
“She writes on causal relations, perception, the nature of time, the mind-body relation, the philosophical import of dreaming, and much else” -- Project Vox continues to inform us about the unrecognized and underappreciated women philosophers of the early modern period with a new entry on Lady Mary Shepherd
The philosophy, linguistics, & psychology of time -- Matt Farr, Nicky Clayton, and Kasia Jaszczolt (Cambridge) on the Mind Over Chatter podcast
“Help your future self by making the present more memorable” -- Felipe De Brigard (Duke) and others featured in a NYT piece about memory, imagination, and romanticizing the past
“Xenobots are turning some conventional views in developmental biology upside down” -- learning about organisms and life from " a new generation of xenobots — ones that took shape on their own, entirely without human guidance or assistance"
“Aristotle, whose name is taken so much in vain by our logicians, would turn in his grave if he knew that so many Logicians know no more about Logic to-day than he did 2,000 years ago” -- Wittgenstein reviews a logic text
The metaphysics of blockchain -- and its implications for "enterprise" uses of the technology, from Martin Glazier (Hamburg)
“To bridge the gap between a medieval, outdated mode of teaching and curriculum, and to meet the reality — the terrible and miserable reality — which is outside the classroom” -- a previously unpublished 1968 lecture by Herbert Marcuse on the student protests of the time
“Things that didn’t really help: Being ‘reasonable'” -- a philosopher writes about his anxiety and what did and did not help him manage it
New series of video interviews on the philosophy and cognitive science of imagination -- from the Northern Imagination Forum and The Junkyard blog
Theism and “the possibility that there are ways of making sense of things that are very different from any scientific way of making sense of things” -- Adrian Moore (Oxford) on what atheists could learn from logical positivists