End Times archive

Alison Assitergoes all Crazy 88 on the deep philosophical issues of Code Pink and multi-culturalism, Althusser, enlightened women, pornography, Kierkegarrd's metaphysics and politics, Kierkegaard's naturalism and relationship to Kant, and love's passion and deception. Gonzo. Published on: Oct 4, 2013 @ 04:31

Gillian Russell is literally a kick-ass philosopher of language and logic. Here she goes all Bride vs Gogo over the sexyness of philosophy of language, about not letting the analytic/synthetic distinction get left behind, about how philosophy could make more progress than it does if it had more textbooks, about why logic is not dry, about tea drinking and shooting New Zealanders, killing bulls with a single blow, about the philosophers who do martial arts, about viciousness, the awesomeness of Kill Bill and Tarantino, about not burning her armchair and why philosophers are basically omniverous. This one's got swag. Published on: Sep 27, 2013 @ 05:12

Susanna Siegel is the major philosophical mentalist who gets into our heads and deep into the depths of philosophical phenomenology, epistemic downgrades, how the issues can be approached from different traditions, considers a gun in a fridge, how priming examples don't reveal underlying psychological mechanisms, cognitive modularity and what it does and doesn't insulate, top-down effects, the rational accessibility of perception, the contents of visual experience, the richness of perception and what to do about sexism in professional philosophy. Off we go. Published on: Sep 20, 2013 @ 04:10

Best known as the Ace Ventura of Vagueness, the Fu Fighter of the Philosophy of Philosophy, the Nightwing of Knowledge and its Limits and the Iceman of Identity and Discrimination, Timothy Williamson is no less the Marvel Man of Modality and Metaphysics. His first interview with 3ammagazine pioneered the End Times series. He's invited back with a new book to join the series he inspired and broods to the depths on why naturalism is an unhelpful term, why 'mad dog naturalist' Alex Rosenberg is brave but wrong, why Paul Horwich's Wittgensteinianism is also deeply mistaken, about why there's a need to dirty one's hands on technicalities if you want to be able to choose between competing theories, about necessitism vs contingentism, permanentism vs temporaryism, an aside about death, about Ruth Barcan Marcus's key axiom, about his deepened respect for Rudolph Carnap,about Kripke's fantastic success story, and Bob Stalnaker's and Kit Fine's contributions too, and about higher order modal logic being an alternative paradigm for core metaphysical theories. Like the Hulk, this one's so kickin' it needs a cage in high atmosphere. Smashed It! Published on: Sep 13, 2013 @ 04:47

John Gardner is a big beast of legal philosophy who takes the label 'legal positivism' mainly to problematize it, who thinks deeply about the 'chicken and egg' puzzle, who finds Dworkin's idea of constructive interpretation bewitching but mistaken, who thinks it's misconceived to think judges can only be constrained by rules in their decisions if the rules pre-exist the decisions, who has much to say about the role of customary rules, who asks whether there can be a written constitution, who defends the Razian thesis that the law makes moral claims and reconciles it with the possibility of immoral laws, who writes about law as a leap of faith and connects Kelsen with Kierkegaard and says rape is wrong as sheer use of person. Who loves ya baby? Published on: Sep 6, 2013 @ 05:30

L.A. Paul is a deep howdy of metaphysics. She plumbs the depths of why philosophy matters, thinks metaphysical exploration is like scientific exploration in important respects, thinks causation a key puzzle, thinks xphi contributes to the philosophical conversation, thinks fundamental parts of the world are a mix of intrinsic natures, and outlines what you can't expect when you're expecting. All in all she's hardcore. Fabadooza! Published on: Aug 31, 2013 @ 07:58

Paul Horwich is the king of the deflationists. He thinks all the time about the advantages of deflationism about truth over its rivals, including whether debates about truth are independent of arguments about realism, about Wittgenstein's meaning-as-use theory, about deflationism's link to vagueness, and about Michael Lynch, as well instrumentalism in science, Wittgenstein's metaphilosophy, about why science has done so well and traditional philosophy so badly and why he attempts to make Wittgenstein's position clear, defensible and worth taking seriously. Over to you bub! Published on: Aug 9, 2013 @ 05:39

Sean Carroll is the uber-chillin' philosophical physicist who investigates how the preposterous universe works at a deep level, who thinks spats between physics and philosophy are silly, who thinks a wise philosopher will always be willing to learn from discoveries of science, who asks how we are to live if there is no God, who is comfortable with naturalism and physicalism, who thinks emergentism central, that freewill is a crucial part of our best higher-level vocabulary, that there aren't multiple levels of reality, which is quantum based not relativity based, is a cheerful realist, disagrees with Tim Maudlin about wave functions and Craig Callender about multiverses, worries about pseudo-scientific ideas and that the notion of 'domains of applicability' is lamentably under-appreciated. Stellar! Published on: Aug 3, 2013 @ 06:19

Taylor Carman is the go-to guy on 19th and 20th century European philosophy who broods on Heidegger and what an understanding of being means, why it rules out a lot of contemporary philosophy, about the difference between Husserl and Heidegger and why Husserl was wrong, about what Searle and Dennett miss out, about convergences and divergences between Heidegger and Tyler Burge, why charity can't be fundamental to linguistic meaning, about why Heidegger isn't a transcendentalist idealist, about why Merleau-Ponty is one of the most interesting and original philosophers of the twentieth century although his politics are his least fruitful efforts and about the friendship between Merleau-Ponty and Levi-Strauss. Continental philosophy in the pellucid register. You're most welcome! Published on: Jul 26, 2013 @ 06:00

Alex Rosenberg is the mad dog proponent of nice nihilism who broods on the implications of naturalism. He is always thinking about the relationship between science and religion, science and its laws, reductionism, Dan Dennett, the philosophy of biology, about why scientific realism is better than instrumentalism, giving the atheist a guide, why it's ok not to have freewill, why Fodor was wrong about Darwinism, why economics is mostly mathematical politics and is improving but still faces the reflexivity problem, about how biology is growing in importance in the social sciences and about analytical metaphysics and recent disputes. This one bites! Published on: Jul 19, 2013 @ 23:40

Todd May is the poststructuralist anarchist who thinks anarchism is more than just a critique of the state, that there is more than one struggle, that Foucault, Deleuze and Lyotard are important, that postructuralism is elusive, that anarchism is bottom-up and liberalism is top-down, that 'how might one live?' is the down and dirty question, that Foucault's thought will remain standing when the dust is settled, that what it means to be human is a matter of practices, that Ranciere gets him emotionally, that friendship offers a different model from neo-liberalism and that his conception is about resistance not cohesion. High Five! Published on: Jul 12, 2013 @ 05:25

Tim Maudlin is the Tekken Revolution of the philosophy of physics. He is forever brooding on why there is no deep fissure between philosophy and science, the brilliance of Einstein and John Stewart Bell, about how to work out how the world is, about how to solve the liar paradox, on issues regarding metaphysics and physics, on time passing, on the way mathematics can mislead physicists, about relativity and why calling Einstein's theory that is a bad idea, about why there is no quantum theory that can be interpreted, and why he finds the idea that nothing is fundamental possible but implausible. All so Huckleberry! Published on: Jul 5, 2013 @ 05:37