Adding philosophical depth to anything and everything
Philosophy in the real world.
Philosopher Thomas Kuhn argued that science is “a series of peaceful interludes punctuated by intellectually violent revolutions” in which “one conceptual world view is replaced by another.” (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1962) The longer-lasting, more tranquil periods of “normal science” are guided by a dominant paradigm. Astrophysics has been […]
Read more
Excerpts from How We Are and How We Got Here: A Practical History of Western Philosophy. British Reform Movement Significant developments in social philosophy and social reform took place in the United Kingdom in the 1800s. The Parliament of the United Kingdom passed a progressive series of laws beginning in […]
Read more
I began teaching philosophy in 1998, and I love talking with students and helping them discover new ideas. Several years ago, I gave up on the mass produced introduction to philosophy textbooks. The offerings from the Big Four corporate educational publishers (Cengage, McGraw Hill, Pearson, and Oxford) are overpriced […]
Read more
It’s a simple hypothesis: I have the ability to choose freely what actions I will take. Whether that hypothesis is correct — or its opposite is correct, that our choices are determined by external forces — is impossible to prove by reason. Or is it? William James observed that generating […]
Read more
Note: This is a transcript of a recent podcast episode, moving the content from that one-way medium to this more two-way Medium. Any irony is intentional. Siloization – ˈsī-lō-ə-ˈzā-shən : the process of isolating a group apart from others especially in ways that hinder… Hello, how are you today? Even […]
Read more
Some people believe that philosophy is detached from the real world and has no practical application to our lives. That’s ignorance, but it’s understandable because of the long tradition of rationalist and now analytic philosophy that seems to be really spending a lot of time and energy on things that […]
Read more
I recently talked about the philosophy of democracy, and I am a philosopher; I’m not a political theorist; I’m not a political scientist. What that means is I look at what are the fundamental underlying issues related to political actions, political beliefs, rather than the nuts and bolts about politics. […]
Read more
Welcome to the insert philosophy here podcast. Inserting the principles of philosophy into real life. As I record this, it is less than three weeks from the United States Election Day. So on this week’s edition of the insert Philosophy Here Podcast, I want to talk about democracy, the concept […]
Read more
A positive answer to the postmodern condition? French philosopher and sociologist Lyotard (1924–1998) was a fierce critic of universalizing theories and “metanarratives” (narratives about narratives). In his book, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1979), he proclaimed that we have outgrown our need for metanarratives or grand narratives. Metanarratives […]
Read more
A sure sign of intellectual and emotional maturity is the ability and willingness to think beyond simplistic binaries. Alas, it is something that political extremists are unable or unwilling to do. How could people who claim to be anti-war and anti-imperialist end up supporting an imperialist war? Simple: when their […]
Read more