End Times archive

Peter Godfrey-Smith is the go-to guy in the philosophy of biology. He is forever evolving his thoughts on externalism, complexity and why we shouldn't expect a settled outcome, the contribution of pragmatists to philosophy of biology, why Fodor gets it wrong, on how best to understand what science is, on Darwinian theory, Darwinian populations, on why Richard Dawkins and David Hull are wrong and on the contribution of philosophy to biology. Like Cool Hand Luke, this one bites like a 'gator! Published on: Apr 11, 2014 @ 03:22

Ruth Chang is a super-sassy sensation who confronts us with the philosophy of hard choices as she broods on the difference between incommensurate and incompatible and why the distinction counts, on how to handle hard choices, on different kinds, on why incomparability is rare but matters, on things being on a par, on causal determinism and agency, on why the hell I spend my time interviewing philosophers, on being a closet existentialist, on the philosophical relevance of dirty socks to understanding love relationships and on the recent spate of sexual harassment scandals in philosophy departments. This is a kooky deep existentialism with Ka-pow Kapazz! Woohay! Published on: Apr 4, 2014 @ 03:48

Scott Soames thinks philosophy is majestic and multi-faceted, is a leading philosopher of language and writes about the history and development of the analytic tradition in philosophy. He thinks about the progress we've made in the study of language since Frege, about the central semantic features of language, about truth, about what Russell got wrong, about why propositions aren't enough and why they aren't just theoretical entities, about Davidson, about Cognitive Realism, about why his theories don't distort very much, about the unfinished business of Saul Kripke and going beyond rigidity, about what went in to his books on 20th century analytic philosophy and why analytic philosophy is not a philosophical school, about the analytics in America and his theory of Legal Deferentialism. Fee Fi Fo Fum, this is one mileshigh mind-bomb! Published on: Mar 28, 2014 @ 03:14

Jeremy Sheamur broods on Karl Popper and the difference between the young Popper and the old, on the post-modernism of Popper, on why Popper is not a Cold War intellectual, on Popper and Habermas, on realism in the social sciences, on Ernest Gellner, on the decline of the public intellectual, on the complexities of Hayek,on public choice theory and Hayek, on Hayek's relationship with Thatcher, Reagan and the neo-Cons, on Popper's and Lakatos's influence and on the non-relationship between Hayek and Nozick. This one ploughs two depths! Published on: Mar 21, 2014 @ 04:11

Clare Chambers chews over the core philosophical issues of sex, culture and justice for liberal feminists, brooding on practices of physical modification, social construction's role in negotiating claims of universalism and tolerance, Foucault and the panopticon, Bourdieu and habitus, Mackinnon's critique of liberal feminism, taking violence against women seriously, Benhabib's discourse ethics, how not to be a relativist, of what kind of universality is worth defending and of the state of academic philosophy and feminism. This is a voice from a war zone. Listen up! Published on: Mar 14, 2014 @ 04:16

Frank Jackson is the go-to guy on philosophy of mind, epistemology, metaphysics and meta-ethics who invented the Mary's Room thought experiment and changed his mind and who thinks all the time about the epiphenomenalism of dualism, qualia, conceivability, the defence of conceptual analysis, why Kripke, Gettier and Putnam were doing xphi really, on laptops and quarks, on David Lewis, Quine, Kripke and influence, on networks and theoretical terms and their meanings, on threats to circularity and on beating the drum for reductionism. This one swings a haymaker! Kaboom! Published on: Mar 7, 2014 @ 04:04

Daniel Stoljar thinks all the time about what we can and can't learn from introspection, about ignorance and the imagination, the epistemic view of consciousness, the ignorance hypothesis, slugs and tiles, distinctions between empirical and philosophical questions, physicalism as weltanschauung, whether materialism is part of a scientific world view, on materialism and physics and on whether metaphysics harmonising with science is any different from tourism doing so also. This one keeps hooking to the body. Brawlin'. Published on: Feb 28, 2014 @ 04:20

Cecelia Watson is a new philosopher on the block who goes all philosophically historical and vice versa to think about the challenges facing new philosophers, about addressing philosophy's bad rap, about the painter John LaFarge and his influence on the philosophy of William James, on James' Principles of Psychology, about the role of art on epistemology, of the importance of dogs to James, of dress and fashion and philosophy, on the semicolon and grammar snobs, the overstudy epidemic, and the debts of Pragmatism and science to art. This is roaring. Published on: Feb 21, 2014 @ 04:07

Susan Schneider is the Sarah Connor of philosophy as she ponders the role of science fiction and thought experiments to help understand uploading, time travel, superintelligence, the singularity, a new approach to the computational theory of mind, consciousness, Jerry Fodor and physicalism. Hasta La Vista baby. Published on: Feb 14, 2014 @ 04:00

Mark Andrew Schroeder swims in the deep contested waters of meta-ethics thinking all along about why it ensnares all of us, about metaethical expressivism and noncognitivism, about its relationship to semantics, about its relationship to natural languages, about the importance of 'not', about technicality and depth, about slaves of the passions, about disagreeing with David Enoch, about moral realism, about what's at stake, about Bernard Williams, about hypotheticalism and about the Humean theory of reasons. Go figure. Published on: Feb 8, 2014 @ 04:04

Elisabeth Camp thinks all the time about metaphor, fiction and why they don't fit into long-standing models of the mind, about constructing a more ecumenical theory, about the differences between metaphor and make-believe, about the imagination and thought experiments, about the link between metaphor and literal speech, about slurs, about the philosophical importance of what baboons display, about what George Lakoff gets right and wrong, about progress in philosophy and about waging a two-front war about both language and human cognition. Groovy dooby. Published on: Jan 31, 2014 @ 04:19

Ken Gemes never stops brooding on what the postmoderns got right about Nietzsche, about the lack of seriously considered theories in Nietzsche, about why his naturalism isn't of interest, about the stark nihilist fact at the heart of Nietzsche's philosophical outlook, about the role of the genius, about being strangers to ourselves, ressentiment, Nietzschean localism, about Freud and Nietzsche's relationship, about the ascetic ideal, about the canonical virtue of scientific empirical testability, about the need for fine grained logical content, about the value of his different philosophical interests and why what Nietzsche says may well be literally true. All in all, this one walks into the essential territory like its griot time... Published on: Jan 25, 2014 @ 04:30