New Books in Philosophy
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.
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276
Linda Zagzebski, “Exemplarist Moral Theory” (Ox...
Many of the longstanding debates in moral philosophy concern the question of where more theorizing should begin. Some hold that moral theories should start with definitions of moral terms like good; others contend instead that we should begin by identi...
59 min
277
Benjamin Hale, “The Wild and the Wicked: On Nat...
Many environmentalists approach the problem of motivating environmentally friendly behavior from the perspective that nature is good and that we ought to act so as to maximize the good environmental consequences of our actions and minimize the bad ones...
66 min
278
Cristina Bicchieri, “Norms in the Wild: How to ...
Humans engage in a wide variety of collective behaviors, ranging from simple customs like wearing a heavy coat in winter to more complex group actions, as when an audience gives applause at the close of a musical performance.
56 min
279
Stephanie Ruphy, “Scientific Pluralism Reconsid...
The idea that the sciences can’t be unified–that there will never be a single ‘theory of everything’–is the current orthodoxy in philosophy of science and in many sciences as well. But different versions of pluralism present very different views of wha...
63 min
280
Ryan Muldoon, “Social Contract Theory for a Div...
The idea that a political order derives its authority, legitimacy, and justification from some kind of initial agreement or contract, whether hypothetical or tacit, has been a mainstay of political philosophy, at least since Hobbes. Today,
61 min
281
Carl Gillett, “Reduction and Emergence in Scien...
Are complex phenomena “nothing but the sum of their parts”, or are they “more than the sum of their parts”? Physicists, chemists, and biologists as well as philosophers have long argued on both sides of this debate between the idea of reduction and tha...
67 min
282
Fred Feldman, “Distributive Justice: Getting Wh...
The philosopher (and 1972 presidential candidate) John Hospers once wrote, “justice is getting what one deserves. What could be simpler?” As it turns out, this seemingly simple idea is in the opinion of many contemporary political philosophers complica...
72 min
283
Jennifer Greenwood, “Becoming Human: The Ontoge...
Psychological and philosophical theories of the emotions tend to take the adult emotional repertoire as the paradigm case for understanding the emotions. From this standpoint, the emotions are usually distinguished into two categories: the basic emotio...
67 min
284
Elizabeth Barnes, “The Minority Body: A Theory ...
We are all familiar with the idea that some persons are disabled. But what is disability? What makes it such that a condition–physical, cognitive, psychological–is a disability, rather than, say, a disease or illness?
67 min
285
Andy Clark, “Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, A...
The predictive processing hypothesis is a new unified theory of neural and cognitive function according to which our brains are prediction machines: they process the incoming sensory stream in the light of expectations of what those sensory inputs ough...
66 min
286
William H. Shaw, “Utilitarianism and the Ethics...
On any mature view, war is horrific. Naturally, there is a broad range of fundamental ethical questions regarding war. According to most moral theories, war is nonetheless sometimes permitted, and perhaps even obligatory.
62 min
287
Paul C. Taylor, “Black is Beautiful: A Philosop...
Why is it controversial to cast light-skinned actress Zoe Saldana as the lead character in a film about the performer Nina Simone? How should we understand the coexisting desire and revulsion of the black body that traces its roots to Thomas Jefferson’...
64 min
288
A. John Simmons, “Boundaries of Authority” (Oxf...
Political states claim the moral right to rule the persons living within their jurisdiction; they claim the authority to make and enforce laws, establish policies, and allocate benefits and burdens of various kinds.
56 min
289
J.D. Trout, “Wondrous Truths: The Improbable Tr...
The social practice we call science has had spectacular success in explaining the natural world since the 17th century. While advanced mathematics and other precursors of modern science were not unique to Europe, it was there that Isaac Newton,
67 min
290
Kenneth Schaffner, “Behaving: What’s Genetic, W...
In the genes vs. environment debate, it is widely accepted that what we do, who we are, and what mental illnesses we are at risk for result from a complex combination of both factors. Just how complex is revealed in Behaving: What’s Genetic,
64 min
291
Martha Nussbaum, “Anger and Forgiveness: Resent...
Anger is among the most familiar phenomena in our moral lives. It is common to think that anger is an appropriate, and sometimes morally required, emotional response to wrongdoing and injustice. In fact, our day-to-day lives are saturated with induceme...
63 min
292
Silvia Jonas, “Ineffability and Its Metaphysics...
There is a long history in philosophy, art and religion of claims about the ineffable from The One in Plotinus to Kant’s noumena or thing-in-itself to Wittgenstein’s famous remark at the end of Tractatus that “whereof one cannot speak,
71 min
293
Diana Heney, “Toward a Pragmatist Metaethics” (...
The pragmatist tradition in philosophy tends to focus on the pioneering work of its founding trio of Charles Pierce, William James, and John Dewey, who together proposed and developed a distinctive kind of naturalist empiricism.
64 min
294
Arianna Betti, “Against Facts” (MIT Press, 2015)
The British philosopher and logician Bertrand Russell claimed it is a truism that there are facts: the planets revolve around the sun, 2 + 2 = 4, elephants are bigger than mice. In Against Facts (MIT Press, 2015),
64 min
295
Mark Navin, “Values and Vaccine Refusal: Hard Q...
Communities of parents who refuse, delay, or selectively decline to vaccinate their children pose familiar moral and political questions concerning public health, safety, risk, and immunity. But additionally there are epistemological questions about th...
63 min
296
Julian Reiss, “Causation, Evidence and Inferenc...
What do we mean when we claim that something is a cause of something else that smoking causes cancer, that the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand caused World War I, that the 8-ball caused the other billiard ball to go into the side pocket?
66 min
297
David Shoemaker, “Responsibility from the Margi...
Moral life is infused with emotionally-charged interactions. When a stranger carelessly steps on my foot, I not only feel pain in my foot, I also am affronted by her carelessness. Whereas the former may cause me to wince,
68 min
298
Rachel McKinnon, “The Norms of Assertion: Truth...
One of the important ways we use language is to make assertions – roughly, to pass on information we believe to be true to others. Insofar as we need to learn by means of what others they tell us, assertion is a speech act that addresses this need.
60 min
299
Duncan Pritchard, “Epistemic Angst: Radical Ske...
Many are introduced to philosophy by way of a confrontation with the kind of radical skepticism associated with Rene Descartes: Might I right now be dreaming? Might everything I think I know be the product of some grand deception perpetrated by a malev...
63 min
300
Eric Dietrich, “Excellent Beauty: The Naturalne...
Although there are many deep criticisms of a scientific view of humanity and the world, a persistent theme is that the scientific worldview eliminates mystery, and in particular, the wonders and mysteries of the world’s religions.
65 min