New Books Network
Philosophy
Chinese Studies November 20, 2020

Zhuangzi and the Becoming of Nothingness

David Chai

Hosted by Alexus McLeod
Zhuangzi and the Becoming of Nothingness (SUNY Press, 2018) offers a radical rereading of the Daoist classic Zhuangzi by bringing to light the role of nothingness in grounding the cosmological …

Subscribe to

Philosophy

on the NBN

RSS Spotify Stitcher Apple
Philosophy November 10, 2020

Games

Agency As Art

C. Thi Nguyen

Hosted by Carrie Figdor
Monopoly, Solitaire, football and Minecraft are all games, but for C. Thi Nguyen they are also an art form – specifically, the art form of agency, our capacity to set …
Philosophy November 2, 2020

Lost in Thought

The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life

Zena Hitz

Hosted by Robert Talisse
We live in a culture that tends to view thought with a degree of suspicion. Thinking is frequently associated with uselessness, idleness, laziness. These suspicions can be somewhat allayed when …
Critical Theory October 20, 2020

Universal Emancipation

Race Beyond Badiou

Elisabeth Paquette

Hosted by Sarah Tyson
What is Badiou’s theory of emancipation? For whom is this emancipation possible? Does emancipation entail an indifference to difference? In Universal Emancipation: Race Beyond Badiou (University of Minnesota Press, 2020) …
Art October 12, 2020

Attentional Engines

A Perceptual Theory of the Arts

William P. Seeley

Hosted by Carrie Figdor
How do we distinguish art from non-art artifacts, and what does cognitive science have to do with it? In Attentional Engines: A Perceptual Theory of the Arts (Oxford University Press …
World Affairs October 1, 2020

No Refuge

Ethics and the Global Refugee Crisis

Serena Parekh

Hosted by Robert Talisse
Discourse in wealthy Western countries about refugees tends to follow a familiar script. How many refugees is a country morally required to accept? What kinds of care and support are …
Philosophy September 10, 2020

Smellosophy

What the Nose Tells the Mind

Ann-Sophie Barwich

Hosted by Carrie Figdor
Smells repel and attract; they bring emotionally charged memories to mind; they guide behavior and thought nonconsciously; they give food much of its taste; and the loss of sense of …
Philosophy September 1, 2020

The Epistemic Innocence of Irrational Beliefs

Lisa Bortolotti

Hosted by Robert Talisse
There is something intuitive about the idea that when we believe, we ought to follow our evidence. This entails that beliefs that are the products of garden varieties of irrationality …
Critical Theory August 20, 2020

Saussure’s Linguistics, Structuralism, and Phenomenology

The Course in General Linguistics after a Century

Beata Stawarska

Hosted by Sarah Tyson
In Saussure’s Linguistics, Structuralism, and Phenomenology: The Course in General Linguistics after a Century (Palgrave Macmillan), Beata Stawarska guides us to consider Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics anew …
Genocide Studies August 10, 2020

On Inhumanity

Dehumanization and How to Resist It

David Livingstone Smith

Hosted by Carrie Figdor
The phenomenon of dehumanization is associated with such atrocities as the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and the Holocaust in World War II. In these and other cases, people are described …
Philosophy July 10, 2020

Games in the Philosophy of Biology

Cailin O’Connor

Hosted by Carrie Figdor
The branch of mathematics called game theory – the Prisoners Dilemma is a particularly well-known example of a game – is used by philosophers, social scientists, and others to explore …
Communications July 1, 2020

Grandstanding

The Use and Abuse of Moral Talk

Justin Tosi and Brandon Warmke

Hosted by Robert Talisse
College courses in Ethics tend to focus on theories of the moral rightness or wrongness of actions. This emphasis sometimes obscures the fact that morality is a social project: part …
Philosophy June 22, 2020

Anaesthetics of Existence

Essays on Experience at the Edge

Cressida J. Heyes

Hosted by Sarah Tyson
How should we think about the relationship between subjectivity and experience? In Anaesthetics of Existence: Essays on Experience at the Edge (Duke University Press, 2020), Cressida J. Heyes approaches this …
Intellectual History June 10, 2020

Ancient Relativity

Plato, Aristotle, Stoics and Skeptics

Matthew Duncombe

Hosted by Carrie Figdor
As a matter of basic metaphysics, we classify individuals in terms of their relations to other things – for example, a parent is a parent of someone, a larger object …
World Affairs June 1, 2020

Free to Move

Foot Voting, Migration, and Political Freedom

Ilya Somin

Hosted by Robert Talisse
When we think of democracy, we typically think of voting; and when we think of voting, we ordinarily have elections and campaigns in minds. In this intuitive sense, voting is …
Drugs, Addiction and Recovery May 11, 2020

Love Drugs

The Chemical Future of Relationships

Brian Earp and Julian Savulescu

Hosted by Carrie Figdor
Consider a couple with an infant (or two) whose lives have become so harried and difficult the marriage is falling apart. Would it be ethical for them to take oxytocin …
Philosophy May 1, 2020

The Meaning of Travel

Philosophers Abroad

Emily Thomas

Hosted by Robert Talisse
Travel has been a topic lurking in the background (at least) of a lot of philosophy. Socrates was keen to remind his jury as well as his interlocutor Phaedrus that …
Performing Arts April 29, 2020

The Phenomenology of a Performative Knowledge System

Dancing with Native American Epistemology

Shay Welch

Hosted by Alexus McLeod
In The Phenomenology of a Performative Knowledge System: Dancing with Native American Epistemology (Palgrave Macmillian, 2019), Shay Welch investigates the phenomenological ways that dance choreographing and dance performance exemplify both …
Philosophy April 14, 2020

Human and Animal Minds

The Consciousness Questions Laid to Rest

Peter Carruthers

Hosted by Carrie Figdor
Do nonhuman animals have phenomenally conscious mental states? For example, do they have the types of conscious experiences we have when, in our case, we experience the smell of cinnamon …
Law March 20, 2020

Socially Undocumented

Identity and Immigration Justice

Amy Reed-Sandoval

Hosted by Sarah Tyson
In Socially Undocumented: Identity and Immigration Justice (Oxford University Press, 2020), Amy Reed-Sandoval reframes the question of immigration justice by focusing on the historical development and lived experiences of socially …