Issues
Issue 154: February/March 2023
EDITORIAL
Society, Reason and Knowledge
by Rick Lewis
NEWS
News: February/March 2023
Hegel discovery rocks Munich • Tech advances help avoid animal testing • Final frontier for ethics — News reports by Anja Steinbauer
SOCIETY & REASON
One Logic, Or Many?
Owen Griffiths and A.C. Paseau try to count them.
Humans, the Believing Animals
Aristotle says humans are rational animals but Kevin Currie-Knight argues that our capacity for belief is even more fundamental.
World Wide Web or Library of Babel?
Marco Nuzzaco wants us to see the net as something more than a library.
Postmodern Flames In Brazil
Marcos A. Raposo asks if postmodernism can survive science, and vice versa.
6 Signs You’ve Taken The Blue Pill
Lewis Vaughn tells you how you can know whether you’re a conspiracy theorist.
Bricolage: Natural Epistemology
D.E. Tarkington picks up ways of gaining truth, with inspiration from Deleuze, Guattari, and other continentals.
ARTICLES
John Stuart Mill & Harriet Taylor Mill on Equality in Marriage & Family
Lynn Gordon and David Louzecky compare the couple’s conjugal cogitations.
A Solution to the Trolley Problem
Rick Coste says the solution depends upon what we’ll realistically allow.
Virtual Dissolution
Maryna Lazareva says don’t be just a digital fish in the aquarium of social media.
The Theodicies of Allama Iqbal & John Hick
Muhammad Mohsin Masood compares the evolutionary thinking of theologian John Hick and poet-philosopher Muhammad Allama Iqbal.
Evil From The Outside
Martin Jenkins considers alternative explanations of suffering, somewhere between traditional monotheism and new atheism.
Émilie du Châtelet (1706-1749)
Andrea Reichenberger presents a fulcrum of the European Enlightenment.
INTERVIEWS
Rebecca Buxton
Rebecca Buxton co-edited, with Lisa Whiting, The Philosopher Queens: The lives and legacies of philosophy’s unsung women (2020). Reece Stafferton sat down with her to discuss the dilemmas women face, and have faced, when encountering philosophy, which throughout history has been dominated by men.
LETTERS
Letters
Private Wittgenstein Dismissed • Vive La France • Men are for Dogs, Women for Cats • Sporting Chances? • Finding Further Fault With Foucault • Argument? What Argument? • Abandon Deism, or Abandon God? • God, Being & Time • On Creative Regret
COLUMNS
God Bless Karl Marx!
Peter Mullen uncovers the personal secrets of philosophers.
Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821)
by Terence Green
Philosophers on Laziness
by Matt Qvortrup
An Encounter with Radical Darwinitis
Dr Raymond Tallis lances a metaphysical boil.
Philosophy For Everyday Life
Massimo Pigliucci considers the usefulness of philosophy.
REVIEWS
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
Brian J. Collins critiques Yuval Noah Harari’s ethical and political incoherence.
The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture by Yoram Hazony
Brad Rappaport meditates on a humanist reading of the Hebrew Bible.
The Birth of Tragedy by Friedrich Nietzsche
Rose Thompson relates a redeeming myth by Friedrich Nietzsche.
Wittgenstein: Stoppard’s Muse
Fergus Edwards finds Wittgenstein everywhere in Tom Stoppard’s plays, from Jumpers to Leopoldstadt.
CARTOONS
Simon & Finn
by Melissa Felder
Wolfgang Niesielski’s Cartoon
by Wolfgang Niesielski
Chris Gill’s Cartoon (1)
by Chris Gill
Chris Gill’s Cartoon (2)
by Chris Gill
Phil Witte’s Cartoon (1)
by Phil Witte
Phil Witte’s Cartoon (2)
by Phil Witte
Brave Sir Bentham, Utilitarian Knight
A comic by Corey Mohler about the inevitable anguish of living a brief life in an absurd world.
FICTION
The Free Will Exam
Luke Tarassenko’s hero finds himself at a testing time.
The Rime of the Ancient Geometer
by Steven Clayman
The Last Oracle
by Clinton Van Inman