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How do you decide whether you ought to do something? Chances are you’ve employed statements about how things are or have been as the basis for making a judgment call. The 18th-century Scottish philosopher David Hume forcefully argued against this approach. According to ‘Hume’s law’, also known as the ‘is/ought problem’, determining what you ought to do based on what is represents a logical mistake because there’s a gap that reason cannot bridge between the facts of the world and the values you might espouse.
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Political philosophy
The radical activist couple who fought for social change in the courtroom
21 minutes
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Human rights and justice
Can providing humanitarian aid be illegal? A troubling case from the US-Mexico border
17 minutes
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Information and communication
Coverage of the ‘balloon boy’ hoax forms a withering indictment of for-profit news
17 minutes
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Meaning and the good life
Wander through the English countryside with two teens trying to make sense of the world
10 minutes
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Personality
A ‘dumpster archeologist’ reconstructs strangers’ stories via what they’ve discarded
14 minutes
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Meaning and the good life
A Japanese religious community makes an unlikely home in the mountains of Colorado
9 minutes
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Bioethics
Is it ethical to have a second child so that your first might live?
10 minutes
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Meaning and the good life
‘Everydayness is the enemy’ – excerpts from the existentialist novel ‘The Moviegoer’
2 minutes
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Knowledge
An Indigenous myth and a geological survey elicit two ways of knowing one place
4 minutes