Philosophy
essay
Ethics
The incompleteness of ethics
Many hope that AI will discover ethical truths. But as Gödel shows, deciding what is right will always be our burden
Elad Uzan
video
Ethics
What’s an idea worth? How prominent thinkers have understood intellectual property
6 minutes
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Rituals and celebrations
A life in Zen
Growing up in countercultural California, ‘enlightenment’ had real glamour. But decades of practice have changed my mind
Anshi Zachary Smith
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Biography and memoir
The story of Malcolm X
Alex Haley co-wrote The Autobiography of Malcolm X but Haley left out some profound elements of Malcolm’s political thought
Alex White
video
Thinkers and theories
The prison abolitionist who dares to envision a world without ‘unfreedoms’
16 minutes
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Anthropology
Spider divination
Life is complicated. In Cameroon, initiated diviners read the messages of spiders to untangle possible futures
David Zeitlyn
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The environment
Beyond food and people
Nietzsche shows us how to embrace our connection with nature – without denying its essential conflict, strife and suffering
Nicholas E Low
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Human rights and justice
Knowledge and justice
Any legal system that fails to compensate people for epistemic harm is unjust. Their damage must be named and remedied
Mitch Woolery
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Animals and humans
Humanlike?
Interpreting the emotional lives of animals requires a subtler and more nuanced understanding of anthropomorphism
Mike Dacey
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Consciousness and altered states
Kind of confusing
Is consciousness like jazz, something hard to pin down? Or is it more like the biology of dolphins, odd but natural?
Tim Bayne
video
Mathematics
Spiral into the ‘golden ratio’ – and separate the myths from the maths
4 minutes
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Illness and disease
The power of the ‘C’ word
Saying the word ‘cancer’ changes a person’s life and can lead to overtreatment and fear. Is the word too hot to use at all?
Benjamin Chin-Yee
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Biology
Memories without brains
Certain slime moulds can make decisions, solve mazes and remember things. What can we learn from the blob?
Matthew Sims
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Death
Freedom over death
Death is a certainty. But choosing how and when we depart is a modest opportunity for freedom – and dignity
Michael Cholbi
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Thinkers and theories
The French liar
René Descartes, the founder of modern philosophy, was furiously condemned by his contemporaries. Why did they fear him?
Sandrine Parageau
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Architecture
The replica and the original
Architectural copies of lost structures require reckoning with history and heritage. At what cost is the past rebuilt?
Elizabeth Kostina
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History of ideas
From scattered traces
How the ideas circulating among one noblewoman’s coterie in 16th-century Dubrovnik anticipated modern feminist thought
Luka Boršić
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Virtues and vices
Awkward silences
What is it about lulls in conversation that make them so very uncomfortable? It has to do with how we connect with each other
Rebecca Roache
video
Knowledge
Why David Deutsch believes good explanations are the antidote to bad philosophy
10 minutes
video
Architecture
A lush tour of Fallingwater – the Frank Lloyd Wright design that changed architecture
14 minutes
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Political philosophy
The allure of autarky
Liberal thinkers are shocked that nations are once again isolating from the world. The real surprise would be if they didn’t
Ben Chu
video
Economics
A tour of New York’s gaudiest neighbourhood with the Marxist geographer David Harvey
13 minutes
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History of science
Incredible testimonies
In the 1980s, thousands of Americans began to suspect they may have been abducted by aliens. What happened?
Greg Eghigian
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Comparative philosophy
What is Ethiopian philosophy?
Riven by two competing schools of thought, the future of philosophical enquiry in Ethiopia stands at a crossroads
Fasil Merawi