Issues
Issue 168: June/July 2025
EDITORIAL
AI Think Therefore AI Am
by Rick Lewis
NEWS
News: June/July 2025
Renowned Ethicist Alasdair MacIntyre Dies • Thoughts About Happiness • Sex versus Gender in the Courts — News reports by Anja Steinbauer
HUMOUR
Is Laughter Liberating or Cruel?
Alfie Bown investigates different categories of laughter.
The Functions of Humor in Writing
Omar Sabbagh contemplates the use of humor, in fiction, and in life.
DIGITAL PHILOSOPHY
Ethics for the Age of AI
Mahmoud Khatami asks, can machines make good moral decisions?
Rescuing Mind from the Machines
Vincent J. Carchidi agrees with Descartes and friends that our ability to use language creatively distinguishes our minds from computers.
Studying Smarter with AI?
Max Gottschlich on sense and nonsense when using AI in academia.
Affirmative Action for Androids
Jimmy Alfonso Licon asks, when should we prioritise android rights?
Is VR Meaningful Escapism?
Amir Haj-Bolouri enquires into possible meaning through technology.
ARTICLES
Welcome to the Civilization of the Liar’s Paradox
Slavoj Žižek uncovers political paradoxes of lying.
What Simone de Beauvoir Got – And Didn’t Get – About Motherhood
Nura Hossainzadeh argues that motherhood is both physical and transcendent.
Young & Meaningful
Elise Beal notes a Japanese philosophy of finding pleasure in the small things, and matches it with an online trend.
Anand Vaidya (1976-2024)
Manjula Menon on the short but full career of a ‘disciplinary trespasser’.
INTERVIEWS
Stephen Fry
Perhaps unshockingly for someone who is an actor, broadcaster, comedian, director, narrator and writer, Stephen Fry has a deep interest in words and how we use them. After hearing him lecture on that subject, Marcel Steinbauer-Lewis asked him about Artificial Intelligence and how it connects with the extraordinary lure of language.
LETTERS
Letters
Humane Responses • A Journey Around Tallis • Capital in the Capitol • Caves, Chambers & Bubbles • Poet’s Corner
COLUMNS
Excusing God
Raymond Tallis highlights the problem of evil.
Helvétius (1715-1771)
by Terence Green
Philosophers on Holidays
by Matt Qvortrup
The Importance of the Purple
Massimo Pigliucci looks for threads of integrity in a morally compromised world.
REVIEWS
Liberalism as a Way of Life by Alexandre Levebvre
We search for freedom this issue, as Kevin Currie points out the many varieties of liberalism.
Determined by Robert Sapolsky
Philip Badger questions Robert Sapolsky’s determinism.
Perfect Days
Thomas E. Wartenberg focuses on a path to happiness.
FICTION
It’s Just A Joke
by Christine Jefferys
René Descartes Loses His Phone
Judah Crow follows Descartes as he seeks that which one must have always.
CARTOONS
Guto Dias’ Cartoon
by Guto Dias
Lao Maintenance
by Juno Browning
Jon Carter’s Cartoon
by Jon Carter
Simon & Finn
by Melissa Felder
Sanko and Gibson’s Cartoon
by Sanko and Gibson