The idea of a universal basic income (UBI) is currently being much-discussed in Europe and elsewhere, in part–or even largely–because of Rutger Bregman’s extremely readable and well-argued presentation of the UBI idea in Utopia for Realists. Here are Bregman’s ideas and arguments in a nutshell. UBI means that every adult person gets a decent living … [continue reading]
Ten Brilliant But Professionally Neglected Philosophical Ideas Since 1977.
I. Introduction In a recent edgy essay, “Why Hasn’t Professional Philosophy Produced Any Important Ideas in the Last 40 Years?” I argued that although it’s almost certainly the case that philosophers have produced some brilliant ideas, i.e, philosophical ideas that manifest great intellectual creativity, insight, and originality, open up a new way of looking at … [continue reading]
Collective Wisdom, Collective Stupidity, Professional Philosophy, and Open Philosophy.
1. Collective intelligence–see, e.g., this and this–is an emergent property of human or otherwise animal mindedness, that is constituted by the cognitive capacities and cognitive activities of a group of (e.g.) people as a group, especially including group-reasoning, group brain-storming and innovation, the social production of written texts and other kinds of social media, group deliberation, … [continue reading]
Real Philosophy Re-Discovered 6: Samuel Alexander’s “Space, Time, and Deity.”
1. Introduction, by Z Samuel Alexander (1859-1938) was an Australian-born British philosopher, and the first Jewish fellow of a college at Cambridge or Oxford–in his case, Lincoln College, Oxford. Later he held a professorial Chair of philosophy at the “red brick,” politically socialist, or at least left-leaning, religiously tolerant University of Manchester. I don’t know … [continue reading]
Why Hasn’t Professional Philosophy Produced Any Important Ideas in the Last 40 Years?
1. By a brilliant philosophical idea I mean a philosophical idea that manifests great intellectual creativity, insight, and originality, opens up a new way of looking at a large domain of concepts, facts, phenomena, theories, and/or other information, and would have significant impact and influence if it were widely disseminated and adopted. And by an … [continue reading]
Standing United with APP, and The APP Dilemma Revisited.
APP Editors’ Note: Ron de Weijze and Andreas Keller are independent philosophers living and working in Europe. YP is a young philosopher working on her BA somewhere in North America or Europe. RTP is a recently tenured associate professor of philosophy teaching at a public university somewhere in North America. And AG is an independent … [continue reading]
Socrates Tenured.
APP Editors’ Note: The following is an excerpt from Socrates Tenured: The Institutions of 21st Century Philosophy–APP_socrates_tenured_poster_aug16 Universally venerated by contemporary philosophers, the actual philosophic practice of Socrates is rejected or ignored. Socrates could never get a position today in a philosophy (or any other) department. Socrates Tenured offers an account, and a critique, of … [continue reading]
Nudging as Smiley-Faced Coercion: The Systematic Obstruction of Enlightenment.
They just took your natural impulses and desires and they pushed them, reinforced them, so you acted quite naturally, only you acted in the ways that they wanted. The Marquis began to wonder if he had ever met this person before, and was trying to remember exactly where, when he was tapped gently on the … [continue reading]
The Continuist Hypothesis.
For the philosopher is confronted not by one complex many-dimensional picture, the unity of which, such as it is, he must come to appreciate; but by two pictures of essentially the same order of complexity, each of which purports to be a complete picture of man-in-the-world, and which, after separate scrutiny, he must fuse into … [continue reading]
How To Think About Voting in This Presidential Election.
One of the many benefits of not being a professional academic philosopher is that you can pursue real philosophy as a full-time, lifetime calling without having either a job controlled by the Professional Academic State (aka the PAS) or any professional academic social status. This means that because you have neither a PAS-controlled job that … [continue reading]