Issues
Issue 87: November/December 2011
EDITORIAL
Against Stupidity
by Rick Lewis
NEWS
News: November/December 2011
Why So Few Women Philosophers? • Procrastinationist wins Ig-Nobel Prize • Internet will eat your brain shock claim — News reports by Sue Roberts
BRAINS & MINDS
Consciousness, Freewill and Language
Michael Langford talks about the language we use to talk about the mind and brain.
Ethics On The Brain
Vincent Di Norcia theorizes how morality is generated by how the brain works.
Philosophy of Mind: An Overview
Laura Weed takes us on a tour of the mind/brain controversy.
The Minds of Machines
Namit Arora considers the complexity of consciousness and its implications for artificial intelligence.
ARTICLES
Come to our Party!
Philosophy Now’s 20th Anniversary Philosophy Festival
Gay Rights: A Question of Fairness
John Draeger considers pairing and parenting; discomfort and discrimination.
Greening the Gadfly
Paul Keeling on why we need environmental philosophy now.
Marshall McLuhan on the Mobile Phone
Peter Benson sees a prophet’s message come to fulfilment through net and cell.
What is Prudent Pragmatism?
William Bluhm & Robert Heineman show how to do ethics without foundations.
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)
Alistair MacFarlane sketches Wittgenstein’s life with words.
CROSSWORD
Crossword
Our forty-first phalanx of philosophical felicities flatly formed by Deiradiotes.
INTERVIEWS
Alexander McCall Smith
Alexander McCall Smith is a former professor of medical law and now a popular novelist. Patricia Cleveland-Peck asks him about his interest in philosophy.
Michael Graziano
Michael Graziano is a Professor of Neuroscience at Princeton. Ernest Dempsey asks him about the mind and the brain.
LETTERS
Letters
Trolley Follies • Having Trouble With Rickman • Religion Between The Lines • Painting Pictures, Painting Selves • Shakespearian Emissions
COLUMNS
Moral Pornography
by Joel Marks
Remembering Marshall McLuhan
Tim Madigan meditates on the man behind the message.
On Points
Raymond Tallis pinpoints the mathematics/reality divide.
REVIEWS
Dilthey: Selected Writings
Rebecca Hansen reviews a book of selected translations from Wilhelm Dilthey.
On What Matters by Derek Parfit
James Alexander ponders Derek Parfit’s new work.
The Isabel Dalhousie novels of Alexander McCall Smith
Patricia Cleveland-Peck detects philosophy in the books of Alexander McCall Smith.
13 Conversations About One Thing
James Okapal has 13 open questions about happiness.
FICTION
Christmas Party Philosophy
Tim Wilkinson sure knows how to have a good time.