Philosopher's Zone

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The simplest questions often have the most complex answers. The Philosopher's Zone is your guide through the strange thickets of logic, metaphysics and ethics.

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Visual art as philosophy

When it comes to the ideal philosophical medium, most of us would identify the written word - or maybe the spoken word, if we're fans of Socratic dialogue - and this is because for centuries, philosophy has been a linguistic practice. But this week we're arguing that visual art can be philosophy, and looking at how visual art can represent concepts in ways that haven't traditionally been recognised by Western epistemic traditions. Guest: Taylor-Jai McAlister, clinical psychologist and postdoctoral Research Fellow in Philosophy, Macquarie University, Sydney Producer: David Rutledge Defining Aboriginality - Taylor-Jai McAlister on The Philosopher's Zone, November 2023
30 Jul

How smart are machines, anyway?

Ever since AI was founded in the 1950s, people have talked and written about 'intelligence' as though we all broadly agree on what that word means. But there's considerable debate on that score, and among the debaters are philosophers - like this week's guest - who question the degree to which machines can be said to be intelligent at all, and think that claims of intelligence can all too easily deflect attention from the real ethical issues around AI. Guest: Tim Crane, Professor of Philosophy at the Central European University (CEU) in Vienna, Austria Producer: David Rutledge
23 Jul

Hegel: The philosopher with the (one) big idea

GWF Hegel (1770-1831) wanted to construct nothing less than a complete explanation of reality - nature, consciousness, art, history, politics, the lot - based on a single self-explanatory idea. Whether or not he succeeded is an interesting question (spoiler: he didn't), but more interesting is the question of why philosophy has become so much less ambitious since then, and what we can learn from Hegel today.
16 Jul

Eco-grief and environmental loss

Philosophers have traditionally thought of grief as something that attaches to immediate loss - the death of a loved one, something terrible that's happened to us personally. But as the environmental crisis continues to wreak havoc on human and non-human lives, the philosophy of emotions needs a concept that captures a response to loss that perhaps hasn't happened yet, or loss that affects other people we may never meet: eco-grief.
9 Jul

Colonising space

There's something about space that's always captured the human imagination, but what happens when space begins to capture the imagination of billionaire tech entrepreneurs? In the past, we've visited space for scientific purposes, but now the grand vision is colonisation, permanent human settlement on the Moon, Mars and even further afield, with such ventures along the way as asteroid mining, which promises to deliver untold riches. The technical challenges are immense - as are the ethical ones.
2 Jul

Can pregnancy be a job? the ethics of commercial surrogacy

Commercial surrogacy - the practice of paying someone to gestate your child and then hand it over when it's born - is banned in Australia, but it has its supporters. Defenders of commercial surrogacy argue that it should be legal for someone to receive payment for the labour of carrying a child, on the grounds that surrogacy constitutes a legitimate form of work. But are there some things that just shouldn't be for sale? This week we're testing the arguments.
24 Jun

Belief, emotion and trust

The traditional philosophical view of belief is that it's a rational cognitive affair, evidence based and directed toward truth. According to this account, things like delusion and religious belief are "edge cases", exceptions that prove the rule. But this week we're considering not only that belief may be closely tied to emotion, but that it may actually be a form of emotion itself.
16 Jun

Communication in an age of crisis

Collins Dictionary made "permacrisis" their word of the year in 2022 - a prescient choice because since then, the crises have just kept coming. Permacrisis is forcing us to take a close look at the way we communicate, because while free public discourse is one of the cornerstones of democracy, there's something about the nature of today's public discourse that fuels crisis, and keeps us frozen in a fight-or-flight posture.

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David Rutledge

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The simplest questions often have the most complex answers. The Philosopher's Zone is your guide through the strange thickets of logic, metaphysics and ethics.