Philosophy
124 articles-
When Mary Wollstonecraft Was Duped by Love
A spotlight on the personal life of the trailblazing philosopher.
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Can AI Help Us Be Better People?
One question for Jon Rueda, a doctoral student in moral philosophy at the University of Granada.
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Life Is Hard. And That’s Good
When the going gets tough, the tough get philosophical.
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Don’t Treat Your Life as a Project
Fight the tendency to see your life as a narrative journey.
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What Is Misinformation Doing to Us?
One question for Daniel Williams, a philosopher at the University of Cambridge.
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Animals Feel What’s Right and Wrong, Too
It’s time to take moral emotion in animals seriously.
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Neuroscience Gets in the Way of Appreciating Art
To this philosopher, art is the best method for exploring who and what we are.
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The Simulated World According to David Chalmers
Don’t worry, even in a simulation, life is still perfectly meaningful.
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Can We Prove the World Isn’t a Simulation?
You might think we have definitive evidence we’re not in a simulation. That’s impossible.
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You Can Save More Animals by Donating $100 Than Going Vegan
By now everybody’s heard about the terrible treatment that pigs and chickens get in factory farms. For many, the solution seems obvious: eat less meat. But let’s look at that solution in terms of how effective it is. According to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the average American eats about 30 farm animals […]
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Steven Pinker Has His Reasons
The psychologist unpacks rationality and denies being a guru to the capitalist elite.
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Electrons May Very Well Be Conscious
Panpsychists look at the many rungs on the complexity ladder of nature and see no obvious line between mind and no-mind.Illustration by Yurchanka Siarhei / Shutterstock Last year, the cover of New Scientist ran the headline, “Is the Universe Conscious?” Mathematician and physicist Johannes Kleiner, at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy in Germany, told […]
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How to Make Sense of Contradictory Science Papers
Published research is less about conclusions than science at play.
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Are We Cut Out for Universal Morality?
If objective ethical values exist, we’ll have to give up tribalism to realize them.
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Do We Have Free Will? Maybe It Doesn’t Matter
It’s hard to change people’s beliefs about free will. So, it can feel like a relief to realize that even when you can change people’s beliefs, it seems to make no moral difference anyway.Illustration by Triff / Shutterstock Belief is a special kind of human power. Agustin Fuentes, an anthropologist at the University of Notre […]
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Here’s How We’ll Know an AI Is Conscious
Zombies are supposed to be capable of asking any question about the nature of experience. It’s worth wondering, though, how a person or machine devoid of experience could reflect on experience it doesn’t have.Photograph by Ars Electronica / Flickr The Australian philosopher David Chalmers famously asked whether “philosophical zombies” are conceivable—people who behave like you […]
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Should Marine Species Own the High Seas?
To save the ocean, give property rights to the creatures living there
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How Einstein Reconciled Religion to Science
Not long ago, I heard an echo of Albert Einstein’s religious views in the words of Elon Musk. Asked, at the close of a conversation with Axios, whether he believed in God, the CEO of both SpaceX and Tesla paused, looked away from his interlocutors for a brief second, and then said, in that mild […]
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The Joys of Being a Stoic
Science and ancient Greeks agree—Stoicism increases well-being.
