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Dec 24, 2017 —
Robert Wright & Kieran Setiya
- Midlife and coming to terms with who we aren’t
- Is the midlife crisis different for men and women?
- Kieran: Disappointment is a given for the mid-career academic
- There’s more to life than minimizing suffering
- Schopenhauer (and the Buddha): Dissatisfaction is inherent in desire
- Bob suggests a familiar culprit: selfhood
Dec 11, 2017 —
Daniel Kaufman & Bryan Van Norden
- Just how Euro-centric are American philosophy departments, anyway?
- Is racism baked into Western philosophy?
- A brief account of Western dalliances with Eastern thought
- Why new movements in philosophy must kill their ancestors
- Why do philosophy departments stay white? Subtle self-selection, Bryan says
- Is philistinism killing philosophy as a discipline?
Nov 22, 2017 —
Robert Wright & Shaun Nichols
- Pondering free will before Thanksgiving’s excesses
- Shaun: Determinism is too complicated to be intuitive
- The benefits of blame
- Is “free” will just a matter of semantics?
- What game theory experiments tell us about moralistic anger
- Shaun: It’s okay to use determinism to forgive yourself
- Do the “uncaused effects” of quantum physics bear on the free will question?
Sep 8, 2017 —
Josh Summers & Stephen Asma
TAGS altruism | cognitive science | consciousness | Donald Trump | dreaming | empathy | ethics | evolution | meditation | philosophy
Sep 7, 2017 —
Robert Wright & Alison Gopnik
- How a personal crisis brought Alison back to David Hume
- Hume’s (likely) chance encounter with Buddhism
- Lessons learned from 23-year-old Hume’s nervous breakdown
- Which ideas might Hume have borrowed from Buddhism?
- How meditation disrupts the ‘autopilot’ of adulthood
- Is introspection as valuable as neuroscience?
Jul 16, 2017 —
Daniel Kaufman & Crispin Sartwell
- Crispin’s new book Entanglements: A System of Philosophy
- Individuals as knots on a thread
- Crispin’s materialism: The world is real, but it is “all the ways”
- A materialist’s way of understanding social reality
- Perception as being penetrated by the world
- How distinct from the rest of the world are we?
- Knowledge, power, and politics
Jun 28, 2017 —
Robert Wright & Jay Garfield
TAGS Buddhism | enlightenment | ethics | free will | human nature | meditation | philosophy | religion | self
Jun 23, 2017 —
Robert Wright & Massimo Pigliucci
- Massimo’s new book, How to Be a Stoic, and Bob’s forthcoming book, Why Buddhism Is True
- Similarities between Buddhism and Stoicism
- The metaphysics of Stoicism
- Is there a Stoic version of the Buddhist “not-self” doctrine?
- Massimo’s Stoic advice column
- Seneca’s tips for anger management
- Achieving an objective awareness of your emotions
- Using meditation to cope with feelings of failure
TAGS ancient philosophy | Buddhism | human nature | meditation | mental health | mindfulness | philosophy | psychology | self
Jun 22, 2017 —
Josh Summers & Linda Blanchard
TAGS Buddhism | enlightenment | Hinduism | human nature | meditation | mindfulness | philosophy | religion
Jun 6, 2017 —
Daniel Kaufman & Massimo Pigliucci
- “Purpose” in science and morality
- What Aristotle thought about purpose in nature
- Why asking “what is it for?” makes sense in biology but not other sciences
- Does form dictate function?
- Is there a “law” of morality?
- The paths to human flourishing
- Why a “scientific” approach to ethics à la Sam Harris doesn’t work
May 15, 2017 —
Daniel Kaufman & Massimo Pigliucci
- Massimo’s new book How to Be a Stoic
- Why we all need a philosophy of life
- Why Stoicism can appeal to Christians, Buddhists, and atheists alike
- Stoic virtues, disciplines, and areas of study
- Cynics—the monks of Stoicism
- Things within and outside your control
- Massimo’s Stoic version of a Dear Abby column
Apr 25, 2017 —
Josh Summers & David Barash
TAGS biology | Buddhism | free will | fundamentalism | genetics | mind-body problem | mythology | philosophy | religion
Feb 6, 2017 —
Daniel Kaufman & Massimo Pigliucci
- Join the hordes clamoring for Massimo’s forthcoming book!
- The science of ethics
- Is morality baked into our biology?
- Can primates tell us where morality comes from?
- How Kant and moral psychology complement each other
- Nietzsche’s moral philosophy
- Warning: Chimps and bonobos are not hairy proto-humans!
- The trouble with studying morality in infants
TAGS cognitive science | ethics | evolution | human nature | justice | philosophy | psychology | science | tribalism
Feb 2, 2017 —
Robert Wright, Deepak Chopra, & Michael Shermer
TAGS Buddhism | cognitive science | consciousness | enlightenment | Hinduism | human nature | meditation | mysticism | perception | philosophy | physics | psychology | science | self | spirituality
Jan 23, 2017 —
Daniel Kaufman & David Ottlinger
TAGS cognitive science | democracy | free will | gender | human nature | language | philosophy | politics | psychology | violence
Jan 19, 2017 —
Robert Wright & Dale Wright
TAGS Buddhism | Christianity | compassion | consciousness | enlightenment | meditation | mindfulness | perception | philosophy | politics | religion | spirituality | war | Zen
Jan 17, 2017 —
Daniel Kaufman & David Ottlinger
- Dan’s definition of classical liberalism
- Locke’s Second Treatise of Government and Mill’s On Liberty
- Mill and Locke on the individual
- The social contract and political authority
- The group and the individual in the modern world
- How much of a liberal was Mill really?
- Social censorship and the PC debate
- Is Mill’s utilitarianism at odds with his liberalism?
- Classical liberalism in America
Jan 16, 2017 —
Robert Wright & James Currier
TAGS atheism | Buddhism | empathy | family | Hinduism | human nature | identity | meditation | philosophy | religion | ritual | science | spirituality | Sunday Assembly
Dec 18, 2016 —
Nikita Petrov & George Young
- Does Russian thought have anything to contribute to the world?
- Nikolay Fedorov, an eccentric thinker who influenced Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky
- Fedorov’s plan: Immortality for everyone
- “Kinship” as a fundamental property of all matter
- A mass movement for the spiritual unity of humankind
- Vladimir Solovyov’s The Meaning of Love: Sexuality as a path to a Christian utopia
- Christ as the ultimate role model
TAGS Christianity | consciousness | death | evolution | history | human nature | literature | mysticism | occult | philosophy | politics | religion | science | spirituality | technology | the future | transhumanism
Dec 5, 2016 —
Daniel Kaufman & Massimo Pigliucci
- How do ancient and modern philosophy differ?
- Philosophy as a way of life
- How the scientific revolution changed philosophy
- Has modern ethics gone down the wrong path?
- Why did ethicists turn away from virtues and toward moral rules?
- Do universal ethical principles exist?
- What Sam Harris gets wrong about ethics
Nov 27, 2016 —
Nikita Petrov & Robert Place
TAGS ancient philosophy | Buddhism | Christianity | consciousness | enlightenment | meditation | mysticism | mythology | occult | philosophy | politics | psychology | religion | self
Nov 13, 2016 —
Robert Wright & Keith Frankish
TAGS Buddhism | cognitive science | consciousness | ethics | evolution | human nature | memory | mind-body problem | panpsychism | perception | philosophy | psychology | self | technology
Oct 18, 2016 —
Robert Wright & Margaret Wertheim
TAGS Christianity | consciousness | Daniel Dennett | philosophy | physics | religion | science | spirituality
Oct 10, 2016 —
Robert Wright & Jonathan Gold
- The seminal Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu, hero of Paving the Great Way
- Buddhist and Darwinian arguments for reality not being as it seems
- The ‘hyper-reductionism’ of Buddhism
- Meditation and the doctrine of emptiness
- Does the Buddhist view of causality leave room for agency?
- Are the past and the future real?
- Hindu and Buddhist versions of non-duality
TAGS Buddhism | evolution | free will | Hinduism | human nature | meditation | mindfulness | perception | philosophy | psychology | religion | self | spirituality | time
Oct 9, 2016 —
Robert Wright & Wesley Wildman
- Wesley explains “transreligious theology”
- What’s religious about religious naturalism?
- Can science help us understand ultimate reality?
- Bringing religious thought and philosophy together
- Be skeptical of spiritual experiences
- Don’t just love your enemies, understand them
- Wesley: “Purpose” isn’t a useful category
TAGS atheism | Buddhism | Christianity | consciousness | meditation | Paul Tillich | philosophy | physics | psychology | religion | science | spirituality | tribalism
Sep 21, 2016 —
Robert Wright & Erik Braun
- Erik’s book The Birth of Insight and its hero, Ledi Sayadaw
- Three marks of existence: impermanence, suffering, and not-self
- Origins and characteristics of American Buddhism
- How Burmese politics shaped Western Buddhism
- Ledi’s take on how meditation leads to enlightenment
- The ethical side of Buddhist practice
- Erik’s meditation practice
TAGS Buddhism | consciousness | enlightenment | history | human nature | meditation | mind | mindfulness | philosophy | politics | psychology | religion | science | self
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