Free Will (Part 2)
Philosopher Daniel Dennett continues his discussion of free will. While we may never have the absolute free will that comes from determining agent causation, Professor Dennett suggests that, if we are able to act in an i..
Free Will (Part I)
Philosopher Daniel Dennett talks about free will, which he says is probably "the most accessible and grabbing of all the philosophical problems." He notes that most people are worried that if they don't have free will, t..
Functionalism
Philosopher Hilary Putnam talks about his early idea about the mind, which he says actually consists of two ideas. One goes back to Aristotle and essentially argues that the mind is not an object but, rather, a system of..
Getting in Contact with Reality
Philosopher Hubert Dreyfus contrasts differing views of reality and how we encounter it, as expressed by Martin Heidegger and Jean Paul-Sartre. He points out that where Heidegger sees meaning--as in objects in the enviro..
Global Justice
Focusing on the nation-state as the prism through which major theories of justice are generally considered, Philosopher Martha Nussbaum discusses what she calls the "...accident of birth into one nation rather than anoth..
God, Design, and Cosmology
Philosopher Daniel Dennett looks at arguments for the existence of God which are based on the need to explain how the replicating entities required for natural selected came to be.
Greed
Philosopher Martha Nussbaum talks about the theory of rational self-interest. She observes that one good thing about greed is that it "sometimes tends to distract people from even worse things, like militant ethnocentric..
Hegel and the Goals of Life
Philosopher Charles Taylor discusses Hegel's beliefs about life's goals. Professor Taylor explains that Hegel saw human beings as intrinsically rational, which he linked very closely to freedom. In fact, Professor Taylor..
Heidegger and Kierkegaard
Philosopher Hubert Dreyfus contrasts the ways in which Martin Heidegger and Soren Kierkegaard answer the question what it is to be a self. For Heidegger, according to Professor Dreyfus, who you are is the social role tha..
History of Scientific Ideas, The
Philosopher Stephen Toulmin talks about the ways in which terminology and meaning change over time in the sciences. He gives the example of Leibniz insisting that "...the processes of the physical world should be mechani..