Who Studies Philosophy?

Studying philosophy is valuable no matter what career path one pursues, from academia to business to entertainment to politics. The following are just a few examples of people in a wide variety of fields who have studied philosophy.

Who Studies Philosophy? - The American Philosophical Association

Alan Turing & The Cartesian Challenge

The movie might be flawed (so I hear; haven't seen it yet) but the legacy is important. A number of interesting articles are associated with this post.

At a time when more people than ever are getting to know about Alan Turing through “The Imitation Game”, it seems fitting to contribute to this growing public interest in his scientific and political legacy, by exploring his ground-breaking ideas, and the tumultuous happenings of his life, through the unique lens of academic philosophy. Although Turing never described himself as aphilosopher, his three major contributions to the history of ideas: The Turing Test, The Turing Machine and The Church-Turing Thesis, have been of great interest to scholars working in the philosophy of mind and computing. His 1950 paper, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence”, which was published in the prestigious philosophical journal Mind, was especially successful in capturing the fascination of analytic philosophers.

The Computational Theory of Mind: Alan Turing & The Cartesian Challenge : The Critique

The Auto-Icon

Jeremey Bentham, preserved utilitarian, faces off against Phillipa Foot.



The Auto-Icon - Existential Comics

The odd phenomenon of "blind insight"

A growing body of evidence is revealing that our guesses and our confidence in those guesses don’t come from the same place in our minds.



The odd phenomenon of "blind insight" - Boing Boing

Extended Cognition (Part I)

Andy Clark and David Chalmers

Some thoughts on the extended mind thesis. Does cognition and mind go beyond the boundaries of our skull? Are the tools and instruments used in cognitive processes part of the cognitive process?



3quarksdaily: Extended Cognition (Part I)

Seven Tools For Critical Thinking

Dennett excerpts seven tools for thinking from the new book. Having taught critical thinking and argumentation to undergraduates for years, I can say that his advice is pretty much standard fare of critical reasoning. But Dennett’s formulations are uniquely—and bluntly—his own.

Philosopher Daniel Dennett Presents Seven Tools For Critical Thinking | Open Culture

9 Philosophical Thought Experiments

Sometimes, the best way to illustrate a complicated philosophical concept is by framing it as a story or situation. Here are nine such thought experiments with downright disturbing implications.

9 Philosophical Thought Experiments That Will Keep You Up at Night

Camus Explained Perfectly with Candy Land

Camus Explained Perfectly with Candy Land [Comic] | Critical-Theory.com

The Optimistic Science of Leibniz

Leibniz

"The diversity of Leibniz’s interests and undertakings is dizzying. How are we to make sense of a man who contributed prominently to so many fields, including both religion and science? In our day, it is common to think especially of religion and science as either pulling in opposing directions in their respective understandings of the world, or as parallel but different domains. How did they hang together for Leibniz?"

The Optimistic Science of Leibniz - The New Atlantis

Congratulations Graduates!

Congratulations to all the philosophy and religious studies students graduating this semester. Best of luck to all of you and please keep in touch.

Cory Clark, Philosophy Major
Ryan Frye, Philosophy Major, Phi Sigma Tau Honors Society
Jennifer Greenwell, Philosophy Major
Marc Kennedy, Philosophy Major, Phi Sigma Tau Honors Society
Ashley Poe, Philosophy Major, Phi Sigma Tau Honors Society
William Wethington, Philosophy Major

Jason Block, Philosophy minor
Zachariah Casey, Philosophy minor
Brock Larkins, Philosophy minor
Adam Riser, Philosophy minor
Max Roberts, Philosophy minor
Mandy Turner, Philosophy minor, Phi Sigma Tau Honors Society

Samantha Lewis, Philosophy Focus
Zachary Thompson, Philosophy Focus

Andrew Gilbert, Religious Studies Minor
Adam Howard, Religious Studies Minor

Kevin Patton, Religious Studies Focus

Rosetta discovers water?

Attention Philosophy students: "Rosetta discovers water on comet 67p like nothing on Earth" What would Putnam say if it is NOTHING like earth water?



Rosetta discovers water on comet 67p like nothing on Earth | Science | The Guardian

Margaret Cuonzo Talks About Paradoxes

Margaret Cuonzo

Margaret Cuonzo talks about paradoxes, philosophy and more.

The sorites is, to my mind, one of the deepest paradoxes out there and it provides a good example for understanding different ways to solve paradoxes. It is very deep because the premises of the paradox are close to certainly true, the reasoning is straightforward, and yet the conclusion is obviously false. In addition, the phenomenon that gives rise to the paradox, namely the vagueness of language, is so ubiquitous that the paradox has implications for much of our language. It tells us a lot about the concepts that we use everyday. The vast majority of our concepts, those like, baldness, wealth, strength, nearness, and so on, are vague. These admit of borderline cases and this can lead to outright contradiction. One fascinating thing about the sorites, then, is that it exposes how perfectly useful concepts lead to contradiction.

3:AM Magazine by Richard Marshall

Religious Studies Courses for Spring 2015

Check out the spring 2015 courses for the Religious Studies minor. And note the KIIS summer semester in Greece!

The Is-Ought Problem

From the BBC4 series on the History of Ideas: The Is-Ought Problem. "Do you draw conclusions from how things are to think about how things should be? There might be a gap in your reasoning."

Companions in Misery [or "Happy Together"]

On being miserably happy:

[Schopenhauer's] account of others as “fellow-sufferers” in “On the Sufferings of the World” encourages us to nurture a soft spot for even the most flawed individuals. That we are all condemned to the same Sisyphean fate ought to make us compassionate instead of competitive, work together instead of in isolation, and rely on one another instead of just ourselves. While Camus, in his well-known essay on the myth, has Sisyphus suffer his punishment alone, Schopenhauer’s account of redemption through shared misery might give Sisyphus, and us, neighbors to love. Still, Camus concludes, “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” And if Camus can imagine happiness for a man sentenced to an eternity of meaningless toil, perhaps we can do the same for dissatisfied New Yorkers. Whether we are grieving the death of a friend or complaining about alternate-side-of-the-street parking, I think Schopenhauer was right to call us “companions in misery,” with the emphasis on companions.

From New York Times, The Stone, Companions in Misery By Mariana Alessandri

Runaway Trolley: Pragmatism is Not Welcome!

From Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

Morality is the key to personal identity

‘Know thyself’ is a flimsy bargain-basement platitude, endlessly recycled but maddeningly empty. It skates the very existential question it pretends to address, the question that obsesses us: what is it to know oneself? The lesson of the identity detector is this: when we dig deep, beneath our memory traces and career ambitions and favourite authors and small talk, we find a constellation of moral capacities. This is what we should cultivate and burnish, if we want people to know who we really are.

Morality is the key to personal identity – Nina Strohminger – Aeon

Essay Contest

Essay Contest

Attention philosophy students: Please consider submitting something to this essay contest. Take a paper you wrote for a course in a previous semester or a paper you're writing now. Philosophy faculty would be happy to work with you to polish it for the contest.

Ethics Bowl 2014

Congratulations to this year's Ethics Bowl team. Ted Hays, Courtney Knox, Christian Willett, Leighann Goins, Ryan Frye and Marc Kennedy competed in Marion, IN recently. They did a great job, ranking 12th and ahead of some very good schools. Thanks to Dr. Yaw for helping prepare the team.

Free Will?

Not free will. Free Won't.