Issues
Issue 165: December 2024 / January 2025
EDITORIAL
Return to God?
by Rick Lewis
NEWS
News: December 2024 / January 2025
Lost Hegel lecture notes now being digitized • Professor Ted Honderich dead at 91 — News reports by Anja Steinbauer
SOCIAL MEDIA
Plato’s Cave & Social Media
Seán Radcliffe asks, has Plato’s Allegory of the Cave been warning us of social media for 2,400 years?
Trolls, Skeptics & Philosophers
Rosemary Twomey questions our online epistemology.
THE RETURN OF GOD?
Exploring Atheism
Amrit Pathak gives us a run-down of the foundations of modern atheism.
A Critique of Pure Atheism
Andrew Likoudis questions the basis of some popular atheist arguments.
Evil & An Omnipotent, Benevolent God
Zdeněk Petráček looks at the biggest problem facing monotheism.
A God of Limited Power
Philip Goff grasps hold of the problem of evil and comes up with a novel solution.
The Best Possible World, But Not For Us
Mohsen Moghri gives a Godless but principled response to the problem of evil.
Medieval Islam & the Nature of God
Musa Mumtaz meditates on two maverick medieval Muslim metaphysicians.
ARTICLES
Metaphors & Creativity
Ignacio Gonzalez-Martinez has a flash of inspiration about the role metaphors play in creative thought.
Seeing & Knowing
Shashwat Mishra explores the limits of perception via the Molyneux problem.
Perpetuating the Santa Deception
Jimmy Alfonso Licon wonders whether pretending there’s a Santa is naughty or nice.
Volney (1757-1820)
John P. Irish travels the path of a revolutionary mind.
How Can We Make A Computer Conscious?
Each answer below receives a random book. Apologies to the entrants not included.
INTERVIEWS
Robert Stern
Robert Stern talks with AmirAli Maleki about philosophy in general, and Kant and Hegel in particular.
LETTERS
Letters
Thoughts on Thoughts on Thoughts • Get Smarter • Decoding A Decoding • A Swift Rebuttal • Basic Arithmetic • A Message on Meaning
COLUMNS
Xenophanes (c.570-c.478 BCE)
by Terence Green
Philosophers on Dance
by Matt Qvortrup
“I refute it thus”
Raymond Tallis kicks immaterialism into touch.
Seneca On Anger
Massimo Pigliucci tells us how to avoid becoming irate.
REVIEWS
Too Late To Awaken by Slavoj Žižek
T.W.J Moxham reads Slavoj Žižek’s little book of Hegelian horrors.
Barriers to Entailment by Gillian Russell
Christopher John Searle recommends a study of which moves are allowed in logical arguments.
It’s A Wonderful Life
Becky Lee Meadows considers questions of guilt, innocence, and despair in this classic Christmas movie.
CARTOONS
Harley Schwadron’s Cartoon (1)
by Harley Schwadron
Harley Schwadron’s Cartoon (2)
by Harley Schwadron
Simon & Finn
by Melissa Felder
Jonny Hawkins’ Cartoon
by Jonny Hawkins
The Greatest Happiness Possible
A comic by Corey Mohler about the inevitable anguish of living a brief life in an absurd world.
FICTION
Cave Girl Principles
Larry Chan takes us back to the dawn of thought.
The Battle
by Laura Birnbaum