Philosophy

Ghosts among the philosophers

Cambridge, home of analytic philosophy, was also a hotbed of psychical research. How did this spooky subject take root?

Matyáš Moravec

What is incoherence?

We can all be inconsistent. Philosophy illuminates a bigger puzzle: how do we hold contradictory beliefs at the same time?

Alex Worsnip

We’ll meet again

The intrepid logician Kurt Gödel believed in the afterlife. In four heartfelt letters to his mother he explained why

Alexander T Englert

Why mathematical truths exist with or without minds to consider them

8 minutes

The patterns of reality

Some have thought that logic will one day be completed and all its problems solved. Now we know it is an endless task

Timothy Williamson

The great, forgotten Wolff

Written for laymen, read by women and kings, Christian Wolff’s mathematical method made him a key Enlightenment philosopher

Michael Walschots

Analytic women

Twin forces marginalised the women of early analytic philosophy. Correct those mistakes, and the next generation benefits

Jeanne Peijnenburg & Sander Verhaegh

Is the idea that democracy always benefits society misguided, or just mathematics?

7 minutes

How a devout Catholic philosopher approaches the problem of evil

8 minutes

Why Aristotle believed that philosophy was humanity’s highest purpose

9 minutes

Are coincidences real?

I am an unequivocal rationalist and yet I still want to see something strange and wonderful in life’s weird coincidences

Paul Broks

Chew over the prisoner’s dilemma and see if you can find the rational path out

6 minutes

Bertrand Russell wanted to kill off causation. Can contemporary philosophy rescue it?

8 minutes

How many monkeys is it worth sacrificing to save a human life?

6 minutes

Moral mathematics

Subjecting the problems of ethics to the cool quantifications of logic and probability can help us to be better people

Elad Uzan

Is the question ‘Why is there something instead of nothing?’ even worth asking?

9 minutes

Is it more likely you’re a person with a past, or an ephemeral brain in a void?

6 minutes

What is a law of nature?

Laws of nature are impossible to break, and nearly as difficult to define. Just what kind of necessity do they possess?

Marc Lange

The unresolved probability paradox that goes to the heart of scientific objectivity

8 minutes

This paradoxical life

When logic fails to make sense of a world noisy with inconsistency, paraconsistent logics hold out (im)possible solutions

Zach Weber