Tabla de contenidos para June - July 2025 en Philosophy Now

“To err is human, but to really screw things up requires a computer.” Anon. We are caught between heaven and hell. The skies are full of portents of doom. Oh wait, no, those are explosive AI-controlled drones being released from a ‘mother ship’ deployment aircraft. A few years back when we reported that somebody had started a UN-registered organisation called the Campaign Against Killer Robots, the name seemed cute. No longer. Our world is going all digital and this brings the questions crowding in. Is it fair? Is it safe? Will AI take our jobs? How will we find meaning in this new reality? Are we just sitting around drinking cocktails as the world ends? Better to think about where we are going, what AI cannot do, how we can…

‘More songs about Buildings and Food’ was the title of a 1978 album by the rock band Talking Heads. It was about all the things rock stars normally don’t sing about. Pop songs are usually about variations on the theme of love; tracks like Rose Royce’s 1976 hit ‘Car Wash’ are the exception. Philosophers, likewise, tend to have a narrow focus on epistemology, metaphysics and trifles like the meaning of life. But occasionally great minds stray from their turf and write about other matters, for example buildings (Martin Heidegger), food (Hobbes), tomato juice (Robert Nozick), and the weather (Lucretius and Aristotle). This series of Shorts is about these unfamiliar themes; about the things philosophers also write about. Philosophers on Holidays It’s time to pack the sunscreen. Don’t forget to take…

Artificial intelligence is becoming an ubiquitous companion in our lives and institutions. As we strive for greater convenience and efficiency, we’re increasingly outsourcing our intellectual activities in judging, reasoning, and decision-making to what Bruno Liebrucks called ‘automated thinking’. In former times, it was believed that the divine intellect alone could comprehend a large totality at one glance. But nowadays, any AI user can feel like a voluntaristic deity, capable of commanding entire worlds of data at will. AI is especially appealing when thinking is hard work – as it is in education, and particularly at university. In subjects involving large amounts of text, using AI seems to offer a convenient shortcut. But this is only a seductive semblance. Cutting through this illusion requires a quite developed insight into the point…

Recently at Oxford University’s Sheldonian Theatre you gave a lecture called: ‘Words, Words, Words: The Lure of Language’. Where did your interest in the sound of words come from? Well, I answer that very question in the lecture! Indeed most of it is taken up with telling the story of the time I happened on a line that hit me over the head like a sandbag when I was 11 or 12. A line from Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. This love of language was reinforced by reading and rereading my WWW of early literary heroes: Wilde, Wodehouse and Waugh. Your lecture was a great showcase of its subject and, leaving, there was real excitement about using language. Clearly, it’s something we can all appreciate. Nonetheless, even in…

Liberalism as a Way of Life “THAT’S BECAUSE YOU’RE a liberal!” my self-identified ‘progressive’ colleague said to me with slight contempt. We were talking about the importance of the right to conscience even when it means the right to hold noxious – maybe racist or sexist – views. As a liberal, I loathe sexism and racism just as she does; but equally, as a liberal, I loathe putting moral restrictions on what people may believe or enact in their private lives. Yet to my progressive colleague, these views are antique and liberalism is akin to not taking a stand on much of anything, thus letting individual rights run roughshod over social justice. She’s not alone. Liberalism is encountering pretty serious resistance these days. Liberals expect it from the conservative right,…

This is the third time in this column I have written about – or more specifically, criticised – Philip Goff’s ideas. In Issue 135, I demonstrated (at least to my own satisfaction) that panpsychism, as set out in Professor Goff’s 2019 book Galileo’s Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness, did not make sense. Then in Issue 162, I argued against the claim advanced in his Why? The Purpose of the Universe (2023) that the intrinsic improbability of a planet able to support life was evidence for a cosmic purpose. Now I am at it again. You may think that this amounts to literary stalking, or even persecution. That may be the case. But it is also a tribute to the intrinsic interest of Goff’s ideas, the lucidity with…

Alfie Bown Alfie Bown is Senior Lecturer in Digital Media at King’s College London. His most recent book, Post-Comedy, explores the political and cultural changes in the history of laughter. He is also author of Dream Lovers, on dating and technology. His main project is the psychoanalytic pamphlet house and monthly reading group Everyday Analysis, which is always looking for new members. Nura Hossainzadeh Nura Hossainzadeh is a research fellow in the Department of Political Science at San Francisco State University and a Master’s student in Information and Data Science at UC Berkeley. She received her PhD in political theory from UC Berkeley, focusing on comparative political theory and Islamic political thought. Amir Haj-Bolouri Amir Haj-Bolouri is a full professor of Informatics with a specialization in Work-integrated Learning at University…

Imagine a self-driving car speeding down a narrow road when suddenly a child runs into its path. The car must decide: swerve and risk the passenger’s life, or stay the course and endanger the child? This real-world dilemma echoes the classic ‘trolley problem’ in ethics, and highlights the ethical challenges of AI. Similarly, AI systems in healthcare diagnose diseases and recommend treatments, sometimes making life-or-death decisions. But can machines truly understand right from wrong? What happens when they make mistakes, or reflect their creators' biases? As AI integrates into our lives, it will both transform how we work and challenge our understanding of morality. From facial recognition to loan approvals, AI makes decisions once reserved for humans; yet machines lack empathy, context, or moral reasoning. This raises profound questions: Can…

The so-called Liar Paradox – statements like ‘everything I say is false’ – has been endlessly debated by philosophers from Ancient Greece and India to the twentieth century. The paradox is that if this statement is true then it is false (everything I say is not false), and vice versa. Instead of getting lost in the endless network of arguments and counter-arguments, I will turn to Jacques Lacan (1901-81), who offers a unique solution by way of distinguishing between the content of an enunciation and the subjective stance implied by this enunciation: between the content of what you are saying and the stance implied by what you are saying. The moment we introduce this distinction, we immediately see that a statement like ‘everything I say is false’ can itself be…

Comedy has become a pressure point for contemporary culture. It flares up in debates about censorship, cancellation, progressivism, and even fascism. An obvious example would be the now infamous Oscars ceremony at which Will Smith slapped Chris Rock for making a joke about his wife – on a stage that’s renowned for its ‘roasting’ humour. This provoked anxiety among those on stage and those off it, leading to arguments about the overstepping of boundaries. Other examples might include recent controversies over Ricky Gervais and Dave Chappelle, or the fallout over Paul Currie ejecting a guest who refused to applaud the Palestine flag. If once comedy was a shared experience of relief – a departure from norms and cultural pressures – today it seems to be a nexus of social tension.…

Humane Responses DEAR EDITOR: In response to James R. Robinson’s ‘Empathy & Sympathy’ in Issue 167, I contend that empathy is essential to a moral philosophy, both in theory and practice. For example, it’s implicit in Confucius’s rule of reciprocity, “Don’t do to others what you wouldn’t want done to yourself” and Jesus’s Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you’d have them do to you.” Empathy is a requisite for the implementation of either. And as both a reader and writer of fiction, I know that stories wouldn’t work without empathy. Indeed, one study revealed that reading fiction improves empathy. The tests used ‘letter box’ photos of eyes to assess the subject’s ability to read the emotion of the characters behind the eyes (New Scientist, 25 June 2008). The dependency…

ROBERT SAPOLSKY IS that rare thing in modern academia, a true polymath. This is evidenced by his multiple and simultaneously held professorships, which range from Anthropology to Neurology, as well as his willingness to stick his nose into what philosophers often consider to be their business. In this case, that business is the debate around free will. Sapolsky espouses a ‘hard’, if non-reductive, form of determinism – the idea that all physical activity is determined by previous physical activity, including in the brain, and so there is no free choice. From the outset, Sapolsky dismisses outright the classical notion of ‘free will’, which is typically associated with a ‘dualist’ metaphysics – the claim that reality consists of both a causally-determined physical realm and a non-physical mental realm in which events…

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• Renowned Ethicist Alasdair MacIntyre Dies • Thoughts About Happiness • Sex versus Gender in the Courts Valentin-Yves Mudimbe has died The Congolese philosopher and professor of literary studies Valentin-Yves Mudimbe has died. Having emigrated to the United States for political reasons in 1979, Mudimbe lectured at Haverford College as well as Stanford and Duke Universities. Known mainly for his influential 1988 book The Invention of Africa, Mudimbe challenged the assumptions and the epistemological basis of historical accounts of Africa. Mudimbe died on 22 April 2025 at the age of 83. Spain Honours Byung-Chul Han The Korean-German philosopher Byung-Chul Han has been awarded the Princess of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities 2025. The award is to honour “the work of fostering and advancing the sciences and disciplines considered humanistic…

Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) is considered the perfect technology for extending the experiences we have in the physical world. Through it, we can represent and simulate the past, the present and the future. And through the rapid development of Artificial Intelligence, modern VR experiences are not only realistically convincing, but also smart. As such, IVR experiences can increasingly be a creative product of human imagination. Moreover, the IVR experience is ‘immersive’ in the way that it turns the user into a ‘being-in-the-virtual-world’ – that is, an embodied avatar, dynamically present, and capable of accomplishing ‘magic’ – teleportation across virtual worlds, walking through walls, hiding inside furniture, or generally, exercising the god-like power of being able to define the (virtual) reality around us. The immersive effect is arguably dependent on the…

It is often said that becoming a parent is a profound transition. This transition feels different to everyone, since it occurs within the particular context of each person’s life. For me, it felt like a jolt from the abstract to the concrete; from the philosophical to the everyday; from the freedom to speculate, to the need to make decisions. When I had my first child, I was teaching political theory at Princeton, and when I had my second, I was teaching in a ‘great books’ program at Stanford. So I moved abruptly from spending my days thinking about the big ideas – justice, freedom, Islamic theories of government, love in Christian mystic writings, love in medieval Italian poetry – to dwelling in the more physical dimensions of life: changing diapers…

So, the other day I told a jokeWhich they said wasn’t woke:I thought, ‘It’s my right to speak my mind.Even if it’s not completely kind!’ When does banter go too far?Do we need a Comedy Czar?The absurd, the dark, or satire,If someone laughs, does it matter?Before we cancel in great amounts,Is it only intention that counts? It isn’t just humans; as far as we can tell,Primates are wired to laugh as well.Science and philosophy theorise,Is that always necessary or wise? Is comedy just a form of recreation;Or solace in an awful situation?A way of building connection;Familial bonds and affection?An antidote to power and vanity;An excuse to indulge profanity;Or a confection of surreal insanity?A way of diffusing spite and hate?Is its absence a psychopathic trait? Therapeutic or subversive,One thing’s for sure,…

In the tumultuous political landscape of ancient Rome, few stories better illustrate the ideal of moral courage than that of Helvidius Priscus, a Roman senator who faced Emperor Vespasian with remarkable fortitude. During Vespasian’s reign (69-79 CE), Priscus found himself in a direct confrontation with imperial power. When ordered not to attend a Senate meeting in order not to potentially embarrass Vespasian with a public confrontation, Priscus responded with characteristic clarity: “You have the power to disqualify me as a senator, but as long as I am one, I’m obliged to attend meetings.” The Emperor, seemingly willing to compromise, permitted his attendance, but demanded his silence. Priscus, however, understood that his duty transcended mere physical presence: “Don’t ask me for my opinion and I’ll keep quiet.” When Vespasian insisted he…

Hirayama (Kôji Yakusho), the Japanese toilet cleaner protagonist of Wim Wenders’ 2023 Academy Award Winning Film Perfect Days, is the anti-Sisyphus. Sisyphus, you may recall, is the hero of Albert Camus’ philosophical essay, The Myth of Sisyphus (1942). According to the Ancient Greek myth Camus draws up on, Sisyphus was condemned by Zeus to rolling a huge stone up a hill every day, only to have it roll back down to the bottom of the hill each evening. Annoying, right? For Camus, Sisyphus’s unflagging yet futile attempts to hoist that rock to the summit represents the essence of human life, which is its absurdity. For Camus, life’s absurdity is the result of a conflict between our need for meaning and the world’s indifference to us. ‘Absurdity’ signifies our collective inability…