End Times archive

He is a philosopher who has written extensively on key contemporary issues such as solidarity, the philosophical issues of race and genetics, the sanctity of life and human dignity but here he talks about the philosophy of German Materialism, and along the way he discusses its history, how it became prominent in the mid nineteenth century, Feurbach, the strong link between philosophy and anthropology, Marx and Engels, the diluting consequence of Haeckel’s monism, materialism's link with Kantianism, the difficult case of Nietzsche, and how Logical positivism fits in. Keep your feet on the ground for this one... Kurt Bayertz Published on: Jun 13, 2015 @ 13:09

He is the inter-disciplinary philosopher working through ideas we can read further about in A Theory of Human Action, Epistemology and Cognition, Liaisons: Philosophy Meets the Cognitive and Social Sciences, Knowledge in a Social World, Simulating Minds: The Philosophy, Psychology, and Neuroscience of Mindreading, Reliabilism and Contemporary Epistemology, Essays, Joint Ventures: Mindreading, Mirroring, and Embodied Cognition, Epistemology, A Contemporary Introduction (with M. McGrath), and Social Epistemology: Essential Readings, all of which give you a clear idea of where we're going in this interview. If there are still folks out there who say philosophy is too busy picking its own belly-button to be relevant then this should put that myth to bed... Alvin Goldman Published on: Jun 6, 2015 @ 15:23

Costica Bradatan is a philosopher who thinks about Levinas, failure, philosophers who had to die to make their points, philosophy as the art of living, Munch's skeleton arm, the essays of Montaigne, philosophy in the flesh, Simone Weil, Thomas More, Plato's artistic genius, why anyone should bother to murder philosophers and why philosophy when done well is a serious joke. Go have a laugh... Published on: May 29, 2015 @ 09:15

Richard Healey is the pragmatist philosopher of physics who thinks there's a need to interpret quantum mechanics, that none of the standard interpretations are good enough, that the idea of a nonseparable world helps and that a pragmatist approach is the way to go. He discusses how to dispel the Feynman mystery, the paradox of Wigner's friend, and how to reconcile quantum mechanics with relativity, whether quantum mechanics is a realist or instrumentalist position, on whether quantum mechanics makes ontological claims, on time, on quantum nonlocality and Dr Bertlmann's socks, and on getting free of the prejudices we call common sense. Go figure... Published on: May 24, 2015 @ 15:54

Roberto Casati is the philosophical disquieting muse of de Chirico as he thinks about holes and shadows, parts and places, the role of imagination, collaboration, language's influence on metaphysics and the analytic/continental divide. Start thinking twice... Published on: May 16, 2015 @ 08:46

Markus Gabriel broods on why the world doesn't exist and never stops wondering about Kant, existence, pluralism, fields of sense, Huw Price, about why he isn't po-mo, nor a Meinongian, about why unicorns exist, about why he's a realist, about dissolving the hard problem, about why naturalism and physicalism are wrong, about Schelling and post-Kantian idealism, about Badiou and Meillassouz, Heidegger, about resisting skepticism, about negative philosophy, mythology, madness, laughter and the need for illusions in metaphysics, and about the insult that is the continental/analytic divide . Gird up for an amazing story... Published on: May 10, 2015 @ 09:29

Jonathan Birch is a brooder on the philosophy of biology. Here he thinks about teleological language use in science, about what natural selection can do, about Bill Hamilton's kin selection theory, on what was in Darwin's original theory and what wasn't, about the origins of human cooperation, about the role of philosophy in science and about Nick Bostrom's simulation argument. Step out into his jungle... Published on: May 2, 2015 @ 08:10

Stathis Psillos is the philosopher of science who thinks about why it's best to be a scientific realist, about structural realism, about John Worrall, Frank Ramsey, Henri Poincaré, about scientific theories as growing existential statements, about the metaphysical, semantic and epistemic aspects, about epistemic optimism, about Larry Laudan, Willfred Sellars, about truth, about Nancy Cartwright's version of realism, about causation and explanation, about the problem with powers, about causal descriptivism and about why we should heed what philosophers say. Let's go... Published on: Apr 25, 2015 @ 16:40

Jeffrey King works in philosophy of language and metaphysics. He has written three books and numerous articles. He very much likes to ski. Published on: Apr 19, 2015 @ 16:17

Lisa Herzog has worked at the Technical University Munich, Germany, St. Gallen University, Switzerland, and most recently on a research project at the Cluster "Normative Orders" and the Institut für Sozialforschung, Frankfurt, Germany. Her research focuses on the relation between economics and philosophy. Her first book is "Inventing the Market: Smith, Hegel, and Political Theory" (Oxford University Press 2013). In 2014 she published "Freiheit gehört nicht nur den Reichen: Plädoyer für einen zeitgemäßen Liberalismus" [Freedom not just for the rich - a plea for a well-understood liberalism] (C.H.Beck) . Now we're talking... Published on: Apr 10, 2015 @ 11:40

Luciano Floridi is Professor of Philosophy and Ethics of Information at the University of Oxford, where he is also Director of Research and Senior Research Fellow of the Oxford Internet Institute and Governing Body Fellow of St Cross College. He is a member of Google Advisory Council on the Right to be Forgotten. His last book is The Fourth Revolution: How the Infosphere is Reshaping Human Reality (Oxford University Press, 2014). Here he broods on the history of philosophy as a sine wave, on why the philosophy of ICT is ultimately a species of the philosophy of ethics, on what information is, on a post-analytic-continental divide, on hyperhistory, on the infosphere, on the ethics and politics of information, on responsibility, privacy, Google's The Right to be Forgotten, on the quality of information and on why AI is interesting because of what it tells us about ourselves. This one's about who we want to become... Published on: Apr 5, 2015 @ 12:51

Alison Stone is a philosopher who broods to the wide depths on Schelling and nature, on Hegel on nature, on Bildung, on Hegel and environmental philosophy, on Luce Irigaray and the importance of reproduction, on Irigaray and Judith Butler's 'performative theory', on maternal subjectivity and on feminist philosophy. This one is all about broadening philosophy's scope... Published on: Mar 22, 2015 @ 10:48