philopapers

Carol Nicholson looks at philosophical themes in The Name Of The Rose. (WARNING: CONTAINS PLOT SPOILERS.) Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose (1980) was an international bestseller that sold fifty million copies “which puts it in the league of Harry Potter, and ahead of Gone with the Wind, Roget’s Thesaurus, and To Kill […]

Lawrence J. Hatab’s book is a welcome addition to current philosophical conversations about phenomenology and language alike. In the first half of the book, phenomenology, is the focal point. In the sections entitled “Proto-Phenomenology and the Lived World” and “Disclosure, Interpretation, and Philosophy,” Hatab takes his readers through what it means that phenomenology grants priority

Jessica Logue conducts an investigation into their relationship. For a number of years I have been interested in the question, ‘Does a life’s work make up for a life?’ Initially, what I had in mind is the idea that there’s a line between one’s public and personal life, that those two lives can be separated,

The purpose of this short book is to provide a semantic analysis of sentences of the form “X looks F to S”. Breckenridge says that his purpose is to explain what it means for a visual experience to have a certain character (p. 7), but the focus is really on a semantic analysis. The example

Sam Woolfe gives us a brief history of the idea that reality is unreal. Anyone who has seen The Matrix (1999) will know that the basic premise of the film is that our ‘reality’ is simulated in our minds by a computer intelligence. However, the idea that reality is a simulation is not new. The

In Aristotle’s philosophy, there is no source or principle of evil as there is of good (Metaphysics IX.9, 1051a19-21). Badness does not exist in the category of substance, whereas the supreme god is existence par excellence. Furthermore, there is no contrary to this ‘primary being’ (Metaphysics XII.10, 1075b20-24). How then, does evil get a foothold? Extreme badness is

Krista Rodkey assembles wedding plans from Plato’s advice on romance and parties in the Republic, Laws, Symposium, & Phaedrus. WeddingsAreWe.com is proud to present this exciting new line of boutique wedding services designed in coordination with Plato son of Ariston. Our new product line Platonic Weddings TM brings together the exceptional quality of the WeddingsAreWe.com

Donald Cary Williams studied at Harvard, where he received his PhD in 1924. After a stint at UCLA (1930-1939), he went on to spend the majority of his pre-retirement work-life at his alma mater (1939-1967). In spite of the fact that most of his active career took place in an environment characterized by thoroughly anti-metaphysical,

Nikolaos Gkogkas on the aesthetics of Nelson Goodman. Nelson Goodman (1906-98) was one of the best-known American philosophers of the twentieth century. One of his main philosophical objectives was clarity of the ideas and concepts employed by philosophy. But his work also dealt extensively with aesthetics and the arts. And, being pragmatically-oriented, he thought that

In this timely book, Toby Ord argues that there is a one in six chance that humanity will suffer an existential catastrophe within the next 100 years, and that minimizing this risk should be a major global priority. We live in an age of heightened existential risk, due to such powerful technologies as nuclear weapons,