Of all the David Frosts, I am the David Frostiest.
Suppose we learn that a moral judgment we thought reasonable has an origin in merely adaptive emotions? Is that moral judgment now debunked? Perhaps you only care for your loved ones because they incite higher levels of oxytocin in your body. This article I just published considers this question by thinking about the famous “trolley …
Philosophers make a distinction between the possibility of there being a meaning of life and there being a possibility of a meaning in life. If there really was a meaning of life that would indicate that there is a purpose to humanity which would apply to each of us and could dictate how we ought to …
Damon Linker’s criticism of science popularizer Neil deGrasse Tyson’s recent anti-philosophy statements begs the question I’m afraid. I want philosophy to win on this one, but I don’t think Linker has managed to pull off making the case. We could conceive the main beef to be about whether asking unanswerable questions is worthwhile. That’s what …
Assistant Professor Elizabeth Cohen at Scientific American says: According to [Zillman’s] affective disposition theory, people enjoy entertainment when characters that they identify as the “good guys” win, and the “bad guys” get the justice they deserve. And yet for a long time, we the audience have apparently enjoyed watching characters on TV do bad/immoral things …
In case you missed it, at the Atlantic, Patrick Tucker has written an article about the military’s project to create moral artificial intelligence — robots that can make moral decisions. For instance, in a disaster scenario, a robot may be forced to make a choice about whom to evacuate or treat first, a situation where …
Neuroskeptic: Previously, only one person in all the world could possibly know which percept I was experiencing – me. I could tell you about my experience, but as it remained my experience, you’d have to take my word for it. You’d have no way to check. Now, today’s advances in artificial intelligence are allowing researchers …
Open Court Publishing released Girls and Philosophy in their series on Pop Culture and Philosophy. I wrote the first chapter for it on what Adorno would say about Lena Dunham’s HBO show, Girls. It’s available at Amazon and Powells.com.
Emily Esfahani Smith at theatlantic.com writes about the philosophical distinction that most psychologists make between happiness and well-being. Happiness comes from the satisfaction of desires, wants and goals, while well-being comes from possessing meaning in life, which the psychologists equate to living for a purpose higher than the self. “Happiness without meaning characterizes a relatively shallow, self-absorbed …
Philosopher Peter Carruthers at the OUP blog: You can, as it were, hear yourself as deciding to do something when the appropriate sensory-like episode — “I’ll do it now”, say — figures in consciousness. But your access to the underlying decision is just as indirect and interpretive as is your access to someone else’s decision …
When we like a TV show, why do we like it? What is it about a TV show or any media content that makes it good? Perhaps you don’t care. “It’s enough that I like it,” you say. “I don’t need to know more than that.” That may be fine for you. But media content …