essay
Metaphysics
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
essay
Consciousness and altered states
Stuck with the soul
The idea of the soul is obviously a nonsense, yet its immaterial mysterious nature has deep hooks in the human psyche
David P Barash
video
Metaphysics
Bertrand Russell wanted to kill off causation. Can contemporary philosophy rescue it?
8 minutes
essay
Metaphysics
We are interwoven beings
A dragon needs the clouds and the wind in order to fly. What happens when we too relinquish individualistic reasoning?
Mercedes Valmisa
video
Thinkers and theories
Bernard Williams on Descartes’s audacious endeavour to prove knowledge is possible
43 minutes
essay
Metaphysics
This essay isn’t true
Alethic nihilism is the theory that nothing is true. There is much to gain by taking this radical idea seriously
David Liggins
essay
War and peace
Trenches in Chernobyl
Disturbing and inhaling radioactive dust, in their haste Russian soldiers unburied the wrecked, undead Earth itself
Michael Marder
essay
Ethics
The lethal act
The Buddha taught not to kill, yet his followers have at times disobeyed him. Can murderers still be Buddhists?
Martin Kovan
video
Metaphysics
Is the question ‘Why is there something instead of nothing?’ even worth asking?
9 minutes
video
Logic and probability
Is it more likely you’re a person with a past, or an ephemeral brain in a void?
6 minutes
essay
Thinkers and theories
Why read Fichte today?
Inspired by Kant, Fichte launched a radical philosophical system based on subjectivity and aspiring to freedom for all
Gabriel Gottlieb
video
Thinkers and theories
Metaphysics and beyond – Martha Nussbaum on Aristotle’s indelible ideas
43 minutes
video
Metaphysics
Knowing if you’re awake seems simple. Why has it vexed philosophers for centuries?
5 minutes
video
Metaphysics
To see the Universe more clearly, think in terms of processes, not objects
6 minutes
video
Philosophy of mind
Embodied cognition seems intuitive, but philosophy can push it to some strange places
14 minutes
essay
Thinkers and theories
Hegel today
Too dense, too abstract, too suspect, Hegel was outside the Anglophone canon for a century. Why is his star rising again?
Willem deVries
video
Knowledge
What can a Kurosawa classic tell us about reality, knowledge and truth?
5 minutes
essay
Philosophy of mind
The mind does not exist
The terms ‘mind’ and ‘mental’ are messy, harmful and distracting. We should get rid of them
Joe Gough
essay
Stories and literature
The divine Dante
At 700, Dante’s Divine Comedy is as modern as ever – a lesson in spiritual intelligence that makes us better at being alive
Mark Vernon
essay
History of ideas
Ideas that work
Truth, knowledge, justice – to understand how our loftiest abstractions earn their keep, trace them to their practical origins
Matthieu Queloz
essay
Thinkers and theories
On the necessity of obedience
George Berkeley was a visionary immaterialist. And a philosopher whose views on subordination to God legitimised slavery
Tom Jones
essay
Philosophy of religion
Reincarnation now
Modern mindfulness strips Buddhism of its spiritual core. We need an ethics of reincarnation for an interconnected world
Avram Alpert
essay
Philosophy of mind
The problem of now
The injunction to immerse yourself in the present might be psychologically potent, but is it metaphysically meaningful?
John Martin Fischer
video
Knowledge
Can you know everything about colour if you see in black and white? A thought experiment
5 minutes