Generous Questions

Bob Plant puts out music as Portland Vows, and you should definitely go and listen to his releases on the Concrète Tapes label here (https://portlandvows.bandcamp.com/) and on the Third Kind label here (https://thirdkindrecords.bandcamp.com/album/living-posthumously) and here (https://thirdkindrecords.bandcamp.com/album/a-bag-of-shadows). A list of his published philosophical works can be found on PhilPapers here (https://philpeople.org/profiles/bob-plant). In the episode I mentioned a book...

Niall Grimes has a website here (http://www.niallgrimes.com/), he's the host of Jam Crack podcast, which you can find on all good podcasting apps or click here: http://www.niallgrimes.com/jam-crack-climbing-podcast and you can follow him on twitter @grimerclimber (https://twitter.com/grimerclimber) or on instagram @niallgrimes (https://www.instagram.com/niallgrimes) At one point in the conversation I mention the concept of 'grip', which is used by philosophers and psychologists interested in...

Susan suggested a bunch of things to read about the philosophy and ethics of listening, for you to follow up: * Talk: The science of conversation by Elizabeth Stokoe * Yo! And Lo! The Pragmatic Topography of the Space of Reasons by Mark Lance and Rebecca Kukla * Dotson, Kristie. "Tracking Epistemic Violence, Tracking Practices of Silencing", Hypatia 26.2 (2011): 236-257. [link to .pdf (http://www.victorkumar.org/uploads/6/1/5/2/61526489/dotson-2011-hypatia.pdf)] * Medina, José. "Varieties of...

Here are some links to find out even more: Our guest for this episode: Dr Clare Moriarty! * her personal webpage at KCL is here (https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/dr-clare-moriarty), and you can find her on twitter @quiteclare (https://twitter.com/quiteclare). * Here's Clare's excellent piece for History Ireland which discusses A Masterclass in Trolling from an 18th Century Bishop: 'Berkeley vs. Walton' (https://www.jstor.org/stable/26853081?seq=1) For some introductory things to learn more about...

I didn't know much about Icelandic Sagas before I heard about Aoife's project, I just knew that they were long and complicated and involved feuds and fate. But Aoife, a philosophy student at Queen's University Belfast, knew a lot more and wanted to try to make sense of all the heavyweight moral decisions and decisive actions that go on in them. Her project is partly an investigation of a moral framework, and partly a research project into historical and anthropological reconstruction, but...

We talk about ethical egoism, which Rupert seems to feel is dismissed a little bit too lightly, and we hear about how he's going to try to defend it. While Rupert’s talking about ethics and about what determines or fixes ethical truths – where they come from – at the same time in the background there are lot of other issues about political philosophy and authority and freedom and the state. I cut some of that discussion out just to help keep this episode focused on a particular subject, but...

This is a conversation with a final-year student in Philosophy. Aine graduated from Queen's University Belfast in the summer of 2019, and like many students she used her final year of studies to work on an extended independent research project. Dissertation students write about a philosophical topic of their own devising, working alongside individual members of faculty who help to steer their project. Aine worked with my colleage Roger Clarke (http://www.rogerclarke.org/) on an epistemology...

Prof. Nancy Jecker came to Queen's University Belfast to speak at this philosophy conference (https://philevents.org/event/show/64710) on the ethics of chronic illness, and I used that opportunity to ask her about her philosophical interests and work. We talked about life and death – in particular, lives lived with chronic illneses, and the ways that a person's story doesn't end just at the moment that they die. We talked about intergenerational ethical issues (for example, about caring for...

This is part two of the interview with Jonathan Webber about his book 'Rethinking Existentialism', and in this one we talk about existentialist ideas around freedom and ethical action, which is why I'm calling it I'm calling it 'Freedom and Morality'. I asked him some questions about how he knew that he had a big enough idea to start thinking about the topic as a 'book' project rather than a series of philosophy papers. We also got chatting about the current vogue of contemporary writing...

It's the first episode! And that means all the work that's been building for over year gets unleashed RIGHT HERE and it's pretty exciting and terrifying at the same time. So where better to start than with a conversation with a lovely friendly philosopher, discussing his fascination with soul-searching French philosophy? Jonathan Webber is a professor of philosophy at the University of Cardiff. He came to Queen's University Belfast in April 2018 to do a viva voce examination of one of our...