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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401
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
402
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
403
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
404
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
405
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
406
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
407
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
408
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
409
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
410
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
411
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
412
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
413
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
414
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
415
Jason Brennan, “The Ethics of Voting” (Princeto...
It is commonly held that citizens in a democratic society have a civic duty to participate in the processes of collective self-government. Often, this duty is held to be satisfied by voting. In fact, the sentiment is commonly expressed that voting is a...
72 min
416
Carolyn Korsmeyer, “Savoring Disgust: The Foul ...
Today’s podcast features a book about disgusting art – that is, art that deliberately aims to cause disgust. While aesthetic judgments regarding the value, or not, of artworks have historically been tied to the notion of beauty,
61 min
417
Elizabeth Anderson, “The Imperative of Integrat...
Demographic data show that the United States is a heavily segregated society, especially when it comes to relations among African-Americans and whites. The de facto segregation that prevails in the US is easily shown to produce grave and systematic dis...
60 min
418
Susan Schneider, “The Language of Thought: A Ne...
In 1975, Jerry Fodor published a book entitled The Language of Thought, which is aptly considered one of the most important books in philosophy of mind and cognitive science of the last 50 years or so. This book helped launch what became known as the c...
65 min
419
Sanford Goldberg, “Relying on Others: An Essay ...
In our attempts to know and understand the world around us, we inevitably rely on others to provide us with reliable testimony about facts and states of affairs to which we do not have access. What is the nature of this reliance?
58 min
420
Robert Pasnau, “Metaphysical Themes: 1274-1671”...
What was the scholastic metaphysical tradition of the later Middle Ages, and why did it come “crashing down as quickly and completely” as it did towards the end of the 17th Century? Why was the year 1347 a “milestone in the history of philosophy”?
62 min
421
Gerald Gaus, “The Order of Public Reason: A The...
If we are to have a society at all, it seems that we must recognize and abide by certain rules concerning our interactions with others. And in recognizing such rules, we must take ourselves to sometimes be authorized to hold others accountable to them....
61 min
422
Eric Schwitzgebel, “Perplexities of Consciousne...
How much do we know about our stream of conscious experience? Not much, if Eric Schwitzgebel is right. In his new book Perplexities of Consciousness (MIT Press, 2011), Schwitzgebel argues for skepticism regarding our knowledge of the phenomenology of c...
60 min