New Books in Philosophy

Interview with Philosophers about their New Books

Society & Culture
Philosophy
226
Ethan Mills, "Three Pillars of Skepticism in Cl...
The existence of skepticism in Indian Philosophy has long been neglected in favor of dogmatic positions...
64 min
227
Jonathan Birch, "The Philosophy of Social Evolu...
It seems to go against evolutionary theory for an individual to give up its own chances at reproducing in order to increase the fitness of others...
60 min
228
Henry S. Richardson, "Articulating the Moral Co...
Even those among us who think that morality is rooted in timeless normative truths will acknowledge that the overall moral fabric that binds us to one another is subject to various kinds of renovation and expansion...
69 min
229
Maria Kronfeldner, "What's Left of Human Nature...
Much of the debate about the roles of nature vs. nurture in the development of individual people has settled into accepting that it's a bit of both...
67 min
230
Samuel Schindler, "Theoretical Virtues in Scien...
A fundamental problem in science, and in philosophy of science, is that of theory choice...
59 min
231
Carrie Figdor, "Pieces of Mind: The Proper Doma...
We’re all familiar with cases where one attributes certain psychological states or capacities to creatures and systems that are not human persons....
69 min
232
Shannon Spaulding, “How We Understand Others: P...
Social cognition includes the ways we explain, predict, interpret, and influence other people. The dominant philosophical theories of social cognition–the theory-theory and the simulation theory–have provided focused accounts of mindreading,
63 min
233
David Rondel, “Pragmatist Egalitarianism” (Oxfo...
Pragmatism is a longstanding philosophical idiom that advocates public-facing philosophy – philosophy that abandons merely academic puzzles and addresses itself to the social and political problems of the day.
65 min
234
Robert A. Wilson, “The Eugenic Mind Project” (M...
For most of us, eugenics — the “science of improving the human stock” — is a thing of the past, commonly associated with Nazi Germany and government efforts to promote a pure Aryan race. This view is incorrect: even in California, for example,
65 min
235
Candice Delmas, “A Duty to Resist: When Disobed...
According to a long tradition in political philosophy, there are certain conditions under which citizens may rightly disobey a law enacted by a legitimate political authority.  That is, it is common for political philosophers to recognize the permissib...
65 min
236
Anjan Chakravartty, “Scientific Ontology: Integ...
A scientific ontology is a view about what a scientific theory says exists. Longstanding philosophical debate on this issue divides into two broad camps: anti-realists, who think scientific theories are committed to the existence only of those things t...
62 min
237
Shelley Tremain, “Foucault and Feminist Philoso...
How should we understand disability? In Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability (University of Michigan Press, 2017), Dr. Shelley Tremain explores this complex question from the perspective of feminist philosophy,
32 min
238
Brian O’Connor, “Idleness: A Philosophical Essa...
Culturally, idleness is widely derided as laziness, uselessness, and sloth.  Even within philosophy, the idle are criticized for being wasteful, selfish, and free-loading. Indeed, throughout the history of moral and political philosophy,
58 min
239
Keya Maitra, “Philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita: ...
The Bhagavad Gita is one of the foundational texts of Hinduism and probably the one most familiar and popular in the West. The moral problem that motivates the text – is it right to kill members of one’s extended family if they are on the other side in...
62 min
240
Steven Gimbel, “Isn’t That Clever: A Philosophi...
Humor and its varied manifestations—jesting joking around, goofing, lampooning, and so on—pervade the human experience and are plausibly regarded as necessary features of interpersonal interactions.  As one would expect,
64 min
241
Eric Winsberg, “Philosophy and Climate Science”...
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that there is a warming trend in the global climate that is attributable to human activity, with an expected increase in global temperature (given current trends) of 1.5- 4.
65 min
242
Elizabeth F. Cohen, “The Political Value of Tim...
We’re all familiar with some of the ways that time figures into our political environment.  Things such as term limits, waiting periods, deadlines, and criminal sentences readily come to mind.  But there are also protocols, accords, mandates,
66 min
243
Edouard Machery, “Philosophy Within Proper Boun...
There are five people on the track and a runaway trolley that will hit them, and you are on a footbridge over the track with a large person whose body can stop the trolley in its tracks. Should you push the large person to his death to save the five...
62 min
244
William A. Edmundson, “John Rawls: Reticent Soc...
John Rawls is easily the most celebrated and influential political philosopher of the 20th Century, and his impact remains remarkably strong today.  The central concepts with which his theory of justice begins are now components of the philosophical ve...
62 min
245
Ruth G. Millikan, “Beyond Concepts: Unicepts, L...
Kant famously asked the question, how is knowledge possible? In her new book, Beyond Concepts: Unicepts, Language, and Natural Information (Oxford University Press, 2018), Ruth Garrett Millikan responds to this question from a naturalistic,
62 min
246
Christian B. Miller, “The Character Gap: How Go...
My guest today is Christian Miller. Christian is A. C. Reid Professor of Philosophy at Wake Forest University.  He is a moral philosopher specializing on character, with special interest in the empirical study of the virtues and vices.
58 min
247
Alexus McLeod, “Philosophy of the Ancient Maya:...
The ancient Maya are popularly known for their calendar, but their concept of time and the metaphysics surrounding that conception are not. In Philosophy of the Ancient Maya: Lords of Time (Lexington Books, 2018),
64 min
248
Gloria Origgi, “Reputation: What it is and Why ...
We all put a great deal of care into protecting, managing, and monitoring our reputation. But the precise nature of a reputation is obscure. In one sense, reputation is merely hearsay, a popular perception that may or may not have any basis in fact.
59 min
249
Menachem Fisch, “Creatively Undecided: Toward a...
Thomas Kuhn upset both scientists and philosophers of science when he argued that transitions from one scientific framework (or “paradigm”) to another were irrational: the change was like a religious conversion experience rather than a reasoned shift f...
63 min
250
Karen Neander, “A Mark of the Mental: In Defens...
The two biggest problems of understanding the mind are consciousness and intentionality. The first doesn’t require introduction. The latter is the problem of how we can have thoughts and perceptions that about other things for example,
60 min