Issues
Issue 51: June/July 2005
EDITORIAL
Thinking Straight
by Rick Lewis
NEWS
News: June/July 2005
Alexandrian Philosophy School Excavated • APA Loses Its Head • Philosophy Joke Contest • High School Philosophy News — News reports by Sue Roberts and Charlotte Rigby
LOGIC
A Logical Vacation
Julia Nefsky on the curiously strong connections between logic and humour.
Analogies, Slippery Slopes & the Prohibition of Cannabis
Robert Davies applies some critical thinking to an old debate.
How To Be Much Cleverer Than All Your Friends (so they really hate you)
Part I: Design for a Superbeing. By Mike Alder.
Symbols Made Simple
A quick and friendly introduction to symbolic logic by Stephen Szanto.
The Liar Lied
Neil Lefebvre and Melissa Schehlein give an intuitive solution to the famous Liar Paradox.
ARTICLES
Is Science Neurotic?
Nicholas Maxwell argues that science misrepresents its own core aim and as a result, suffers from self-deception.
On Probability & Life’s Little Miracles
Phillip Hoffmann on the importance of the astonishingly improbable.
The Epistemology of Ignorance
Peter Rickman on the crucial importance of context.
This Philosophical Life
Chris Fotinopoulos on growing up to become a philosopher, on good and bad education and on Socratic dialogue in high schools.
OBITUARIES
Susan Sontag (1933-2004)
by Charlotte Rigby
CROSSWORD
Crossword
Deiradiotes unveils the fifth of his fiendish philosophical crosswords. You may be relieved to know that the answers are available.
LETTERS
Letters
Mistakes and Table Legs • Beware of the Triads! • Burning the Library • The Misuse of Language • Species and Families • Some Learned Disputations Upon St Thomas Aquinas • Dworkin’s Death is Philosophy’s Loss • So What Is ‘Natural’?
COLUMNS
Dear Socrates
Having returned from the turn of the Fourth Century B.C. to the turn of the Twenty-First A.D., Socrates has eagerly signed on as a Philosophy Now columnist so that he may continue to carry out his divinely-inspired dialogic mission.
The Basis of Morality
Tim Madigan on scientific versus religious explanations of ethical behaviour.
On the Other Hand...
Sometimes the greatest enemy of ethics is ‘ethics’, says Joel Marks.
REVIEWS
History of Jewish Philosophy
Ralph Blumenau considers the long and distinguished history of Jewish Philosophy.
The Myths We Live By by Mary Midgley
Bob Sharpe applauds Mary Midgley’s exposé of some modern myths.
I ♥ Huckabees
John Snider ponders time, space and Shania Twain in this review of I ♥ Huckabees.
FICTION
A Yorkshire Wittgenstein
If Ludwig Wittgenstein had come from Yorkshire, what might his Tractatus have been like? Dr G.E.B. Smith imagines.
The Book of Love
A short story about love by Alistair Fruish.