The Philosopher's Zone
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The Heidegger Way
Why let the Cartesian mind-body splitstand in the way of a successful business pitch? For better results, use Heidegger.
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Love Potions
There is nothing new about a philosopher thinking about love. But it takes a slightly different hue in the era of neuroscience.
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Kierkegaard 200
Soren Kierkegaard was born on the precipice of the modern world. He didn't like it much then; what would he make of it now?
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Immortality
If you could live forever, would you? Welcome to the Immortality Project.
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The importance of public things
What happens to a democratic world when the things we own in common disappear? Should it worry us? Professor Bonnie Honig argues that democracy is rooted in the common love for, and contestation of shared objects.
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Jewish philosophy: Martin Buber
Martin Buber was born in pre-Nazi Austria and emigrated to Israel in 1938 where he spent much of the rest of his life. He grappled with Zionism, Jewish thought, secular philosophy and politics and the result is a body of thought very much based on relationships.
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Jewish philosophy: Moses Mendelssohn
Moses Mendelssohn scandalised his more pious fellow 18th century Germans when he said: 'My religion recognises no obligation to resolve doubt other than through rational means; and it commands no mere faith in eternal truths.' This week we look at the life and ideas of one of the great proponents of Judaism as a rational religion.
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Jewish philosophy: Maimonides
Rabbi Moshe Ben Maimon, also known as Maimonides, became a hugely important figure in that great era of Moorish cultural flourishing, 12th century Spain (Cordoba). Maimonides adapted the ideas of Aristotle, was a significant influence on Thomas Aquinas, and became one of the leading Rabbinical scholars of his time, and perhaps of all time.
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Jewish philosophy: Overview part 2
In part two of our introduction we take up the story during the 17th century, with the great European thinker Baruch Spinoza. Tamar Rudavsky from Ohio State University is again our guide.
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Jewish philosophy: Overview part 1
We begin this series with an introduction to Jewish philosophy, from Ancient times onwards—an attempt to explore some of the key thinkers and recurring philosophical questions. Our guide is Tamar Rudavsky from Ohio State University.
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How do octopuses think?
This program was first broadcast on 9 April 2011.
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A rear view of Alfred Hitchcock
A rear view of Alfred Hitchcock is a view that takes in what lies behind and beneath. And what we find is a profoundly pessimistic, though not hopeless, view of the world and a keen interest in the way we see it.
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Anime: the philosophy of Japanese animation
Japanese animation is not just for children. It can be dark, incredibly violent and sexually explicit. But does it represent a distinctly Japanese worldview? And is it philosophical? Yes and yes, according to Jane Goodall from the University of Western Sydney.
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The evil of the Daleks
They are among the most loved, or most feared, villains in science fiction. But what is it that makes Daleks such great baddies? What constitutes evil and why do the Daleks represent a very specific idea about rationality and morality? This week, we talk to a philosopher about what the Daleks have to tell us—in their mechanical, screechy voices—about who we are.
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From Athens to Baghdad: Greek meets Arabic philosophy
This week, we follow the journey of the classics as they spread from Greece to the Arab world and beyond. At a time when Europe still hadn't got its act together philosophically speaking, Arabs were busily translating and debating the ideas of Aristotle and others. We're joined by Professor Peter Adamson from King's College, London, co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy.
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Aristotle after Aristotle
Just a few centuries after their deaths, Plato was thought questionable while his pupil Aristotle was all but canonised: there was almost a fear of criticising him. Everybody used his logic and Christians were drawn to him by his arguments about a first cause of all things. This week Han Baltussen from the University of Adelaide looks at the legacy of Aristotle and at why that legacy was worth preserving.
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Seneca: philosophy and tragedy
Lucius Annaeus Seneca popularised the philosophy of the Stoics, the Greek Hellenistic school. This week, Rick Benitez from the University of Sydney examines Seneca's teaching that contentedness is achieved by a simple, unperturbed life in accordance with nature and that human suffering should be accepted. He looks at Seneca as a writer of tragedies, and at the tragedy of Seneca's own life: he was tutor and later adviser to the Emperor Nero, who eventually ordered him to take his own life.
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The Therapy of Desire - Epicureans and Stoics on the...
Greek Philosophy series to celebrate the work of the late Alan Saunders. Can philosophy be practical and compassionate? This week, Martha Nussbaum from the University of Chicago, talks about desire and Hellenistic ethics.
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Tribute to the Philosophical Alan Saunders
To mark the sad passing of Alan Saunders we bring you tributes from key thinkers and highlights from Alan’s rich Philosopher's Zone archive.
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Thinking Out Loud - Lecture Three
Lecture three in the ‘Thinking out loud’ series of lectures on philosophy and society presented by the University of Western Sydney in collaboration with the State Library of New South Wales, Fordham University Press and ABC RN.
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Thinking Out Loud
‘Thinking Out Loud’ is a series of three lectures on Philosophy & Society, presented by the University of Western Sydney in collaboration with the State Library of NSW, Fordham University Press in the States and ABC RN.
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The philosophy of astronomy
What is the ideology that propels scientists to go to so much trouble? Think, for example, of the hazards involved in a voyage from Europe to our part of the world in the 18th century. Why would you go to all that effort just to observe the transit of Venus? This week, with the next transit just a few days away, we explore the philosophy of northern astronomy in the southern hemisphere with Simon Schaffer, professor of the history of science at the University of Cambridge.
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Buddhism and science: Talking past each other?
This week, we look at the convergence – or perhaps not – of two philosophies: Buddhism and modern science. Buddhism has attempted to redefine itself in relation to neuroscience . A case in point is the ‘dialogue’ between Buddhism and neuroscience promoted by the Dalai Lama and his Western followers. But before talking of a possible convergence between neuroscience and Buddhism, do we need to acknowledge the divergences?
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Who owns your genes?
You might think that, if anybody owns your genes, it’s you, but if you know anything about your genes it will be because of professional gene testing.And in cases of a genetically transmitted disorder, should genetic counsellors breach patient confidentiality to disclose the results of genetic tests to relatives who are likely to be affected by the same disorder? Is genetic information personal information, which belongs to the patient being tested, or does it belong to all the patient’s...
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Shakespeare, Identity and Religion
What was Shakespeare’s religion and what did he think about personal identity? Did he believe that the personal identity we have is had because we are this living body rather than that? How does commitment to religious faith or to marriage affect your identity? And should we think of Shakespeare not just as an inventor of characters but as a thinker?
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Reflections on cultural identity
Ethnic groups across the planet are beginning to act like corporations that own a 'natural' copyright in their 'culture' and 'cultural products'which they protect, often by recourse to the law, and on which they capitalise in much the same way as do incorporated businesses in the private sector.
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The Problem of Evil
The Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik, argues that he killed to do good for his country.Adolf Eichmann, one of the major organizers of the Holocaust, displayed neither guilt nor hatred, claiming he bore no responsibility because he was simply "doing his job". It was for him that the phrase ‘the banality of evil’ was coined. Ivan Milat, however, had a life-long history of behavioural disturbance and a propensity for sadistic violence. So how do we understand the problem? Is it just...
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The Worst Argument in the World
Philosophy is all about arguing, but some arguments are worse than others. In fact, some are so awful that only really intelligent people can believe them: The Chinese room argument, Pascal's wager and the ontological argument for the existence of God are among the nominees. This week we examine some implausible ideas with the help of two connoisseurs of bad arguments.
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A Dangerous Method
This week on the Philosopher’s Zone, we’re looking at a couple of people you might not think of as philosophers at all. One of them aspired to be a scientist of the mind. The other, though, was something of a philosopher, something of a mystic and something of a shaman. His name was Carl Gustav Jung and his relationship with an older man, Sigmund Freud, is the subject of A Dangerous Method, a new film directed by David Cronenberg, written by Christopher Hampton and starring Michael...
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Honourable intentions
Human consciousness is intentional – it’s about something – but what is the relationship between my consciousness and the objects of which I’m conscious? And, in particular, how does this work when the objects don’t even exist, like Santa Claus and Pegasus? This week, we investigate an old philosophical issue.
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Philosophy for Representationalists
Over four decades, the Gavin David Young Lectures in Philosophy at the University of Adelaide have become a very significant series with many distinguished contributors from across the globe.. This year, the speaker was Frank Jackson, Professor of Philosophy at ANU. His subject was ‘Philosophy for Representationalists’: perceptual experiences represent the way things are. For example, visual perceptual experiences typically represent how things are in front of us. We can pass this...
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Extending the mind
Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin? Some philosophers are now arguing that thoughts are not all in the head. The environment has an active role in driving cognition; cognition is sometimes made up of neural, bodily, and environmental processes. Their argument has excited a vigorous debate among philosophers and this week we discover what the fuss is about.We hear from two proponents of the extended mind thesis from one of its critics, Robert Rupert, associate professor...
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Thomas Pogge and global fairness
In a world in which many humans do not have all their human rights fulfilled, who has what obligations to help bring a better world about? This is a question that, for many years, has exercised the mind of Thomas Pogge, Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs at Yale and Professorial Fellow at the Australian National University. This week, we talk to him about it by way of a chat about two influences on his thought: the great eighteenth century German philosopher Immanuel Kant, and...
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The Myth of Plato and Plato the Myth-maker
There’s been a change in the interpretation of Plato. For centuries, he was admired for his inspiration and vision, rather than for his theories and argumentation. Then the pendulum swung hard in the other direction.
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Kafka and Philosophy
Franz Kafka—author of The Trial, in which a man is unjustly accused and tried, and Metamorphosis, in which a man becomes a giant insect—is perhaps the modernist author most often discussed by philosophers. What has been so alluring about Kafka that philosophers have a compulsion to return to his writings? This week we investigate with the help of Henry Sussman, Visiting Professor in German Language and Literature at Yale University and one of the world’s great Kafka scholars.
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Group Agents
On this Philosopher’s Zone we’re looking at agents.Not secret agents but rather public agents: an agent is just somebody who does something for a purpose and an agent is distinguished from a patient.The agent is the person who does things and the patient is the person to whom things are done.But do we have to be talking about individual persons here or can groups of people be agents in the way that individuals can?This week, we investigate.
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Beating and nothingness: Philosophy and the Martial Arts
There are many areas of human endeavour with which philosophy can be connected: the law, religion, science, mathematics -- but martial arts? This week we talk to Damon Young, Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Melbourne, who is both a philosopher and a grappler, about what martial arts have to tell us of thinking and being.
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Michael Dummett: a philosopher's philosopher
Michael Dummett, one of the greatest English philosophers of the twentieth century, died late in December at the age of 86.
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Philosophy and the Environment
In a world of environmental crisis, what can philosophy tell us? Who is qualified to pronounce on the subject and how do the institutions of science (peer-reviewed journals the like) help? How do we model the situation in which we find ourselves and how do we decide which species to save, the most endangered or the easiest to save?
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The inconsistency of Hannah Arendt
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The ethics of Kevin Rudd's heart
This program was first broadcast on 6 August 2011.
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The evil of the Daleks
This program was first broadcast on 18 June 2011.
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Meeting Martha Nussbaum
This program was first broadcast on 20 August 2011.
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How do octopuses think?
This program was first broadcast on 9 April 2011.
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An atheist's God: the paradox of Spinoza
THIS PROGRAM WAS FIRST BROADCAST ON 4 June 2011.
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On authenticity - Beate Roessler
Strangers, people from other countries immigrating into our, endanger our authentic culture, destroying what is valuable, good and familiar. But do they and does that idea make any sort of sense at all? And if we can’t talk about the authenticity of cultures, what about the authenticity of individual persons? This week, we investigate authenticity, the personal and the political.
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The trials and tribulations of private Bradley Manning
We’ve heard a lot in recent times about the legal wrangles of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange but there is another Wikileaker facing life in prison who has been given much less attention: Private Bradley Manning. Bradley Manning is accused of leaking thousands of classified defence documents and faces life in prison if found guilty. Over two hundred legal scholars and philosophers have signed a petition claiming his treatment has been unconstitutional and unethical. This week we look at the...
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The morality of robo-wars - P.W. Singer
These days, you can go to war without shouldering a pack and carrying a rifle: you can take out the enemy’s installations (and, indeed, take out the enemy) just sitting in an office not far from home. But what are the ethics of a war fought for us by machines, where the only deaths we see are on TV monitors? This week, we ask how we can bring a moral imagination to bear on a world of robot wars.
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Apology for duplicate podcasts
We have just upgraded to a new website, and the move has caused some podcast subscribers to download duplicate mp3s. We apologise for this issue and hope you continue to listen to Radio National podcasts in the future.
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2011-11-26 - Daniel Dennett on human consciousness and...
This week on The Philosophers Zone, we meet one of the foremost thinkers of our time. Daniel Dennett is Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University. Described as the great de-mystifier of consciousness, Dennett has been quoted as saying he developed a deep distrust of the methods he saw other philosophers employing and decided that before he could trust his intuitions about the mind, he had to figure out how the brain could possibly accomplish the minds work.
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2011-11-19 - The artist and the philosopher - Gustav...
In the last decades of the Hapsburg empire, from 1895 to 194, the city of Vienna was opulent, elegant and daring. A group of radical young artists, architects, writers, musicians, designers and thinkers were busy overturning all the rules. This week, we meet two of the brightest stars to have arisen in this febrile world, the enigmatic artist Gustav Klimt and the elusive philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, and we look at Klimt through the changing gaze of Wittgenstein.
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2011-11-12 - Pascal's Wager - betting on God
This week on The Philosophers Zone were wagering on God. Well, why not? What have we got to lose? If God doesnt exist, we lose nothing; if he does, we gain everything. This is the famous argument known as `Pascals wager after the great seventeenth-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal. This week, we examine the wager and try to work what our odds are.
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2011-11-05 - Jewish philosophy: Martin Buber
Martin Buber was born in pre-Nazi Austria and emigrated to Israel in 1938 where he spent much of the rest of his life. He grappled with Zionism, Jewish thought, secular philosophy and politics and the result is a body of thought very much based on relationships.
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2011-10-22 - Jewish philosophy: Moses Mendelssohn
Moses Mendelssohn scandalised his more pious fellow 18th century Germans when he said: 'My religion recognises no obligation to resolve doubt other than through rational means; and it commands no mere faith in eternal truths.' This week we look at the life and ideas of one of the great proponents of Judaism as a rational religion.
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2011-10-15 - Jewish philosophy: Maimonides
Rabbi Moshe Ben Maimon, also known as Maimonides, became a hugely important figure in that great era of Moorish cultural flourishing, 12th century Spain (Cordoba). Maimonides adapted the ideas of Aristotle, was a significant influence on Thomas Aquinas, and became one of the leading Rabbinical scholars of his time, and perhaps of all time.
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2011-10-08 - Jewish philosophy: Overview part 2
In part two of our introduction we take up the story during the 17th century, with the great European thinker Baruch Spinoza. Tamar Rudavsky from Ohio State University is again our guide.
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2011-10-01 - Jewish philosophy: Overview part 1
We begin this series with an introduction to Jewish philosophy, from Ancient times onwards - an attempt to explore some of the key thinkers and recurring philosophical questions. Our guide is Tamar Rudavsky from Ohio State University.
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2011-09-24 - The Mind of Jacques Lacan
Jacques Marie Emile Lacan, who died in 1981, was a French psychoanalyst and follower of Freud, but his influence has extended far beyond the boundaries of psychiatry: to philosophy, critical theory, literary theory, sociology, feminist theory, film theory and clinical psychoanalysis. And all this despite a literary style of forbidding complexity. This week, we take courage and try to penetrate his thought.
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2011-09-17 - A very American philosophy
Pragmatism was a philosophical doctrine devised by Americans and to a large extent for Americans. This week, we examine its origins, the stories of the men behind it, what it means and its enduring significance, not just for America but for the world.
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2011-09-10 - Zombies and consciousness
Zombies have been enjoying a bit of a revival, lately (though perhaps `enjoy, which implies inner consciousness, is not the word we want here). The Hollywood zombie is a revenge-seeking corpse with a fervent hunger for human flesh, the traditional Haitian zombie is a kind of robotic slave but the philosophical zombie is a hypothetical figure: a creature like us in every respect but with no inner life. So what does the zombie have to teach us about the nature of human consciousness?
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2011-09-03 - Philosothon 2011 - the first Australasian...
The Philosothon is an event that encourages high school students to investigate ethical and other philosophical questions in the context of `communities of inquiry. Its investigative and competitive, and everybody gets to watch the movie Groundhog Day for its Nietzschian undertones. This week, The Philosophers Zones Kyla Slaven visits the Philosothon to talk to the kids and eavesdrop on their inquiries.
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2011-08-27 - The medieval Islamic philosopher Averroes
Abu al-Walid Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Rushd, better known in the Latin West as Averroes, is one of the greater thinkers in the Islamic/Arabic tradition. This week we discuss the life and times of Averroes with Peter Adamson, Professor of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy at King's College London.
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2011-08-20 - Meeting Martha Nussbaum
This week, we meet one of the foremost philosophers of the age: Martha Nussbaum, professor of law and ethics at the University of Chicago. In a wide-ranging conversation, we discuss emotion and the moral law, how religious ritual aids concentration on the moral law, and the role of literature in philosophy. And we ask a few questions: have the ancient Greek Cynics have a bad press, can you really be a citizen of the whole globe and who was the greatest philosopher of the classical world?
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2011-08-13 - The Philosophical Baby - Alison Gopnik
THIS PROGRAM WAS FIRST BROADCAST IN JANUARY 2011. Given that we all begin our lives as children, it is perhaps surprising that philosophy has paid such little attention, relatively speaking, to childhood. This week, we meet the American philosopher and psychologist Alison Gopnik, who argues that in some ways young children are actually smarter, more imaginative, more caring and even more conscious than adults are.
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2011-08-06 - The ethics of Kevin Rudd's heart
Inserting of a pig valve into Kevin Rudds heart is is not a new medical technique but is it part of a general move towards xenotransplantation? Xenotransplantation is when you take living cells, tissues and organs from one species and transplant them into another. Human xenotransplantation offers a potential treatment for end-stage organ failure, but it also raises many novel medical, legal and ethical issues. This week, we explore some of them.
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2011-07-30 - The moral judgement of psychopaths
Our guest this week says psychopaths are rarely high functioning corporate executives with a taste for downsizing. More often, they are low functioning and far more prone than to violent crime than the rest of the population. Today we explore moral judgement, neuroscience, psychopathy and the criminal justice system with ethics Professor Walter Sinnott-Armstrong from Duke University in the United States.
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2011-07-23 - Tree of Life - The cinema of Terrence Malick
Terrence Malick is, perhaps, unique: a film director who is well-trained in philosophy and who has published an English translation of a book by the great German philosopher Martin Heidegger. But should we see his movies as philosophical statements? In particular, what are we to make of his latest, The Tree of Life, which is set in Texas in the fifties but also takes us back to the creation of the world and the age of the dinosaurs? Metaphysics or pretension? This week, a philosophical...
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2011-07-16 - The Conservative Marshall McLuhan
Since the 1960s, McLuhan famously avoided taking what he called a 'moralistic' stance on the goodness or badness of electric media. But close readers of his major writings are in for a surprise. What emerges is distinctively conservative: tribalistic, stringently moralistic and opposed to the liberal, modernist, individualist age of modernity. This week, The Philosopher's Zone investigates McLuhan the right-wing moralist.
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2011-07-02 - The puzzlement of Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein, the great Anglo-Austrian philosopher, who died fifty years ago this year, often looked puzzled. In fact, puzzlement, about the world and about the concepts with which we try to grasp the world, was to a large extent his stock-in-trade. This week, we investigate how useful it can be to share Wittgensteins puzzlement when turning our attention to human society and the possibility that there might be a science of human society.
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2011-06-25 - High school philosophy
The Victorian Association for Philosophy in Schools has a vision of schools around Victoria stimulating open and inquiring communities of philosophical exploration, in which students develop the art of questioning and acquire conceptual and reasoning tools. This week, we visit their annual conference and discover how even a difficult thinker like Simone Weil - French philosopher, tortured Christian mystic and social activist - can have a place in the classroom.
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2011-06-18 - The evil of the daleks
They are among the most loved, or most feared, villains in science fiction. But what is it that makes Daleks such great baddies? What constitutes evil and why do the Daleks represent a very specific idea about rationality and morality? This week, we talk to a philosopher about what the Daleks have to tell us - in their mechanical, screechy voices - about who we are.
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2011-06-11 - Who was Plotinus?
He believed in the One, a fundamental principle of the universe. He believed in the Intellect and the Soul. He also thought that matter was evil. This week, the Philosophers Zone enters the strange world of Plotinus, a great philosopher who kept the pagan flame alight at a time when the Roman empire was about to give itself up to Christianity.
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2011-06-04 - An athiet's God: the paradox of Spinoza
This week on The Philosophers Zone, we meet Spinozas god, which might seem an odd thing to do: Baruch Spinoza, one of the greatest philosophers of his day, was expelled from the Amsterdam synagogue in 1656 because of his unorthodox religious views. Ever since, he has been regarded as the great atheist of the Western tradition. Yet he mentions God very often throughout his writings. So this week, we try to reconcile the paradox in Spinoza between his perceived atheism and his constant...
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2011-05-30 - Anime - the philosophy of Japanese animation
This program is a REPEAT - it was first broadcast on 16 October 2010. Japanese animation is not just for children. It can be dark, incredibly violent and sexually explicit. But does it represent a distinctly Japanese worldview? And is it philosophical? Yes and yes, according to Jane Goodall from the University of Western Sydney.
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2011-05-23 - Japanese philosophy - a short overview
This program is a REPEAT - it was first broadcast on 9 October 2010. Since the 5th century, Japanese philosophy has assimilated and adapted foreign philosophies to its native worldview: picking and choosing ideas about self, government and social order from Confucianism, Buddhism and Western thought. But does this mishmash of thinking create a unique Japanese philosophy?
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2011-05-14 - Hume and God
Hume would probably not have owned up to being an atheist but he was certainly sceptical of the claims of religion. In particular, he was dubious about the miracles. If somebody claims to have witnessed a miracle, which is more likely, that a miracle occurred or that the person claiming to witness it was mistaken?
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2011-05-07 - Hume on sentiment and morality
Hume insisted that reason alone cannot be a motive to the will and that moral distinctions must therefore be derived from the moral sentiments: feelings of approval (esteem, praise) and disapproval (blame). It is essentially a very social theory of morality.
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2011-04-30 - Hume on cause, effect and doubt
The sun rose today and it has risen on every morning that we know about. But is that a reason for thinking that it will rise tomorrow? Hume thought not and today we examine the reasons for his scepticism.
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2011-04-23 - The life of David Hume
A conversation with Roderick Graham, Humes most recent biographer, about how a boy brought up in rural Scotland became a major figure in European thought
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2011-04-16 - Free Will and the Courts
Suppose I had committed a quick robbery or even a murder on the way in to work. Id end up in court, of course, and heres my plea in mitigation of my offence: I couldnt help it, your honour, because I am genetically predisposed to wrong-doing. Dont blame me, blame my genes. I have no freewill in these matters and it is not just to punish somebody for doing something that he did not really choose to do. Thats the idea that were putting on trial in the Philosophers Zone, not just with a...
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2011-04-02 - At the movies with Gilles Deleuze (part 2)
This week, The Philosophers Zone goes to the movies. In the second of two programmes devoted to the great French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, we examine what he had to say about cinema. He was one of the first philosophers to turn their attention to films and he saw film as a philosophical medium. But what did that mean and why, in his view, did film become more philosophical after World War II?
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2011-03-26 - Who was Gilles Deleuze?
Gilles Deleuze, who died by his own hand in 1995, was one of the most influential and prolific French philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century. He wrote influentially not just on philosophy, but on literature, film, fine art and the environment as well. But his writing style - highly allusive, peppered with neologisms - is not easy-going. This week, we try to get to grips with a significant and important thinker.
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2011-03-19 - The Age of Innocence
Innocence is a good thing, isnt it? Its certainly better than guilt, but our idea of what constitutes innocence may be a construct, and it may be a construct that we project onto the weakest amongst us, children. Do we want to think of children as innocent because weve lost faith in our own innocence? And why do artistic photographs of naked children worry us so much? This week, The Philosophers Zone examines something that troubles us but which we tend not to think about.
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2011-03-12 - Robert Boyle - God, atoms and alchemy
If you did physics at school, or beyond, you might be familiar with Boyles law, first propounded by the Honourable Robert Boyle in 1662. But Boyle was interested in much more than the pressure of gases. He called himself a `Christian virtuoso and devoted a lot of his time to philosophical activities: proving the existence of God and showing that you could believe in atoms without being an atheist. This week, Boyles biographer introduces us to an extraordinary and prolific thinker.
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2011-03-05 - The Sound of Music
What do we mean when we say that the hills are alive to the sound of music? Isnt the point not that music has sound but that it is sound? And does this mean that the source of the sound - the singer, the violinist, the guitarist - doesnt, from a musical point of view, really matter? This week, we explore some difficult questions in the philosophy of music.
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2011-02-26 - The Julian Assange Conspiracy - Networks,...
The object of Wikileaks is to dismantle the conspiracies that, according to its founder, rule the world. But what is a conspiracy and are you part of one? According to Assange, its possible to be a member of conspiracy without even knowing that you are. This week, we look at Julian Assanges political philosophy and his view of the world as a network of conspiracies.
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2011-02-19 - Julian Assange and the rise of nerd...
This week Jaron Lanier -- composer, performer, computer scientist, philosopher and pioneer of virtual reality -- gets seriously sceptical about somebody a lot of people think of as a hero: Julian Assange. The Internet, according to Lanier, was influenced in equal degrees by 1960s romanticism and cold war paranoia. If the political world becomes a mirror of the Internet, then the world will be restructured around secretive digital power centres surrounded by a sea of chaotic, underachieving...
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2011-02-12 - Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood and Sayyid...
The Society of the Muslim Brothers, otherwise known as the Muslim Brotherhood, has been banned in Egypt for many years. Nevertheless, after the recent upheavals, the Brotherhood was among the opposition groups invited to talk with Vice President Omar Suleiman. So today on The Philosopher's Zone we're exploring the life and times of the Egyptian thinker, Sayyid Qutb, the Brotherhoods great theorist. Qutb spent many years in jail during the '50s and'60s, but before his execution by the...
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2011-02-05 - The philosophy of wine - aethetics, taste...
Can a wine really have notes of chocolate, truffle and violets? Can wines be feminine, pretentious or cheeky? Can wines express anything? Or, more philosophically, are the senses of taste and smell as structured as sight? What is the role of metaphor in the language of taste and smell? Is the production of tastes and smell an expressive art and can objective statements be made about these things? This week on The Philosophers Zone we hit the bottle to find out.
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2011-01-29 - The Philosophical Baby - Alison Gopnik
Given that we all begin our lives as children, it is perhaps surprising that philosophy has paid such little attention, relatively speaking, to childhood. This week, we meet the American philosopher and psychologist Alison Gopnik, who argues that in some ways young children are actually smarter, more imaginative, more caring and even more conscious than adults are.
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2011-01-22 - Yes, but how do you know? Scepticism and...
THIS PROGRAM FIRST AIRED ON 5 JUNE 2010. This week, we meet Stephen Hetherington, Professor of Philosophy at the University of New South Wales, who believes that sceptical thinking is one of the most authentic forms of philosophical thinking there is. Scepticism isnt just any old refusal to believe: its an orderly reconsideration of what we know and why we think we know it. How much can we know about our surroundings? Do we in fact have any surroundings or could we just be disembodied brains...
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2011-01-15 - Kurt Gdel and the limits of mathematics
THIS PROGRAM WAS FIRST AIRED ON 20 FEBRUARY 2010. Kurt Gdel was one of the foremost mathematicians and logicians of the 20th century, best known for his famous incompleteness theorem, which tells us that there are mathematical 'blind spots': parts of mathematics that traditional methods of proof cannot access. The theorem has far-reaching consequences for computing and even for our understanding of the nature of the human mind. This week, Mark Colyvan from the University of Sydney introduces...
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2011-01-08 - Nietzsche and the will to power
THIS PROGRAM WAS FIRST AIRED ON 22 MAY 2010. Friedrich Nietzsche was the son of a preacher who came to despise Christianity. He was a scholar of the Greek and Roman classics who became better known as a philosopher. And he was a philosopher whose ideas -- rejecting the idea of pity, embracing the will to power and the ideal of the superman -- cast long shadows over the twentieth century. This week, we take a sympathetic look at this troubling, and troubled, thinker.
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2011-01-01 - Alexander McCall Smith and the philosopher...
THIS PROGRAM WAS FIRST AIRED ON 13 FEBRUARY 2010. This week, a conversation with writer Alexander McCall Smith. Hes best known for his series of novels about Precious Ramotswe and her No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency in Botswana. However, McCall Smith is also the creator of Isabel Dalhousie, a trained philosopher and editor of The Review of Applied Ethics, who solves mysteries in her native Edinburgh and contemplates the ethical problems behind them.
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2010-12-25 - A philosophical history of Russia
THIS PROGRAM FIRST WENT TO AIR ON 24 JULY 2010. This year marks the centenary of the death of the great Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy. Tolstoy wrote works of fiction that had considerable philosophical depth. In fact he thought his most famous book, War and Peace, was not a novel at all but an examination of social and political ideas. This week we take a look at Russian philosophical thinking, mainly in the 19th and early 20th century.
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2010-12-18 - Bah humbug - Why Ebenezer Scrooge is...
Ebenezer Scrooge is one of the few people you are allowed to hate at Christmas, or at least youre allowed to `dislike what he stands for. Miserly and lacking in empathy, Scrooge is essentially a joyless, friendless, humourless, lonely old man. But was he morally bad as common wisdom would have it? Our guest this week says NO. Ebenezer Scrooge was as a man of ethical principle.
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2010-12-11 - The Athenian philosopher Epicurus
born in 341 BC, Epicurus set up a philosophical school which was unusual for its time - it allowed women and slaves to join. He also developed ideas about pleasure and the good life, but would likely turn in his grave were he to know how the term 'Epicurean' has come to be used in the 21st century.
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2010-12-04 - The way of the Dao
It is of uncertain date and the name of its author is not known. Its title does not easily translate into English. In China, where it is known as the Dao De Jing, it has been hugely influential for more than two and a half thousand years. This week, we explore this enigmatic masterpiece and ask what it has to say to the world today.
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2010-11-27 - Hegel and Hegel's God
This week, in another trek through the luxuriant and fascinating jungle that is the thought of one of the greatest philosophers of the nineteenth century, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, we turn to Hegels god and look at Hegel as a rational mystic. Our guest again is Robert M. Wallace, a philosopher best known for his book Hegels Philosophy of Reality, Freedom and God, and a man with a keen interest in philosophical mysticism. Liberal theologians during the last century and a half have wanted...
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2010-11-20 - The Mystery of Hegel
His thought was hugely influential and hugely difficult. The philosopher Bertrand Russell once described him as the single most difficult philosopher to understand. He was Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Though he enjoyed relative fame during his lifetime, in the decades after his death in 1831, according to one writer, Hegels ideas were treated with "a mixture of contempt, horror and indifference." But something happened during the 20th century that brought Hegel back into sight for...
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2010-11-13 - The Art Instinct - evolution and aesthetics
Peacocks have tails; we have art. Dennis Dutton, Professor of Philosopher at the University of Canterbury, argues that art is a form of costly display designed to attract members of the opposite sex. But theres more to it than that: the arts take us into the minds of the people that made them and so theyre an aspect of social life that is beneficial to human beings. This week, we explore a subtle, Darwinian approach to the painting of paintings and the telling of tales.
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2010-11-06 - The human machine: Julien Offray de La...
Are you body and soul, mind and matter, or is it matter all the way through? Sounds like a modern sort of question, but in fact it was asked and answered -- at least to his own satisfaction -- way back in 1748 by the French physician and philosopher Julien Offray de La Mettrie. His book Man a Machine was a bold and quite bald announcement that people are just that: machines. This week on The Philosophers Zone we explore the life and ideas of a strange and daring thinker.
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2010-10-30 - Doing good and causing harm: Euthanasia and...
A study of Australian surgeons found that 36% of reported giving drugs at doses higher than necessary to relieve suffering, but also aware that this would hasten the death of the patient. This week, with euthanasia back on the public agenda, The Philosophers Zone takes on the doctrine of double effect: the ethics of doing good and, perhaps bad, at the same time. Were joined this week by a cancer surgeon and a medical ethicist, to explore this grey area.
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2010-10-23 - The Best of all possible worlds - Steven...
In 1672 a German secret agent arrived in Paris and the result was fierce philosophical debate. The secret agent was Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and he locked horns with two lesser-known but formidable thinkers: Antoine Arnauld and Father Nicolas Malebranche about some of the great philosophical issues of the day.
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2010-10-16 - Anime - the philosophy of Japanese animation
Japanese animation is not just for children. It can be dark, incredibly violent and sexually explicit. But does it represent a distinctly Japanese worldview? And is it philosophical? Yes and yes, according to Jane Goodall from the University of Western Sydney.
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2010-10-09 - Japanese philosophy - a short overview
Since the 5th century, Japanese philosophy has assimilated and adapted foreign philosophies to its native worldview: picking and choosing ideas about self, government and social order from Confucianism, Buddhism and Western thought. But does this mishmash of thinking create a unique Japanese philosophy?
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2010-10-02 - The Extended Mind
Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin? Some philosophers are now arguing that thoughts are not all in the head. The environment has an active role in driving cognition; cognition is sometimes made up of neural, bodily, and environmental processes. Their argument has excited a vigorous debate among philosophers and this week we discover what the fuss is about.
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2010-09-25 - The responsible scientist - John Forge on...
The bomb that exploded above Hiroshima in 1945 was the product of many of the greatest scientific minds in the world and were still arguing about the moral implications of what they did. But thats just the start of it. Today, technological advances in areas such as pharmaceuticals, biosciences, communications and the defence industry channel a vast amount of scientific activity into applied research. What does this mean for the scientist as a moral being? This week, we ask what it takes to...
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2010-09-18 - Philosophy in Afghanistan
This week, with the Afghan parliamentary elections about to take place, The Philosophers Zone explores philosophy in Afghanistan, both within the universities and informally in the broader culture. Is there a philosophical tradition that managed to remain constant during all of Afghanistans recent upheavals? Is there an Afghan philosophy at all and what do Afghan intellectuals think about the condition of their country?
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2010-09-11 - Thinking about other cultures - Anita Herle
Philosophy is a way of grasping our visible and invisible social world. But there is another way, and its called anthropology, which studies the way in which various human cultures extend their grasp. This week, we take a philosophical look at what anthropologists get up to. Do they just observe people in grass huts or do the people have a say in what they get to observe?
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2010-09-04 - Being a person in West Africa - Ajume Wingo
When the President of Zambia Kenneth Kaunda said that Margaret Thatcher was "truly a person," what on earth did he mean? He was invoking a concept central to the philosophy of the Akan people of West Africa. This week, we look at what it means to be a person in a culture where the community matters more than the individual and why the idea has very immediate practical implications.
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2010-08-28 - Spoilt for choice or spoilt by choice?...
Now that Australia has made its choice - sort of - The Philosophers Zone looks as the very idea of choice. Much more than previous generations, we can pick and choose where we live, how many children we have or dont have, what type of bread we would like to eat and even what our gender will be. But the flipside is that that these choices dont always seem to fulfil us. This week we look at the connections between choice and contemporary capitalism and freedom, and the ideologies that underpin...
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2010-08-21 - The philosophy of astronomy - Simon Schaffer
What is the ideology that propels scientists to go to so much trouble? Think, for example, of the hazards involved in a voyage from Europe to our part of the world in the 18th century. Why would you go to all that effort just to observe the transit of Venus? For Science Week, we explore the philosophy of northern astronomy in the Southern Hemisphere with Simon Schaffer, Professor of the History of Science at the University of Cambridge.
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2010-08-14 - Philosophy on the campaign trail
Tony Abbott has been admiring cows at the Brisbane Show, Julia Gillard has, its said, been patronising Mark Latham by brushing him down the front, but is there anything ideological happening in this election? This week, we go in search of political philosophy and ask whether the world we live in - not just Australia, but the whole of the West - is any longer a world in which political elites can articulate the issues and meet the challenges of the age.
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2010-08-07 - Criminal responsibility and the rational...
The criminal law defines a range of public wrongs and it provides for those who commit such wrongs to be called to answer for them through the criminal process of trial and punishment. We also allow for a number of conditions which mute or nullify our responsibility for a given crime: intention, causation, omission etc. This week on The Philosophers Zone, we look at criminal responsibility and its assumptions about rationality.
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2010-07-31 - Leo Strauss - Philosophy's mystery man
According to some commentators, there was a mysterious, dark presence lurking behind the Bush administration. He was, said his critics, elitist, illiberal and anti-democratic. He encouraged Americans leaders in imperialist militarism, neo-conservatism, Christian fundamentalism and the deliberate deception of those they led. And he did all this despite having died in 1973. He was Leo Strauss, professor of political science at the University of Chicago. But was this passionate student of...
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2010-07-24 - A philosophical history of Russia
This year marks the centenary of the death of the great Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy. Tolstoy wrote works of fiction that had considerable philosophical depth. In fact he thought his most famous book, War and Peace, was not a novel at all but an examination of social and political ideas. This week we take a look at Russian philosophical thinking, mainly in the 19th and early 20th century.
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2010-07-17 - It's all about me, the philosophy of self...
This week it's all about me and it's all about you as we explore a few perspectives on philosophy of self. And be sure to take a look at our quiz first as it forms the basis for this week's discussion. It's all about me! The QuizIs there a moral way to live our lives? Is there an absolute truth? Consider these questions and more in our special quiz, before you tune in for the second part of our forum this week. Click here to read the quiz.
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2010-07-10 - It's all about me - a forum on the...
This week it's all about me and it's all about you as we explore a few perspectives on philosophy of self. And more personally still, do you have a consistent principle that guides your life? Or are you philosophically all over the shop? It's all about me! - The QuizIs there a moral way to live our lives? Is there an absolute truth? Consider these questions and more in our special quiz, before you tune in for the second part of our forum next week. Click here to read the quiz.
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2010-07-03 - The Politics of Painting - John Barrell
Whether its an installation by Damien Hirst or a painting by John Olsen, these days we do not quite know how to talk about art. Whether were artists, art critics or philosophers, there is no agreed language. But this was not always the case. In the commercially bustling land that was eighteenth-century Britain, there was a common philosophical language with which art could be discussed. This week, we explore a language of art that was political and had no ambition to be anything else.
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2010-06-26 - Derrida - the father of deconstruction
Did you know theres a recipe out there for deconstructed Caesar salad? Or that you can buy a pair of deconstructed jeans? But deconstruction is not really about ripping the hems or serving all the ingredients separately instead of together in a bowl. Its a way of reading philosophical texts and this week we examine the work of the man who coined the term (and sometimes wished he hadnt): the French philosopher Jacques Derrida.
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2010-06-19 - China's Confucian future
Today we find out whether the most influential philosophical tradition in China, Confucianism, is making a comeback in the worlds largest nation. Professor Daniel Bell from Tsinghua University in Beijing says the political future of China is up for grabs and a hybrid Confucian political structure could well win out.
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2010-06-12 - Confucius - A very Chinese philosopher
Three of the greatest teachers in history never wrote a book. They were Socrates, Jesus Christ and Confucius. As part of Radio Nationals China Week, The Philosophers Zone is looking at one of them: Confucius. He was one the most Chinese of thinkers of all time and one of the most influential - perhaps indeed the most influential - of all philosophers. His thought has coloured Chinese thought and the Chinese way of life for millennia and, despite attempts to suppress it at various times, it...
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2010-06-05 - Yes, but how do you know? Scepticism and...
This week, we meet Stephen Hetherington, Professor of Philosophy at the University of New South Wales, who believes that sceptical thinking is one of the most authentic forms of philosophical thinking there is. Scepticism isnt just any old refusal to believe: its an orderly reconsideration of what we know and why we think we know it. How much can we know about our surroundings? Do we in fact have any surroundings or could we just be disembodied brains in vats being fed what feels like...
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2010-05-29 - Enlightened eccentrics in the age of reason
This week, were revisiting one of the greatest epochs in the history of philosophy. It lasted more than a hundred years from the seventeenth century and the whole length of the eighteenth. It was called the Enlightenment, its heroes were Hume, Kant, Voltaire and many more and it was one of the most hopeful periods in the history of humanity.
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2010-05-22 - Nietzsche and the will to power
Friedrich Nietzsche was the son of a preacher who came to despise Christianity. He was a scholar of the Greek and Roman classics who became better known as a philosopher. And he was a philosopher whose ideas -- rejecting the idea of pity, embracing the will to power and the ideal of the superman -- cast long shadows over the twentieth century. This week, we take a sympathetic look at this troubling, and troubled, thinker.
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2010-05-15 - The philosophy of mathematics
You can count from one to two, from two to three and so on without end. You know that youre not going to run out of numbers to count but how do you know? Did we make all these numbers up, do they obey the laws that we set down, or do they exist in some sort of philosophical heaven waiting for us to discover truths about them? These week, we look at the various ways in which philosophers have tried to make sense of the strange world of numbers.
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2010-05-08 - The philosophy of illness - Havi Carel
Philosophers have paid a lot of attention to death but rather less to illness. Yet illness is an almost universal human experience and can make us think deeply about who we are and what our relationship is to our bodies and to the world we live in. This week we talk to a philosopher whose own experience of devastating chronic illness transformed her view of her own life and of philosophy itself.
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2010-05-01 - Ethics in the classroom - an alternative to...
Should children taking non-scripture classes in primary school be offered an ethics course instead? In NSW, ten schools have just begun a ten week trial of ethics for children not taking religious education. Were joined by one of the creators of the ethics course as well as a Professor of Theology at the Australian Catholic University. We find out what they will learn in terms of the two `R words - reason and relativism.
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2010-04-24 - The Universal Genius - Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz is known as the last "universal genius". In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, he made important contributions to the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, logic, philosophy of religion, as well as mathematics, physics, geology, jurisprudence, and history. He is also famous for saying that this is the best of all possible worlds. This week, we talk to a couple of experts about the subtle and strange ideas of this great philosopher
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2010-04-17 - Confronting Theory
These days, if you go to university to study humanities or media studies, you will encounter something called theory. Its a bit philosophical and a bit French and it maintains that there is no universal human nature and that science cannot be truly objective. This week, we meet Philip Bell, whose new book, Confronting Theory - The psychology of cultural studies comes to grips with what somebody has called `Theory only dogs can hear.
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2010-04-10 - Cultural capital - the story of Pierre...
He was a poor boy from a poor home, and being a poor boy from a poor home was important to his thought. Before the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu died eight years ago, he was the most quoted social scientist alive, and the most lauded public intellectual in France. He was trained in philosophy but decided that philosophy was not enough. Find out why this week in The Philosopher�s Zone.
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2010-04-03 - The Watch and the Watchmaker: Philosophy...
It�s an old question: could there be a watch without a watchmaker? In other words, could there be a universe without a god who made it? These days, the proponents of what is known as Intelligent Design argue that there must have been a designer and that the theory of natural selection cannot tell us how we and other animals got to be here. This week we meet a philosopher who argues that though the Intelligent Design camp is wrong, the philosophical Darwinians are not always right.
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2010-03-27 - What are the odds? Philosophy and...
There�s no getting away from probability. If you�re worried about global warming, there�ll be somebody out there to tell you the chances of a significant increase in temperature over the next few years. Then there are crime rates, the probability of being knocked down by a drunk driver - there�s no end to it. But what exactly are we doing when we�re attributing a probability, low or high, to an event? What does fifty-fifty really amount to? This week, we explore the philosophical...
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2010-03-20 - A Very Public Philosopher
This week, a conversation about the role of the public intellectual with A.C. Grayling, one of Britain�s foremost philosophers and public intellectuals. An extraordinarily wide-ranging writer, Grayling has written plays, he�s written works of technical philosophy and he�s written about great philosophers: including books on Berkeley, Russell and Wittgenstein and a biography of Ren� Descartes More recently, he�s turned his attention to historical topics, with a book on the Allied bombing of...
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2010-03-13 - The liar's paradox and other philosophical...
What I am telling you is false. But if I tell you that what I am saying is false and it is false, then what I am now saying is true, but if it�s true then to say that it�s false is false. Join us today as we go around in paradoxical circles with Peter Cave, who teaches philosophy in the UK at the Open University and City University, London.
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2010-03-06 - In defence of the Enlightenment
The Enlightenment, that great ferment of ideas in eighteenth-century Europe, has its enemies today on both left and right. This week, we hear a talk from the Franco-Bulgarian philosopher Tzvetan Todorov, author of the recently published `In Defence of the Enlightenment�, who argues for an Enlightenment approach to developing and understanding an open and just modern society.
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2010-02-27 - Seeing Red - Perception, sensation and...
You are in a darkened lecture hall looking at a patch of red projected onto a screen in front of you. What's involved in "seeing red"? This week, we meet the philosopher and psychologist Nicholas Humphrey who uses the phenomenon of seeing red as way into the mystery of consciousness.
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2010-02-20 - Kurt Gdel and the limitsof mathematics
Kurt Gdel was one of the foremost mathematicians and logicians of the 20th Century, best known for his famous incompleteness theorem, which tells us that there are mathematical "blind spots": parts of mathematics that traditional methods of proof cannot access. The theorem has far-reaching consequences for computing and even for our understanding of the nature of the human mind. This week, Mark Colyvan from the University of Sydney introduces us to this strange and paradoxical result.
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2010-02-13 - Alexander McCall Smith and the philosopher...
This week, a conversation with writer Alexander McCall Smith. He�s best known for his series of novels about Precious Ramotswe and her No. 1 Ladies� Detective Agency in Botswana. However, McCall Smith is also the creator of Isabel Dalhousie, a trained philosopher and editor of The Review of Applied Ethics, who solves mysteries in her native Edinburgh and contemplates the ethical problems behind them.
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2010-02-06 - The right to property and the right to...
Is it morally permissible to impose strong patent protections where doing so prices important new medicines out of the reach of many poor people? This week on The Philosopher�s Zone, Thomas Pogge, professor of philosophy at Yale University, talks about the morality of the global trade in medicine.
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2010-01-23 - Thinking about the lives of the great...
Ray Monk from the University of Southampton in the UK is something unusual in philosophers of the English-speaking world: he�s a biographer. This week, he tell us about the challenges of writing the lives of Bertrand Russell and of the great Ludwig Wittgenstein and why the thinks that biography is a very Wittgensteinian genre. This program was first broadcast on 16 May 2009
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2010-01-16 - The unhappy family of Ludwig Wittgenstein
Sometimes it�s easy to forget that long dead philosophers had families; a world beyond the cocoon of their thinking and writing; a life with all the joy and sadness and conflict that a family can provide. The 20th century Viennese philosopher's family might today be described as deeply dysfunctional, as well as cultured and hugely wealthy. We're joined by Alexander Waugh, author of, The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War. This program was first broadcast on 9 May 2009
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2010-01-09 - The Philosopher and the Novelist
This week, we look at a philosopher and at a novelist, and we find out what the one had to say to the other. Moira Gatens an Australian Professorial Fellow in the philosophy department at the University of Sydney. And she has just been appointed to the very important Spinoza Chair for 2010 at the University of Amsterdam. This means, amongst presenting the annual Spinoza lecture at Spinoza House in Rijnsburg, where the benches on which Spinoza worked in the seventeenth century at his trade...
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2010-01-02 - The Romantic Movement and rock music
Romantic ideas and philosophy live on in certain strains of modern rock music, according to this week's guest, Craig Schuftan, author of Hey Nietzsche - Leave them kids alone. David Bowie, The Cure, The Smiths, Queen, and more contemporary bands like My Chemical Romance and Weezer share some seriously Romantic tendencies with people like Byron, Schopenhauer, Wagner and even Nietzsche - and it's not just because they all viewed the world through the same gloomy prism.
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2009-12-26 - Philosophy and The Wealth of Nations, PJ...
Adam Smith is known today as the father of economics, but he was, by profession, a philosopher. His book The Wealth of Nations is an attempt to apply philosophy to the world of money-making and commerce. This week, we dip into his great work with the help of PJ O�Rourke, the American political commentator, wit and author of a recent study of Smith.
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2009-12-19 - A tribute to Isaiah Berlin
Isaiah Berlin was born in Russia a hundred years ago, on 6 June 1909. He grew up to be a distinguished philosopher, a great historian of ideas - tracing the origins and vicissitudes of liberal thought over the last few centuries - and an eloquent defender of liberty. He was a man with very many friends and, this week, we talk about him with one of them: the British political philosopher John Gray.
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2009-12-12 - A tribute to Claude Levi-Strauss
Claude Levi-Strauss, the great French anthropologist died not long ago, just a few weeks short of his 101st birthday. We look at his work and find out why he was one of the great thinkers of the 20th century.
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2009-12-05 - How political idealism threatens...
In the eighteenth century, advanced thinkers took up the idea that society was imperfect and that what you do with imperfections is get rid of them. The result was that the growth of large radical projects aimed at transforming things - the French Revolution being a dramatic case. The basic issue was how to transcend conflict and achieve harmony. But is the search for harmony compatible with a free society? This week, Kenneth Minogue, Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the London...
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2009-11-28 - From Athens to Baghdad - Greek meets Arabic...
This week, we follow the journey of the classics as they spread from Greece to the Arab world and beyond. At a time when Europe still hadn�t got its act together philosophically speaking, Arabs were busily translating and debating the ideas of Aristotle and others. We�re joined by Professor Peter Adamson from King's College, London, co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy.
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2009-11-21 - Aristotle after Aristotle
Just a few centuries after their deaths, Plato was thought questionable while his pupil Aristotle was all but canonised: there was almost a fear of criticising him. Everybody used his logic and Christians were drawn to him by his arguments about a first cause of all things. This week Han Baltussen from the University of Adelaide looks at the legacy of Aristotle and at why that legacy was worth preserving.
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2009-11-14 - Seneca - philosophy and tragedy
Lucius Annaeus Seneca popularised the philosophy of the Stoics, the Greek Hellenistic school. This week, Rick Benitez from the University of Sydney examines Seneca's teaching that contentedness is achieved by a simple, unperturbed life in accordance with nature and that human suffering should be accepted. He looks at Seneca as a writer of tragedies, and at the tragedy of Seneca's own life: he was tutor and later adviser to the Emperor Nero, who eventually ordered him to take his own life.
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2009-11-07 - The Therapy of Desire - Epicureans and...
Can philosophy be practical and compassionate? Can it exist for human beings and not just for its own coldly logical reasons? This was a question asked by the philosophers of the Hellenistic age, that�s the period following Aristotle, who died in 322BC. This week, Martha Nussbaum from the University of Chicago, talks about desire and Hellenistic ethics.
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