Issues
Issue 67: May/June 2008
EDITORIAL
Our Furry Friends
by Rick Lewis
NEWS
News: May/June 2008
Kripke Gets Centred • Wittgenstein Gets Clubbed • Ayn Rand Gets Funding • Simon Blackburn Gets Top U.S. Honour — News reports by Sue Roberts
ANIMALS
“I knew him by his voice”: Can Animals Be Our Friends?
Stephen Clark examines how far Aristotle’s concept of friendship might apply to animals, among themselves and between us and them.
Crabs
Peter Royle shows no vexation over Sartre’s crustacean fixation.
Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner? The controversial Peter Singer!
Charlotte Laws cautiously chows down with the Defender of Animals.
Hunting For Consistency
Angus Taylor argues that to be consistent, we must either exclude some humans from the moral community, or else include at least some animals.
Plato is my dog, yo!: Dogs, Love and Truth
Jeremy Barris enlists the help of Plato, Ortega and pragmatist philosophy to argue that love at its deepest is our connection with ultimate truth, and that this connection is found in our love for our dogs.
ARTICLES
Did Duchamp’s Urinal Flush Away Art?
Roy Turner scorns the fact that after Duchamp, critics have questioned the status of ‘traditional’ Western art, making the act of designation the sole determinant of art.
In Defense Of Dueling
Ryan Ruby intellectually attacks, feints and parries in favour of legally reinstating the duel as a means of settling personal disputes.
The Problem With Zombies
Rebecca Hanrahan says that just because you can imagine zombies doesn’t mean they’re possible, or that they can tell us anything about consciousness.
The Wood That Finds Itself A Violin
Yahia Lababidi contemplates the implacable calling to produce great works.
Is There A God?
The following readers’ answers to this central philosophical question each win a random book. The harvest was abundant, unsurprisingly; just sorry we couldn’t fit you all in. The votes were, loosely, Yes: 52%, No: 31%, and Don’t Know: 17%. So we’ll start with a ‘Yes’.
It Shouldn’t Happen to a Philosopher
Fiona Dalzell finds it hard being a philosophical vet.
CROSSWORD
Crossword
Our twenty-first frenzy of fiddled philosophical facts fantastically forced into a frame by Deiradiotes.
LETTERS
Letters
Rand Stand • Editing Corrupts • Transcendental Truth • Death of Caution • Ecology and Mythology • Population Points • Catching Tallis Out • Science and IDology • Bad Thinkers
COLUMNS
Dear Socrates
Having traveled from the turn of the Fourth Century B.C. to the turn of the Twenty-First Century 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.
Turning The Tables: We Matter Because We Are Animals
by Joel Marks
From Loving To Wolfing
Peter Cave toys with love, sex and other objects.
Saving Truth
Raymond Tallis asserts the truth about the truth.
REVIEWS
Ancient Philosophy and Everyday Life by Trevor Curnow
Ralph Blumenau goes to ancient Greece with Trevor Curnow.
Capers in the Churchyard: Animal Rights Advocacy in the Age of Terror by Lee Hall
Joel Marks advocates animal rights with Lee Hall.
Horton Hears A Who!
Todd Walters is delighted to announce that the roles of Socrates and Galileo will be played by Horton and the Mayor of Whoville respectively.