Early on in my writing courses, I ask students to define their sense of rhetoric. Responses range from “persuasion” to “manipulation,” but they tend to share a negative connotation. Little wonder: In America today, the word is often used to dismiss a political opponent. Whereas a Democrat may find a favorite candidate’s speech inspiring, a Republican …
Artificial intelligence is increasingly being rolled out all around the world to help make decisions in our lives, whether it’s loan decisions by banks, medical diagnoses, or US law enforcement predicting a criminal’s likelihood of re-offending. Yet many AI systems are black boxes: no one understands how they work. This has led to a demand for “explainable AI”, …
Since the dawn of philosophical knowledge, the existence of truth has been debated. We all talk about the truth. We all ask for the truth. We demand it, even if we sometimes deny its existence. This article will attempt to give another view of what, for now, I believe to be the truth. In journalism, …
This year marks 50 years since Susan Sontag’s essay Photography was published in the New York Review of Books. Slightly edited and renamed In Plato’s Cave, it would become the first essay in her collection On Photography, which has never been out of print. The breadth of Photography is immense. It ranges over artistic, commercial, photojournalistic, …
Tourists in our own reality: Susan Sontag’s Photography at 50 Read More »
For an ancient philosophy, Stoicism is doing extremely well in 2023. Quotes from the Stoic philosopher and Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius litter my Instagram feed; you can find expert advice from modern Stoic thinkers on leadership, relationships, and, well, just about anything. It is hard to imagine Zeno, the Athenian philosopher who founded Stoicism, or his Roman counterparts Seneca, Marcus Aurelius …
3 reasons not to be a Stoic (but try Nietzsche instead) Read More »
One of the difficult things about working on the philosophy of love is that human relationships change, but our dominant images of love tend to remain the same. The stability of these images reassures us that love is something deep, but we can also be trapped by them. The image of the soulmate has been around for …
Valentine’s Day: a brief history of the soulmate – and why it’s a limited concept Read More »
Are our moral judgements about euthanasia a product of our time? If we came from a different culture, might our changed views about the worth of life and death lead us to opposite judgements? Caitlin Mahar’s The Good Death Through Time takes us on an intriguing journey through the recent history of our changing ideas about dying …
The worthless life and the worthy death: euthanasia through the ages Read More »
The impact of disinformation and misinformation has become impossible to ignore. Whether it is denial about climate change, conspiracy theories about elections, or misinformation about vaccines, the pervasiveness of social media has given “alternative facts” an influence previously not possible. Bad information isn’t just a practical problem – it’s a philosophical one, too. For one thing, it’s about epistemology, …
Bad beliefs: Misinformation is factually wrong – but is it ethically wrong, too? Read More »
The impact of disinformation and misinformation has become impossible to ignore. Whether it is denial about climate change, conspiracy theories about elections, or misinformation about vaccines, the pervasiveness of social media has given “alternative facts” an influence previously not possible. Bad information isn’t just a practical problem – it’s a philosophical one, too. For one thing, it’s about epistemology, …
Bad beliefs: Misinformation is factually wrong – but is it ethically wrong, too? Read More »
Does wearing a mask stop the spread of COVID-19? Is climate change driven primarily by human-made emissions? With these kinds of issues dividing the public, it sometimes feels as if Americans are losing our ability to agree about basic facts of the world. There have been widespread disagreements about matters of seemingly objective fact in the past, …
Why can’t Americans agree on, well, nearly anything? Philosophy has some answers Read More »