Barang

Notes from the underground

Updated 1 August 2024

Phinteresting – Philosophy around the web. Links are to external sites.

241.

Simone de Beauvoir and the Art of Loss (2023)

Sixty years ago, the French writer’s unflinching memoir of her mother’s death tested the limits of her existentialism.
www.newstatesman.com

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240.

A 25-Year-Old Wager Has Finally Been Settled (2023)

David Chalmers and Christof Koch resolve a wager on consciousness that was made when Bill Clinton was president.
www.scientificamerican.com

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239.

The Consciousness Wager (2018)

In 1998, two top thinkers made a bet about whether science can explain the feeling of being. Twenty years on, Per Snaprud tracks them down.
consc.net

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238.

On Having Survived the Academic Moral Philosophy of the 20th Century (2023)

How I discovered that, by the standards of contemporary academic philosophy, Thomist claims must be problematic.
churchlifejournal.nd.edu

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237.

Harry G. Frankfurt - An Intellectual Autobiography (2011)

Appeared in translation in Schaubroeck & Nys (eds.), Vrijheid, Noodzaak en Liefde (2011).
www.dropbox.com

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236.

Harry G. Frankfurt Dies at 94 (2023)

He made his name with two seminal papers that changed the debate about free will. Then came a surprise best seller.
www.nytimes.com

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235.

Why we Need a Biography of Philosopher Bryan Magee (2023)

Magee’s life was as rich and varied as his writing, as revealed by Confessions and three volumes of memoirs.
spectator.co.uk

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234.

How the Anglophone World is Rediscovering Hegel’s Philosophy (2021)

Too dense, too abstract, too suspect, Hegel was outside the Anglophone canon for a century. Why is his star rising again?
aeon.co

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233.

Boo to the Boo-Hurrahs (2021)

Iris Murdoch, Philippa Foot, Elizabeth Anscombe and Mary Midgley took on the male consensus and revolutionised modern ethics.
prospectmagazine.co.uk

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232.

Pinker’s Progress (2021)

How the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker became one of the world’s most contentious thinkers.
www.theguardian.com

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231.

Anil Seth Wants to Understand How Minds Work (2021)

How does conscious experience arise in mere flesh and blood? To neuroscientist Anil Seth, our organic bodies hold the key.
quantamagazine.org

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230.

Ullin Thomas Place: Philosopher and Psychologist

A website dedicated to Ullin Thomas Place (1924-2000) and his scientific work.
utplace.uk

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229.

It’s Hard to Fool a Nose (2020)

Theories of perception are heavily tilted to the visual: we have much to learn from our surprisingly acute sense of smell.
aeon.co

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228.

Obituary – Miles Burnyeat (1939-1919)

Scholar whose detailed analysis of classical texts sustained his sense of wonder in philosophy.
theguardian.com

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227.

Why Did G. E. Moore Disappear From History? (2020)

The strange story of how a man who Bertrand Russell and the Bloomsbury Group looked on as a god ended up almost completely forgotten.
prospectmagazine.co.uk

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226.

Hod Lipson is Building Self-Aware Robots (2019)

Conscious-ness is a famously hard problem, so Hod Lipson is starting with self-aware robots that can help us understand how we think.
quantamagazine.org

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225.

Obituary – Judith Jarvis Thomson (1929-2020)

Judith Jarvis Thomson, philosopher who defended abortion in a classic 1971 essay, dies at 91 at her home in Cambridge, Mass.
nytimes.com

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224.

With Charisma to Spare (2020)

Franz Brentano, philosopher and psychologist, was an iconic teacher eclipsed by his students, Freud and Husserl among them.
aeon.co

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223.

Obituary – Roger Scruton (1944-2020)

A profound but controversial thinker who conceded nothing to intellectual fashion.
prospectmagazine.co.uk

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222.

Philosophy in the Shadow of Nazism (2020)

After the First World War, the Vienna Circle tried to put European thought on a rigorously logical footing. Then the times caught up with them.
newyorker.com

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221.

Leonardo da Vinci’s Brilliance Endures 500 Years On (2019)

In an instant, centuries collide. I have come to Windsor Castle to see the queen’s collection of Leonardo da Vinci drawings.
nationalgeographic.com

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220.

Frank Ramsey: A More Human Philosophy (2020)

The young genius who made major contributions to maths and philosophy – and persuaded Wittgenstein to change his mind.
the-tls.co.uk

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219.

God-Intoxicated Man (2020)

Ten years ago, a manuscript of Spinoza’s Ethics was discovered in the archives of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
the-tls.co.uk

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218.

Berkeley Years (2020)

How I left England and went to teach in Berkeley. Part two of Hans Sluga’s philosophical memoir.
truthandpower.com

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217.

How to Become a Philosopher (2020)

I was born in Bonn, the historical city on the left bank of the Rhine. Hans Sluga reflects on his life as a philosopher.
truthandpower.com

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216.

The Man Who Thought Too Fast (2020)

Frank Ramsey was one of the greatest minds of the last century. Have we caught up with him yet?
newyorker.com

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215.

Unflinching: G.E.M. Anscombe at a Hundred (2019)

John Schwenkler reflects on the voice of someone who spent her life trying to deliver the truth from obscurity.
commonwealmagazine.org

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214.

Awakening (2013)

The alarming phenomenon forcing medicine to confront how little we really know about anesthesia’s effects on the brain.
theatlantic.com

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213.

Living in the Now (2017)

She can paint, but not name a painting; learn new music without knowing a tune. Lonni Sue is teaching us much about memory.
aeon.co

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212.

Celebration of Derek Parfit (2017)

A collection of videos from a celebration of Parfit’s life by friends, family and colleagues in All Souls College, Oxford.
vimeopro.com

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211.

Had a Good Think Lately? (2017)

André Spicer drags a couple of deckchairs around the streets of London.
aeon.co

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210.

German Philosophy Has Finally Gone Viral (2017)

A new generation of rockstar philosophers are taking the discipline to the masses. Will that be its undoing?
foreignpolicy.com

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209.

Armchair Science (2017)

Thought experi-ments played a crucial role in the history of science. But how can they ever tell us anything about the real world?
aeon.co

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208.

Without Mirrors (2012)

What made you become a philosopher? Was it always something you felt drawn to or was it a surprise? Richard Marshall interviews Huw Price.
316am.site123.me

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207.

Time to Go Retro (2012)

A model involving backward causation could help unite quantum mechanics and general relativity—and satisfy an old challenge thrown down by Arthur Eddington.
fqxi.org

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206.

A Journey Into the Animal Mind (2019)

Each year brings a raft of new research papers, which, taken together, suggest that a great many animals are conscious.
theatlantic.com

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205.

Why Does Australia Have an Outsized Influence on Philosophy? (2019)

Peter Godfrey-Smith examines a surprisingly broad Australian footprint.
aeon.co

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204.

I Feel Therefore I Am (2015)

Growing up in Australia, I loved to lie on the grass, immersed in the scent of wattles, and stare up at the sky. Margaret Wertheim ponders how consciousness came to be a problem.
aeon.co

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203.

Satire or Fraud? (2019)

A philosopher’s hoax embarrasses several academic journals but Peter Boghossian’s employer, Portland State University, does not see it that way.
psmag.com

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202.

As Xenophon Saw It (2019)