With Russia and Ukraine embroiled in a war that has caught the world’s attention, would it be a good idea for the United States to get involved to help Ukraine? A lot of talking heads seem to think so, hoping for anywhere between arming the Ukrainians to declaring a no fly zone and even up to boots-on-the-ground military involvement. Are these the wise words of our foreign policy intelligentsia or the saber rattling of demagogues and warmongers?
Interested in Immanuel Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason” but find it too difficult to understand? I’m making a playlist where I’ll explain it as simply as possible.
Although Kant’s ideas are largely considered antiquated by most modern analytic philosophers, his Critique is still a seminal achievement in philosophy. Understanding the Critique remains relevant for understanding what it did to alter the philosophical paradigm, where Kant stands as a dividing line between the early moderns (Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, Hume, et al.) and the later moderns in both analytic and continental philosophy from the nineteenth century onward.
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Saturday, April 20, 2019, 12:00 AM PDT until Wednesday, April 24, 2019, 11:59 PM PDT
Are the mind and body separate substances, or are they one-and-the-same?
Mind-Body Dualism is a philosophical question at least as old as Descartes, and possibly older. Most people tend to have an intuitive sense that they are a mind that has a body – that our mind resides within this physical thing we call a body. What I’m interested in here is whether it is useful to think about the mind and body as separate and what this could mean for humans and society going forward. This article is not meant to be an exhaustive exegesis on the entirety of the mind-body problem or even a summary of every facet. What I will do here is discuss three different ways to conceptualize the mind-body relationship, some practical concerns that arise, and then a theoretical analysis of responses to these practical concerns.