Thought experiment 9: Mary’s Room
The Australian philosopher Frank Jackson used the tale of a colour-deprived prodigy to argue for a world beyond the physical.…
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Thought experiment 8: The Experience Machine
In the 1970s Robert Nozick imagined immersive, tech-simulated pleasure as a negation of what it means to be human.
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David Rieff foretells the fate of woke
Rieff offers the American left a path beyond the culture war and towards a more generous, genuine humanism.
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Judith Butler Q&A: “I’d like more joy, more music, a new political regime”
The philosopher and gender theorist on Hegel, Kafka, and getting lost at the circus.
By Thought experiment 7: The Veil of Ignorance
Rawlsian social justice is the bedrock of contemporary liberalism.
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The race to God Mode
China and America’s AI battle is about more than just tech supremacy – it’s about controlling the future.
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The brutal world of the Brothers Grimm
The folklorists’ fairy tales, in which moral laws are suspended and violence abounds, were no stranger than the progressive fantasies…
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Agnes Callard: “Socrates wants us to reflect on the oddity of our sexual practices”
The public philosopher on open relationships, free speech and why protests fail.
By Thought experiment 6: Twin Earth
Different understandings of semantics expose the limitations of language.
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Notes on the ineffable
How the psychologist and philosopher William James defined “mystical” experience.
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Assisted dying is not about individual suffering, but about the value we place on all human life
Compassion leads one to feel with another person. But that does not tell us what is right.
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Thought Experiment 5: Wittgenstein’s Beetle
Language can function only because there are public criteria for acceptable usage.
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Thought Experiment 4. Becoming a Vampire
Entering into a transformative experience means making a decision about what kind of “you” you want to be.
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Fredric Jameson’s capitalist horror show
We still live in the postmodern landscape defined by the Marxist thinker, who died this month.
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Thought experiment 3: The Gettier Problem
How the American philosopher Edmund Gettier’s argument complicates our understanding of what constitutes knowledge.
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Thought experiment 2: The Unconscious Violinist
How the American ethicist Judith Jarvis Thomson’s defence of bodily autonomy can be transposed on to the right to abortion.
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Elon Musk wants us to have more children
Is demography the new front line of the culture wars?
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Slavoj Žižek’s war with the left
At 75, the “rock star” intellectual has alienated many. But is his politics a strange source of sanity?
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Thought experiment 1: The Chinese Room
The American philosopher John Searle’s defence of human intelligence now has to confront today’s sophisticated AI algorithms.
By Welcome to the realm of the thought experiment
What do a hurtling trolley, a shallow pond and a famous violinist all have in common?
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