by Daniel A. Kaufman ___ As readers of Course Notes will know, I created an entirely new Introduction to Philosophy course this year. Profound changes in the student population over the last several years, including an apparent inability to understand or even just read classics from the history of philosophy, as well as a troubling increase in the number of […]
by Miroslav Imbrišević A couple of years ago the question ‘What is a woman?’ entered the public imagination. Germaine Greer said in 2015 that transgender women are not women, and the novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie said in 2017: “A trans woman is a trans woman”. But the controversy about who falls under the category ‘woman’ doesn’t just originate with trans […]
by Mark English Complexities Terms like “pragmatism” as it applies to philosophy and the history of ideas – most isms really – are intrinsically vague and useful only to the (necessarily limited) extent that they help to bring out persistent or more fleeting strands or commonalities in thinking within or across populations. Even the views of individuals are often difficult […]
by David Ottlinger We, here at the Agora, are not big fans of Justin Weinberg. He has been wrong about freedom of expression in academia. He has been wrong about whether people should able to make anonymous accusations against public figures. He has been wrong about whether public figures when criticized deserve a right of reply. But his latest take […]
by Sonia Zawitkowski ___ Every time I see another “gender bread person” poster, or the thousandth parrot with no prior contemplation and zero actual understanding that “sex is between your legs and gender between your ears,” I become increasingly tempted to nominate inventor of gender, Dr. John Money, as the number one person I would remove from history if I […]
by E. John Winner ___ (1) The perceptive reader, those having operational eyes at least (and let’s remember that not everyone does), will notice that the promise of the subtitle of this article has not been fulfilled. There is no photograph of me writing the title of this article. The phrase has been borrowed from one the many humorous introductions […]
by Mark English I once came across a cartoon from the early 20th century depicting a street scene with everyone – pedestrians, business people and even a cart-horse – looking puzzled and slightly confused. The wording of the caption I have forgotten, but it was along the lines that the theory of relativity had suddenly changed the way we see […]
by Daniel A. Kaufman ___ Over the period in which I’ve been covering the frolics of philosophy’s Woke Brigade (PWB), I’ve tried to maintain an overall amused (and amusing) affect. These are, after all, very silly people behaving in very silly ways, and as I near the end of my time parenting a teenager, I’ve learned that when confronted with […]
by Daniel A. Kaufman ___ The Fall 2019 semester has begun, so it is time to return to our long-running series, “Course Notes.” This year I have unveiled a brand new version of Philosophy 110, our Introduction to Philosophy course, which I intend to feature in Course Notes, throughout the semester. The course faces a series of challenges, all of […]
by Robert Gressis A couple of months ago, I had a diavlog with our host, Dan Kaufman. In that discussion, we debated what Dan has usefully called the “morality everywhere” approach; roughly, this is the idea not only that just about all of our behavior is morally evaluable, but also that it is evaluable according to very demanding moral standards. […]
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