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The simplest questions often have the most complex answers. The Philosopher's Zone is your guide through the strange thickets of logic, metaphysics and ethics.
414 Episodes
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It's easy to say that people who hold extreme antisocial beliefs should be held responsible for those beliefs. But in fact, many extremists operate within what philosophers call impoverished epistemic environments - epistemic "bubbles" and echo chambers whose inhabitants might be ignorant of the truth, or subject to manipulation. But does that mean responsibility for extreme beliefs therefore lies with the wider public? And if so, what are we to do about it?
The 2019 bushfires that devastated the east coast of Australia had one upside: the smoke in the atmosphere made for some stunning sunsets. But is a beautiful sunset caused by bushfire smoke really beautiful? Or consider the blobfish: crowned the world's ugliest animal in 2013 by the Ugly Animal Preservation Society, the blobfish is actually a miracle of evolution, perfectly adapted to its deep-sea environment. But does that feature make it attractive? This week we're looking at how the aesthetic appreciation of nature and scientific knowledge can be at odds with each other.
When it comes to global problems like climate change, it can be easy to feel as though your own individual efforts to stop it are too small to make a difference. But then when you consider the big players whose efforts could make a difference—the corporations, the political parties—making them do the right thing just seems too daunting and complicated a task. What to do when individual efforts seem too small to matter, but structural change seems too big to effect? This week, the authors of a new book talk about taking a middle path.
Digestive disorders are a common source of distress and social anxiety - which might seem to be an odd topic for philosophy, until you start to think about why we attach such stigma, shame and silence to issues of the gut. What does the gut tell us about our own experience of embodiment - and how can disability theory be used to shape healthier attitudes to the gut issues that plague so many of us?
When someone complains about feeling pressure to use 'woke' language, their discomfort is that of a stranger in an unfamiliar world. For people in marginalised communities, travelling between 'worlds' is an everyday experience, albeit not always a voluntary or a safe one. This week we're talking about the language of trans identity, the category of the natural and the experience of 'world' travel.
1We tend to think of time as a universal experience, something that carries us all along in the same direction at the same pace. So it might seem strange to think of time in terms of 'temporalities', different concepts and experiences of time that reflect different cultural values. In Australia, Indigenous temporalities are deeply interwoven with notions of justice, sovereignty and care for country - but these temporalities exist in tension with settler-colonial notions of time.
Once upon a time, what we now call scientists were known as "natural philosophers". These were people who studied the physical universe through observation and logic, using philosophical methods and reasoning. Today, science and philosophy have gone their separate ways, with some scientists rejoicing in the split (the late theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking famously pronounced that "philosophy is dead"). This week we're asking if science and philosophy need each other, and if a reconciliation between the two would benefit both.
Is it possible to have judgement without blame? And what does it mean to say - as Socrates did - that it's better to suffer evil at the hands of others than to be an evildoer oneself? This week we're talking with one of Australia's pre-eminent moral philosophers on questions of judgement, evil, remorse... and why he became a philosopher in the first place.
We routinely refer to "the unconscious" in a way that suggests we all agree on what it means - but in fact, the unconscious is a highly contested domain. For some, it's a subterranean layer of emotions and desires that operate deep below the rational mind, and that drive our behaviour in unpredictable ways. For others, the unconscious barely exists at all, and only as a metaphor or linguistic device. There's certainly no science of the unconscious, no empirical evidence that might show us what it is or how it works. This week we're diving deep into (or perhaps just skating across the surface of) the unconscious, with the great early 20th century psychonauts Ludwig Wittgenstein and Sigmund Freud as our guides.
Buddhism in the West is often thought of as an ethical or philosophical system first and foremost, based on principles of non-self and impermanence, and universalist in its outlook. So it can come as a surprise to find that in countries like Sri Lanka, there exists a strain of Buddhist nationalism that has fierce pride, religious chauvinism and even violence in its history.
Analytic philosophy has often understood itself as being in some sense "above" history - using reason and logic to explore problems that are timeless and apolitical. But this week we're talking with the author of a new book that places analytic philosophy firmly in its social/historical context.
Medical diagnosis these days is not as straightforward as it seems. Doctors still diagnose, but so do a great many people who previously didn't - wellness influencers, misinformation peddlers, users of the many kinds of medical tests available to the public - and then there's the advent of AI and machine learning diagnostics. So what exactly does diagnosis mean today? And what implications do emerging technologies have for the kind of authority traditionally seen as exclusive to the medical profession?
Nationalism is often associated with rightwing politics and anti-immigration sentiment - but is that a necessary connection? This week we're looking at various forms of nationalism, and asking if there's something about the structure of the nation-state itself that fosters an exclusionary attitude to outsiders.
Speech acts - utterances that have the power to make things happen in the world - are increasingly being created by AI, especially in certain workplaces where it's not uncommon to receive orders and instructions from an algorithm. The power of a speech act is often understood as emanating from the intention of its author - but if AI lacks the capacity for intention, how much authority do AI-generated workplace commands really have?
The traditional philosophical view of belief is that it's a rational cognitive affair, evidence based and directed toward truth. According to this account, things like delusion and religious belief are "edge cases", exceptions that prove the rule. But this week we're considering not only that belief may be closely tied to emotion, but that it may actually be a form of emotion itself.
"Workism" is defined as the tendency to put work at the centre of one's identity and life meaning - and according to many recent commentators, it's a bad thing. Workism is said to throw life out of balance, and to expose workists to the risk of deep existential trauma if they lose their job. But according to this week's guest, the arguments against workism don't stack up.
For decades, primatologists believed that primate societies were structured around aggressive alpha males - until a remarkable push from feminist scientists in the 1960s and 70s changed the narrative. So why does the "dominant alpha male" story persist in human culture?
The defeat of the Democrats in last November's Presidential election has prompted much soul-searching on the political left. But according to this week's guest, there's still an important point being missed: the fact that while the left pays close attention to historical injustices committed by the West, it's strangely blind to its own history of complicity with oppression.
100 years ago, Henri Bergson was the most famous philosopher on earth, drawing traffic-stopping crowds to his public lectures and scandalising the French intellectual elite with his popularity among women. His ideas resonated at a time when people were anxious about the rise of new and strange scientific discoveries and technologies - which makes him a thinker well worth exploring in 2025.
What should we think when an academic Humanities journal unsuspectingly publishes a paper that's been written as a hoax, full of fashionable jargon and deliberately specious arguments? Does this demonstrate that the Humanities set a higher value on shallow intellectual trends than on rigorous scholarship - or is there something more nuanced and complicated going on?
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what happened to the Daniel dennett episode I heard just a few days ago?
very interesting episode
I couldn't suppress a chortle when the guest exclaims "Jesus Christ" (cat jumping onto his lap - 18:01)
wonderful show. This guy makes much more sense about why the unbelievable is adhered to. And why there's no point in discussion of the belief. All birds are now drones etc. great fun.
Who is the democratic politician they talk about at 22.40?
Scruton always has some deep insight into the human condition. Enjoyable conversation!
oh my goood! blade runner😭
'Most people' DON'T agree that people should be able to barge in anyone's property. The entire premise of this show is flawed. Also, what 'most people' do is no measure of morality.
All science is is finding an explanation of a an observation in nature. It then extends in to using that understanding and applying it to an objective. Confirming the observation. Perceptional aweness, ability to accurately describe observations and motives and intentions behind the objectives are all governed by one's consciousness and perceptional abilities (which includes technology) Meta-sciences are observations that can only be described with math or a disputed observation.
Fascinating podcast. The issue of how to reconcile the theological Western heritage with thr supposedly secular society we live in is key point to understand every our moral and political choices even nowadays.
Hi I really love the show but the use of jazz as background music is an extremely poor and counter productive choice. Jazz is commonly described as a conversation and for this reason, especially for musicians, it is extremely distracting. For me it is like trying to listen to two unrelated conversations at once. Though I want to listen to the human voice, my attention is continuously being called away to the conversation that is being conducted musically. Please, no more jazz, stick to uniformly ignorable music in the background. To do otherwise is positively ignorant and makes no sense!