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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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Film and visual culture
At the movies with Pauline Kael – in the arthouse cinema where she got her start
19 minutes
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History of ideas
Tantra is, and was, a subversive philosophy of feminine power
19 minutes
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Archaeology
Ancient Greek sculptures were colourful. Why does the white marble ideal persist?
6 minutes
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Thinkers and theories
Metaphysics and beyond – Martha Nussbaum on Aristotle’s indelible ideas
43 minutes
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Art
Dizzying discs and obscene wordplay – revisiting Marcel Duchamp’s 1926 film debut
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Politics and government
Is mass media still ‘manufacturing consent’ in the internet age?
5 minutes
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Metaphysics
Knowing if you’re awake seems simple. Why has it vexed philosophers for centuries?
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Stories and literature
Solaris and beyond – Stanisław Lem’s antidotes to the bores of American sci-fi
7 minutes
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Philosophy of language
For Ludwig Wittgenstein, language is a game, but not a frivolous one
43 minutes