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Daoism

Philosophy News ·

2025/04/19

[New Entry by Chad Hansen on April 19, 2025.] Chinese Daoism is a Chinese philosophy of natural practice structured around a normative focus on dao (道 path, way). This naturalist philosophical project treated dao as a structure of natural possibility for living beings. Unlike similar Western naturalisms, e.g., pragmatism, Daoism’s foil was contemporary: the Confucian-Mohist […]The post Daoism appeared first on Philosophy News.

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Valuation Pipelines in AI

Philosophy News ·

2025/04/18

Let’s be honest. The last AI conference you attended was probably littered with ethical buzzwords (fairness, privacy, accountability, transparency, safety…) whose actual meanings are vague and contentious. Of course, we all think fairness matters—the whole problem is that we disagree on what it involves! Let’s stick with fairness as our example. It’s usually connected to […] The post Valuation Pipelines in AI first appeared on Blog of the APA. The post Valuation Pipelines in AI appeared first on

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Life as a Flow

Philosophy News ·

2025/04/18

Two Truths Approach Each Other What is it to be oneself? Or to live authentically? Psychoanalysis was a first, in terms of the psychological tradition, to incorporate the well-known Delphic maxim “know thyself” which Socrates used as the cornerstone of his philosophy. But D.H. Lawrence in 1922, pointed out: “The final aim is not to […] The post Life as a Flow first appeared on Blog of the APA. The post Life as a Flow appeared first on Philosophy News.

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APA Member Interview: Patrick D. Anderson

Philosophy News ·

2025/04/18

Patrick D. Anderson is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Central State University and editor of the WikiLeaks Bibliography. His research focuses on the history of Africana philosophy and applied ethics and technology. He is the author of Cypherpunk Ethics: A Radical Ethics for the Digital Age(2022) and Anti-colonialism, Ontology, and Semiotics: A Cinematic Exploration […] The post APA Member Interview: Patrick D. Anderson first appeared on Blog of the APA. The post APA Member Interview:

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The Capability Approach

Philosophy News ·

2025/04/17

[Revised entry by Ingrid Robeyns and Morten Fibieger Byskov on April 17, 2025. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography] The capability approach is a theoretical framework that entails two normative claims: first, the claim that the freedom to achieve well-being is of primary moral importance and, second, that well-being should be understood in terms of people’s […] The post The Capability Approach appeared first on Philosophy News.

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Tommaso Campanella

Philosophy News ·

2025/04/17

[Revised entry by Germana Ernst and Jean-Paul De Lucca on April 17, 2025. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography] Tommaso Campanella (Stilo, 1568 – Paris, 1639) was one of the most important philosophers of the late Renaissance. Although his best-known work today is the utopian text La citta del Sole (The City of the Sun), his […] The post Tommaso Campanella appeared first on Philosophy News.

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On Grand Strategy: A Transdisciplinary Analysis of...

Philosophy News ·

2025/04/17

The late American diplomat and grand strategist Henry Kissinger once said, “The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.” However, at a time when American leadership on the international stage is evolving and the future trajectory of global politics is uncertain, geopolitical questions […] The post On Grand Strategy: A Transdisciplinary Analysis of its Interplay with Human Nature, National Security and Strategic Culture first appeared on Blog of the

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Private Guns and Public Safety: Making Sense of the...

Philosophy News ·

2025/04/17

A natural way to understand the conflict between respecting individual rights and advancing the public good is as follows: if a socially worthwhile cause can be realized only by infringing upon the rights of individuals, we must ensure that the benefits to be gained from the cause are worth the sacrifice. This is how discussions […] The post Private Guns and Public Safety: Making Sense of the Tension first appeared on Blog of the APA. The post Private Guns and Public Safety: Making Sense of the

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Why Cicero Matters

Philosophy News ·

2025/04/17

2025.04.7 : View this Review Online | View Recent NDPR Reviews Vittorio Bufacchi, Why Cicero Matters, Bloomsbury Academic, 2023, 175pp., $26.95 (pbk), ISBN 9781350376687. Reviewed by Raphael Woolf, King’s College London It is hard not to warm to a book whose preface begins: ‘This book is about the greatest chickpea in the history of humanity’ […] The post Why Cicero Matters appeared first on Philosophy News.

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Resistance to Evidence

Philosophy News ·

2025/04/17

2025.04.6 : View this Review Online | View Recent NDPR Reviews Mona Simion, Resistance to Evidence, Cambridge University Press, 2024, 216pp., $110.00 (hbk), ISBN 9781009298520. Reviewed by Catharine Saint-Croix, University of Minnesota It is easy to dismiss conspiracy theorists and their ilk as irrational or dull, lost to the normative sway of the epistemic. Mona […] The post Resistance to Evidence appeared first on Philosophy News.

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Hacía una crítica ética de la historia de la...

Philosophy News ·

2025/04/12

2025.04.5 : View this Review Online | View Recent NDPR Reviews Fanny Del Río, Hacía una crítica ética de la historia de la filosofía en México desde la perspectiva de género, Editorial NUN, 2020, 92pp., $11.00 (pbk), ISBN 9786079960056. Reviewed by Amy Reed-Sandoval, University of Nevada, Las Vegas In her book Hacía una crítica ética de la […]The post Hacía una crítica ética de la historia de la filosofía en México desde la perspectiva de género appeared first on Philosophy News.

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The Classical Upaniṣads: A Guide

Philosophy News ·

2025/04/12

2025.04.4 : View this Review Online | View Recent NDPR Reviews Signe Cohen, The Classical Upaniṣads: A Guide (Guides to Sacred Texts), Oxford University Press, 2024, 280pp., $24.95 (pbk), ISBN 9780197654163. Reviewed by Parimal G. Patil, Harvard University Not every book of interest to philosophers is itself a work of philosophy; nor does every such book […] The post The Classical Upaniṣads: A Guide appeared first on Philosophy News.

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Nature, Beauty and Meaning

Philosophy News ·

2025/04/12

The beauty of a painting of a flower, mountain or sunset normally owes to how it depicts its object, to its rendering of nature. But what of the flower, mountain and sunset themselves? To what do they owe their beauty? They do not, after all, depict, represent or render anything. A familiar answer is that they are beautiful solely in virtue of pleasure or delight taken in their colours and forms. But, aside from other defects, this answer does little justice to the importance that natural beauty has

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Friedrich Schiller

Philosophy News ·

2025/04/11

[Revised entry by Lydia L. Moland on April 11, 2025. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography] Johann Christoph Friedrich Schiller (1759 – 1805) is best known for his immense influence on German literature. In his relatively short life, he authored an extraordinary series of dramas, including The Robbers, Maria Stuart, and the trilogy Wallenstein. He was […] The post Friedrich Schiller appeared first on Philosophy News.

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Asking Effective Questions, Steven M. Cahn

Philosophy News ·

2025/04/10

In an oral examination, faculty members are probing the breadth and depth of a student’s knowledge. The usefulness of the format, however, depends on the quality of the questions. A most Ineffective one begins with an elaborate preamble, then goes on at length to raise multiple issues. Suppose, for example, a student working on the […] The post Asking Effective Questions, Steven M. Cahn first appeared on Blog of the APA. The post Asking Effective Questions, Steven M. Cahn appeared first on

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Navigating the Ethics and Ontology of Human...

Philosophy News ·

2025/04/10

Have you ever played the 1970s-era arcade game Pong? It’s basically primitive computer tennis: you hit a moving dot back and forth across the screen using a scrollable vertical line meant to function as a paddle. You win if you reach ten points before your opponent does. Even if you’ve never played, I expect you get […] The post Navigating the Ethics and Ontology of Human Neuron-Microchip Biocomputers first appeared on Blog of the APA. The post Navigating the Ethics and Ontology of Human

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Medical Bias as Hierarchy

Philosophy News ·

2025/04/10

Just ten hours after giving birth to her second child via C-section, Kira Johnson died of haemorrhagic shock at Cedars-Sinai hospital, surrounded by some of the best medical care providers in the world. Why did Kira bleed to death after a routine surgery, despite constant care around the clock? After her husband, Charles Johnson IV, […] The post Medical Bias as Hierarchy first appeared on Blog of the APA. The post Medical Bias as Hierarchy appeared first on Philosophy News.

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Towards a Democratic Economy

Philosophy News ·

2025/04/09

A strange cognitive dissonance is pervading our social life: we regard it as our inalienable right to govern ourselves democratically in one social sphere, while in another we suddenly surrender these very rights unquestioningly. This shift occurs the moment we step through the factory door. Both the state and the economy imply government over others, […] The post Towards a Democratic Economy first appeared on Blog of the APA. The post Towards a Democratic Economy appeared first on Philosophy

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Medieval Theories of Future Contingents

Philosophy News ·

2025/04/09

[Revised entry by Gloria Frost and Simo Knuuttila on April 9, 2025. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography] The philosophical debate concerning the truth-value of singular statements about future contingents derives from Chapter 9 of Aristotle’s treatise De interpretatione (Peri hermeneias). In Chapters 7 – 8, Aristotle deals with the contradictory pairs of assertoric statements which […] The post Medieval Theories of Future Contingents appeared first on Philosophy News.

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Kant vs Hume: Can We Access Reality?

Philosophy News ·

2025/04/09

This post was originally published by the Institute of Art and Ideas and is republished here with permission as part of the Blog of APA’s partnership with the Institute. David Hume and Immanuel Kant were almost contemporaries, but they reached radically different conclusions on the nature of reality and our ability, or lack thereof, to access it. […] The post Kant vs Hume: Can We Access Reality? first appeared on Blog of the APA. The post Kant vs Hume: Can We Access Reality? appeared first on

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