Philosopher's Zone ABC listen
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- 社會與文化
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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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Why time doesn't pass
Most of us experience time as something that passes, or flows like a river - or at least we think we do. Could it be that the sense of time passing is just an illusion? This week we're getting to grips with a theory of time that denies the reality of "flow" - and we're asking why time seems to speed up or slow down in certain situations.
Guest: Heather Dyke, Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Otago NZ
Producer: David Rutledge
Experience of Passage in a Static World - Heather Dyke at the London School of Economics, June 2017
This episode was first broadcast on July 30, 2023. -
Philosophy for tough times
Life is hard — disappointment, regret and suffering come with the territory — and if the projections of climate scientists and epidemiologists are correct, it's not going to get easier any time soon. But then, life has always been hard. What do philosophical traditions have to say about the incurable toughness of human existence?
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Women philosophers in 19th century Germany
When we think of 19th century German philosophy, we perhaps think first of Nietzsche, or Hegel, and then some other men - but Germany in the 1800s was also home to a number of women philosophers.
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Neofeudalism: techno-lords and peasants
For many on the political left, the end of capitalism is a cherished ideal - but what if capitalism ended and we found ourselves with something worse? This week we're exploring the possibility that Western liberal democracies could be sliding in the direction of "neofeudalism" and devolving into a much nastier set of economic and social structures than the ones we presently have.
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Obedience
Is obedience a virtue? History is littered with instances where obedience to bad rulers or unjust laws has resulted in catastrophe. But then it's hard to imagine raising or educating children without obedience being a fundamental requirement. This week we're exploring obedience in the moral domain - and in the domain of classical music, where disobedience to tradition can be the hallmark of genius.
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Style wars pt 2: Scandals and hoaxes
What should we think when an academic Humanities journal unsuspectingly publishes a paper that's been written as a hoax, full of fashionable jargon and deliberately specious arguments? Does this demonstrate that the Humanities set a higher value on shallow intellectual trends than on rigorous scholarship - or is there something more nuanced and complicated going on?