End Times archive

Friederike Moltmann is the Aberlour of philosophical linguistic interface. Her thoughts continually burn bright as she contemplates whether language really does carve nature at the joints, broods on descriptive, revisionary, shallow and fundamental metaphysics, on mereology and why extensional mereology won't do, on the role of integrated wholes, on what reference situations take care of, on why natural language doesn't allow abstract objects in its core and thinking it does is a result of naïve analysis, on the surprising ontology of natural language, on trope ontologies and on why systematic application of linguistic methodology can have serious philosophical consequences. The wind howls and the rain batters against the windows but these thoughts pour out like a different kind of storm... Published on: Nov 14, 2014 @ 03:00

Anna Marmodoro is the Clynelish single malt of the philosophy of powers universe. She takes on some of the most fundamental questions coming out of the classical authors, thinking about progress in philosophy, power metaphysics and the various puzzles that arise, property dualism and property monism, regresses, causality, Aristotle on perception, his subtle realism, the relationship between his metaphysics of perception and his metaphysics of substance, how all this links with contemporary theories and how the theory of the extended mind connects with philosophical issues regarding the Incarnation.This one leaves a warm glow in the mind as winter bears down and darkness falls... Published on: Nov 8, 2014 @ 18:38

Iakovos Vasiliou is a Glenfiddich of Plato studies, brooding continuously on what Plato really thought about ethics, about Plato focusing on being a certain kind of person, on there being moral rules to Greek ethics contrary to received views, on Socrates's denial of the priority of definition view, on Socrates and the Supremacy of Virtue position, on Socrates and the eudaimonistic framework, on Bernard Williams, on hard cases, on whether there's a difference between Socrates and Plato, on incontinence, on hedonism, on the effects of the dialogue form, on Soctratic intellectualism and on what Plato would have thought of the dilemmas posed by The Matrix. As the night's draw in, this is just the dram to fire you up... Published on: Oct 31, 2014 @ 03:00

Paul Lodge is another single malt from the wild and wonderful world of Leibniz studies (starts as a Laphroaig, ends a Glenmorangie) where his thoughts go on forever brooding on the sheer breadth of Leibniz's accomplishments, his big take-home messages, on why he never produced a magnum opus, his correspondences, his relationships with Descartes, Hobbes and Spinoza, what he means by 'harmony', on whether he's an Idealist, on whether he's a Pantheist, on the strangeness of monads, on avoiding the rationalist/empiricist labelling scheme, on the mill argument and why Rorty, Searle and Wilson are unfaithful, on his esotericism, on his women and whether he's a kind of feminist, on the different readings, on why history of philosophy is philosophy and what draws him in obsessively. Take a few shots and feel the world change.... Published on: Oct 24, 2014 @ 03:00

Ofra Magidor knows her days are not numbered but ochre underneath and that she's the philosopher working out whether that is really true or not. She's always thinking about category mistakes and about their two camps, about their relevance for linguistics and computer science, about what makes them odd, about why the idea that they're syntactically ill-formed is wrong but more promising than some might think, about why they're not meaningless, about why Wittgenstein is wrong on this, about the role of presuppositions, about pragmatism and semantics, about dynamic semantic theories, about truth-value gaps, about exciting projects in analytic philosophy and why women and non-whites are unrepresented in philosophy. Go sleep that pipe... Published on: Oct 17, 2014 @ 03:00

Stephen Yablo is the Magilla Gorilla philosophikilla who thinks all the time about ontologies and metaphysics and ontologeses and metametaphysics too, about essentialism, about whether intrinsic is intrinsic to essentialism, about fictionalism and evolving to presuppositionalism, about why conceivability is a guide to possibility, why zembos are harder to get rid of than zombies, about aboutness, about subtraction and about a Wittgenstein thing and other cool stuff. This one is the Ali shuffle thought of via its opposite, only in a mouth ... Published on: Oct 10, 2014 @ 03:00

Stephen Read is the philosopher who brings it all back home from the heady days of the late middle ages and further. He's always brooding on how great the medievals were at logic, about the two schools, about Aristotle and Buridan, about octagons of opposition, about why we should all be reading Thomas Bradwardin the paradox crusher who has solutions to Fitch, the Knower, the liar, Curry's, Field's, Pseudo-Scotus's, about how Aristotle and the medievals got to LOT before Fodor, about why Unger is dead wrong and why logic can't replace metaphysics contra Williamson. Take this one a sip at a time, like a really slow burn malt... Published on: Oct 3, 2014 @ 03:00

Chris Lebron is a philosopher who asks deep questions about theories of justice appropriate for race. He thinks about bridging the gap between abstraction and lived experiences, about American democracy and racial inequality, marginalisation and oppression, about the idea of character and how it helps explain racial inequality, about the problem of social value, about why Rawls isn't enough, about 'white power', about despair and blame, about perfectionism and egalitarianism, about soulcraft politics, about three principles of racial justice and about the lamentable number of black philosophers currently working in the Academy. Give this one the time of day to sink in, then reboot... Published on: Sep 29, 2014 @ 11:26

Paul Crowther bites the hands of both analytic and continental philosophical approaches to aesthetics. Whilst chewing he thinks about how post-modernism is linked to market forces and Supermodernity, about how civilising is organised round self restraint, about how Derrida, Foucault, Lacan, Deleuze have created a distorting orthodoxy, about rejecting analytic philosophical approaches to art, about White Aesthetics, about post-analytic phenomenology, about phenomenological depth, about subject-object reciprocity, about meaning in abstract art, about Kant and German Idealism. Take this one neat and then go for a walk... Published on: Sep 26, 2014 @ 03:00

Jeffrey K. McDonough is the Laphroaig single malt of Leibniz and Berkeley studies, bringing them all back home over a peaty fire. He's forever brooding about Leibniz's theodicy, his systematicity, his monads, his views on monadic causation and the relation betwen the divine and creaturely activity, how Leibniz thought God and physics were compatible, about teleology and the mechanistic universe, about the role of optics in his philosophy, about Berkeley's idealism, about what a bee is to Berkeley, about concurrentism, about its difference from Malebranche's occasionalism, about Kant's refutation of Descartes, and why working out why Julius Caesar is not a number is philosophically useful. Best savoured neat, or with a little cool water... Published on: Sep 19, 2014 @ 03:00

Lori Gruen is a leading feminist philosopher who asks deep questions about the ethics of captivity, ethics, animals and what we're doing to nature. She thinks that human exceptionalism is a prejudice, that considering marginal cases helpful in seeing why, is skeptical about intuitions about far fetched cases digging up important ethical insights, that two big issues concerning ethics and animals are captivity and industrial animal agriculture, thinks ecotourism is complicated, has problems with holisic approaches to environmental ethics, thinks women have it tough, that the ethics of captivity are both complex and have had little philosophical treatment, that self-direction matters when considering how we treat animals, that ideas of a wild free of human management is unrealistic, and that some captivity is necessary. It's not dark yet, but it's getting there... Published on: Sep 12, 2014 @ 03:00

Lorenzo Zucca is a philosopher whose thoughts point right at the heart of some of the big issues facing Europe today. He thinks about fundamental legal rights in the context of Europe and the US, about rules and principles, about issues around privacy, about how fundamental legal rights connect to constitutional dilemmas, about Europe as the secular exception in the world, about why 1989 is more important than 9/11 in bringing religion to the world order, about why there's no sharp distinction between secular and religious arguments, about the distinction between aggressive and inclusive secularism, about Transcendental Monism, Spinoza, Immanent Metaphysical Monism and about striving to establish secular law. Start thinking bub... Published on: Sep 5, 2014 @ 03:00