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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376
Miguel de Beistegui, “Aesthetics after Metaphys...
What is the nature of art? The question involves understanding the relation between art and reality and what we are expressing in art. Miguel de Beistegui, professor of philosophy at the University of Warwick,
58 min
377
Jamie Kelly, “Framing Democracy: A Behavioral A...
Plato famously argued that democracy is nearly the worst form of government because citizens are decidedly unwise. Many styles of democratic theory have tried to meet Plato’s argument by denying that democracy has anything to do with wisdom.
70 min
378
Jill Gordon, “Plato’s Erotic World: From Cosmic...
It’s traditional in Plato scholarship to divide his dialogues in various ways. One common division is a temporal one that distinguishes among early, middle and late dialogues. Another is by content: there are the so-called erotic dialogues,
61 min
379
Nicole Hassoun, “Globalization and Global Justi...
Citizens of well-developed liberal democracies enjoy an unprecedented standard of living, while a staggering number of people worldwide live in unbelievable poverty. It seems obvious that the well-off have moral obligations to those who are impoverishe...
50 min
380
Kristin Andrews, “Do Apes Read Minds?: Toward a...
The ability to figure out the mental lives of others – what they want, what they believe, what they know — is basic to our relationships. Sherlock Holmes exemplified this ability by accurately simulating the thought processes of suspects in order to so...
64 min
381
Paul Weithman, “Why Political Liberalism? On Jo...
It is difficult to overstate the importance of John Rawls to political and moral philosophy. Yet Rawls’s work is commonly read as fundamentally divided between “early” and “late” periods, which are marked mainly by the publication of his two major book...
74 min
382
Lee Braver, “Groundless Grounds: A Study of Wit...
Ludwig Wittgenstein and Martin Heidegger are both considered among the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. Both were born in 1889 in German-speaking countries; both studied under leading philosophers of their day – Bertrand Russell ...
70 min
383
Anthony Laden, “Reasoning: A Social Picture” (O...
According to a view familiar to philosophers, reasoning is a process that occurs within an individual mind and is aimed specifically at demonstrating on the basis of statement that we accept the correctness of some other statement. We reason, that is,
70 min
384
Helen Steward, “A Metaphysics for Freedom” (Oxf...
The basic problem of free will is quite simple to pose: do we ever act freely? One of the traditional “no” answers comes from the idea that we live in a deterministic universe, such that everything that happens had to happen given the initial condition...
67 min
385
Kok-Chor Tan, “Justice, Institutions, and Luck:...
Justice requires that each person gets what he or she deserves. Luck is a matter of good or bad things simply befalling people; hence luck distributes to people things they do not deserve. Justice must then be in the business of morally correcting the ...
76 min
386
Eric Marcus, “Rational Causation” (Harvard UP, ...
We often explain actions and beliefs by citing the reasons for which they are done or believed. The reason I took off my hat at the funeral was because I was paying respect to the deceased. The reason I believed that taking off my hat was appropriate w...
64 min
387
Elizabeth Brake, “Minimizing Marriage: Marriage...
From the time we are children, we are encouraged to see our lives as in large measure aimed at finding a spouse. In popular media, the unmarried adult is seen as suspicious, unhealthy, and pitiable. At the same time,
64 min
388
Paul Thagard, “The Cognitive Science of Science...
We’ve all heard about scientific revolutions, such as the change from the Ptolemaic geocentric universe to the Copernican heliocentric one. Such drastic changes are the meat-and-potatoes of historians of science and philosophers of science.
65 min
389
Michael Lynch, “In Praise of Reason” (MIT Press...
Modern society seems in awe of the advances of science and technology. We commonly praise innovations that enable us to live longer and more comfortable lives, we look forward to the release of new gadgets,
70 min
390
Charlotte Witt, “The Metaphysics of Gender” (Ox...
Is your gender essential to who you are? If you were a man instead of a woman, or vice versa, would you be a different person? In her new bookThe Metaphysics of Gender (Oxford University Press, 2011), Charlotte Witt found that most people answered that...
69 min
391
Karen Stohr, “On Manners” (Routledge, 2011)
We rarely stop to notice that our everyday social interactions are governed by a highly complex system of rules. Though often only implicit, there are rules governing how to board an elevator, how close one may stand to another when in conversation,
64 min
392
Uriah Kriegel, “The Sources of Intentionality” ...
It’s standard in philosophy of mind to distinguish between two basic kinds of mental phenomena: intentional states, which are about or represent other items or themselves, such as beliefs about your mother’s new hairdo, and phenomenal states,
65 min
393
Allen Buchanan, “Better than Human: The Promise...
Popular culture is replete with warnings about the dangers of technology. One finds in recent films, literature, and music cautions about the myriad ways in which technology threatens our very humanity; most frequently,
76 min
394
Peter-Paul Verbeek, “Moralizing Technology: Und...
“Guns don’t kill people; people do.” That’s a common refrain from the National Rifle Association, but it expresses a certain view of our relations to the things we make that also affects our thinking about the scope of ethics.
62 min
395
John Christman, “The Politics of Persons: Indiv...
In theorizing justice, equality, freedom, authority, and the like, political philosophers often rely tacitly upon particular conceptions of the self and individual autonomy. Traditional forms of liberalism seem to assume a conception of the self accord...
63 min
396
Crawford (Tim) Elder, “Familiar Objects and the...
It might be a surprise to non-metaphysicians to discover the extent to which it is questionable whether the familiar objects we see and interact with – the dogs, trees, iPods, and so on – really exist. And yet,
66 min
397
Robert Audi, “Democratic Authority and the Sepa...
In a liberal democratic society, individuals share political power as equals. Consequently, liberal democratic governments must recognize each citizen as a political equal. This requires, in part, that liberal democratic governments must seek to govern...
68 min
398
Peter Ludlow, “The Philosophy of Generative Lin...
The human capacity for language is always cited as the or one of the cognitive capacities we have that separates us from non-human animals. And linguistics, at its most basic level, is the study of language as such – in the primary and usual case,
65 min
399
Fabienne Peter, “Democratic Legitimacy” (Routle...
Winston Churchill said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others. The quip reveals an interesting dimension of democracy: it’s hard to beat, but it’s also hard to love. Democracy is hard to love because it sometimes requi...
52 min
400
Troy Jollimore, “Love’s Vision” (Princeton UP, ...
Love – being loved and loving in the way two otherwise unrelated persons can be – is a kind of experience that just about everyone values intrinsically. As we say, or sing: love makes the world go ’round, and all you need is love.
63 min