Philosophy Carnival #2

Well, it’s the second philosophy carnival I’ve hosted.  So let’s get started.

Counterfactuals and time traveling cold-blooded murderers!  Why is it we always want to see what happens when we kill ourselves (or others) when time traveling?  Does time travel make one murderous?  Anyway, besides  the weird questions that occur to me, the discussion over at Kadri Vihvelin’s philosophy blog does try to tackle Counterfactuals, Indicatives and What Time Travelers Can’t Do.

If that isn’t your cup-o-tea, maybe you like smoking pipes.  But apparently not the pipe if you are from Utah.

And if you don’t like smoking pipes, nor counterfactual time travelers, then perhaps you like the movies.  Over at Pirates and Revolutionaries we have durationless movies that involve no time flow.    Lot’s of YouTube clips — which I did actually watch (most of them at least) and you should too. Because what good is anything without pictures or conversation?

Well, if you don’t like the movies, pipes or homicidal time travelers, try the news.  But not if you read the New York Times’ Stone, apparently, because over at The Consternation of Philosophy, Matt says they got the foundation of human rights wrong.  He writes that the reasons that are given not only do not show a foundation for secular human rights, they actually lead to dogmatism.

But maybe you like dogmatism.  I bet there are secretly lots of philosophers out there who, while publicly decrying dogmatism, are secretly delighted with their own.  I’m probably one of these people.  Then, perhaps we should be epistemological anarchists, as is suggested over at the Kindly Ones.  Paul writes on Feyerabend’s reductio directed at rationalist conceptions of scientific method, which concludes with: Anything Goes.  You should read this- it’s something I dogmatically recommend.

Fine, be that way.  Don’t do what I recommend.  Instead sit around and listen to the radio for all I care.  Actually, we’ve got some high quality internet radio going down at the Partially Examined Life: Pat Churchland on the Neurobiology of Morality (Plus Hume’s Ethics).  I surprised myself and listened to the whole thing.  Good talk.  Also, a book for sale.

If none of this armchair stuff has impressed you, I guess you might be one of those “go out and do stuff types.” [yeah right]  If that is the case, go check out some Experimental Philosophy.  Justin writes, ask not “what the history of philosophy can do for us, but rather what we can do for the history of philosophy.”  That’s the attitude!  (The post is actually on the place of x-phi in a historical and cultural setting.  Good stuff just the same.)

Or maybe you are just at The Ends of Thought, so frustrated with the difficulties that you’re left wondering where a lot of us went wrong (and I’m not saying who has gone wrong; you’ll have to read the post to see who Roman says did).

Lastly, zombies, because philosophers like zombies.