If we are not mindful, we become disconnected from the real struggles that humanity faces when confronted by technology.
Convenience, Thought and Technology
No-one could argue that technology does not make our lives easier, or that technology has not been one of the great liberators in the history of humankind; it certainly has been. Our lives would be more solitary, poorer, nastier, more brutish and shorter without technology, to steal a line from Hobbes. We should hope for continued advances in this liberating Continue Reading …
Technology and Individuality
There is a classic anxiety about technology: that it can lead to a lack of individuality and spiritual emptiness. Why might this be? The place to start is with the lack of control technology can bring about in our lives. This may seem counter-intuitive since it is normally thought that technology is what helps us attain more control in our lives. Of course it does. Continue Reading …
Beginning in Wonder
In episode 73 the question was of ‘why do philosophy’ was posed. There are many ways to come at this question and in the episode the PEL guys kept coming back to two things: Curiosity and Wonder. How are these two words linked, if they are, and what is their relation to philosophy? The essay “Beginning in Wonder: Placing the Continue Reading …
Tolerance, Repression and Terrorism
In 1965 Herbert Marcuse published an article entitled “Repressive Tolerance” in the collection A Critique of Pure Tolerance. The critique of modern society he presents in this paper will not be new to anyone familiar with his work or with the work of others from the first generation of the so-called Frankfurt School: the administered society, the systematic moronization of children Continue Reading …
Martin Buber and Stephen Darwall
There was some discussion in the recent podcast about how an ethics can be derived from Martin Buber ‘s I and Thou. Recently one philosopher has pointed to Buber’s work as at least an historical antecedent to his theory. The third chapter of Stephen Darwall’s 2006 book, The Second-Person Standpoint, opens with the following quote from Buber: When one says You, Continue Reading …
Robert Stern on Moral Obligation
One question, but by no means the only question, that we can ask ourselves when reading the great philosophers of the past is what can they tells us about contemporary debates? A recent attempt to show the fruitfulness of bringing history to bear on a contemporary debate is Robert Stern’s Understanding Moral Obligation: Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard (hereafter UMO). In UMO Continue Reading …
Does the Author Matter?
[Another post from Adam Arnold, FotP “Friend of the Podcast”] Recently I read a short story entitled “My Brother’s Foot”. My interpretation of the story, like my interpretation of just about anything these days, was philosophical. I took the story to be a critique of the idea of an existential hero and a radical notion of self definition. How when Continue Reading …
Voltaire and Evolutionary Biology
[From friend of the podcast Adam Arnold] In regards to the latest episode on Candide and the continuing discussion of scientism and evolution on the blog, it is interesting to look back on the classic article by Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin on the “adaptationist programme” in evolutionary biology. In “The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian paradigm: Continue Reading …
Name-Dropping: An Apologetic (Mead and the Intersubjective Self)
[Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a listener submission by Adam Arnold, graduate student at the University of Warwick. You too can be a guest blogger.] During the Buddhism Naturalized episode, the guest Owen Flanagan (as well as Mark, not unusually for him) may have dropped more names than in any other podcast. I have this same tendency in everyday life. Continue Reading …