Think

ISSN: 1477-1756

21 found

View year:

  1.  25
    Plato, Socrates, and Confederate Monuments.Scott Berman - 2024 - Think 23 (67):11-19.
    What is the best way to respond to monuments in our communities if they represent people who stood for harmful ideas and/or societal structures? I start with the assumption that it would be best for everyone if all of the harmful monuments were removed from our public squares. The more interesting question is: Why would it be best? I will examine critically two different explanations as to why it would be best: one, Plato's, which rests on the harmful non-intellectual influences (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  2.  67
    Is God a Free-Range Parent?Cheryl K. Chen - 2024 - Think 23 (67):5-10.
    If a benevolent and all-powerful God exists, how can there be so much suffering? Could God have created a better world? Or is evil the price we pay for freedom of the will?
    No categories
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  3.  24
    In Defence of (Over)Thinking.SuddhaSatwa GuhaRoy - 2024 - Think 23 (67):21-26.
    Abstract‘You are overthinking that!’ The article argues against the popular idea that too much of the activity of thinking is bad for individuals. Wrong thinking, I argue, is what is bad or unhealthy, irrespective of the length of time it is done for. Wrong thinking can lead to worrying, stress, and impedes practical action. But if thinking is done right, then you can't have too much of it.
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  4.  18
    Philosophy and Raising Good Citizens.Stephen Law - 2024 - Think 23 (67):65-68.
    What's the best way to raise good citizens – individuals who will do the right thing even in the most challenging of circumstances? I argue that philosophy has an important role to play.
    No categories
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  5.  27
    The Authentic Liar.Muriel Leuenberger - 2024 - Think 23 (67):27-30.
    Among the people who have been hailed for being particularly authentic are notorious liars. But this seems like a contradiction. Can you be authentic if you lie about what you value, believe, or feel? This brief article explores this question and the unique stances on honesty that different notions of authenticity take.
    No categories
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  6. Might text-davinci-003 have inner speech?Stephen Francis Mann & Daniel Gregory - 2024 - Think 23 (67):31-38.
    In November 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT, an incredibly sophisticated chatbot. Its capability is astonishing: as well as conversing with human interlocutors, it can answer questions about history, explain almost anything you might think to ask it, and write poetry. This level of achievement has provoked interest in questions about whether a chatbot might have something similar to human intelligence or even consciousness. Given that the function of a chatbot is to process linguistic input and produce linguistic output, we consider the (...)
    Direct download (5 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  7. Religious Miracles versus Magic Tricks.Theodor Nenu - 2024 - Think 23 (67):39-46.
    This short article aims to strengthen Hume's case against the rationality of believing in religious miracles by incorporating certain lessons borrowed from the growing literature on the history and psychology of magic tricks.
    Direct download (5 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  8. What Is Sexual Intimacy?Sascha Settegast - 2024 - Think 23 (67):53-58.
    What is the role of intimacy in sex? The two culturally dominant views on this matter both share the implicit assumption that sex is genuinely intimate only when connected to romance, and hence that sex and intimacy stand in a contingent relationship: it is possible to have good sex without it. Liberals embrace this possibility and affirm the value of casual sex, while conservatives attempt to safeguard intimacy by insisting on romantic exclusivity. I reject their shared assumption and argue for (...)
    Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  9.  51
    On Grief and Griefbots.Cristina Voinea - 2024 - Think 23 (67):47-51.
    Griefbots are chatbots designed to assist individuals in coping with the loss of a loved one by offering a digital replica of the departed. Navigating grief is a deeply transformative and vulnerable journey intricately tied to one's well-being. Do griefbots aid in the grieving process, or do they complicate it? To address these questions, this article blends insights from philosophy and neuroscience to explore the nature of grief as a means to clarify the ethical dimensions surrounding the use of griefbots.
    No categories
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  10.  43
    Yuval Harari on Human Rights and Biology.Nick Zangwill - 2024 - Think 23 (67):59-63.
    Yuval Harari believes that humans make myths, and that these can be powerful engines for social change. One of these myths, claims Harari, is the existence of ‘liberal rights’. This article challenges that claim and defends the idea of grounding rights in human nature.
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  11.  70
    Religious Experience and the Philosophy of Perception.Cheryl K. Chen - 2024 - Think 23 (66):5-10.
    Do we need justification in order to know God exists? Must we infer God exists, if we are to know that he is there? How might religious experience ground belief in God?
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  12.  29
    God and the Problem of Evil: Why Soul-Making Won't Suffice.Brian D. Earp - 2024 - Think 23 (66):11-15.
    If you believe in the existence of an infinitely good, all-knowing, and all-powerful deity (‘God’), how do you explain the reality of evil – including the inexpressible suffering and death of innocents? Wouldn't God be forced to vanquish such suffering due to God's very nature? Alvin Plantinga has argued, convincingly, that if the possibility of ultimate goodness somehow necessarily required that evil be allowed to exist, God, being omnibenevolent, would have to allow it. But as John Hick has noted, the (...)
    No categories
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  13.  15
    Is it Ever Right to Lie? How Ethical Questions Bring us to Philosophy of Mind.Yasemin J. Erden - 2024 - Think 23 (66):59-63.
    Moral and ethical agreements require sufficiently shared values, or at least some common ground. We might think of this in terms of a shared ‘form of life’, ‘lebensform’, as Wittgenstein describes it in his Philosophical Investigations. Yet it is not clear what will be sufficient, nor how to bridge gaps when disagreement occurs, for instance on whether it is ever right to lie. Ethical and moral theories offer some guidance, but there is no guide for which theory one ought to (...)
    No categories
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  14.  10
    Philosophy for Coming Through: Review of Read's Why Climate Breakdown Matters[REVIEW]John Foster - 2024 - Think 23 (66):27-31.
    Philosophy has overwhelmingly approached climate breakdown in terms of the ethical obligations to the future which it is supposed to involve. This review of a recent book by Rupert Read shows him bringing philosophy to bear on why and how it matters in the first place – as an already present disaster which could reconnect us deeply with ourselves.
    No categories
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  15.  24
    Backwards Causation and Max Black's Abominable Conjunction.Brian Garrett - 2024 - Think 23 (66):33-35.
    Philosophers dispute whether an effect can be earlier than its cause (i.e. whether backwards causation can occur). For example, could a trainwreck cause a psychic to have earlier knowledge of it? Max Black tried to show backwards causation to be impossible but he failed to do so, or so I will argue. Nonetheless, his famous article can still teach us something important about certain cases of backwards causation.
    No categories
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  16.  64
    Does Moral Ignorance Excuse?Neil Levy - 2024 - Think 23 (66):17-19.
    There's heated debate around whether people who did terrible things in the past, at a time when there was widespread acceptance of such actions, are appropriately blamed by us, on the grounds they weren't really morally ignorant, or their ignorance was itself culpable. I point to puzzles that arise if we blame them. We need to explain how they could act so badly if they weren't fully ignorant. I argue that plausible answers to that question entail that they're not blameworthy, (...)
    No categories
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  17.  14
    My Body, My Speech.Jimmy Alfonso Licon - 2024 - Think 23 (66):43-46.
    A popular tactic for defending abortion rights is appealing to self-ownership: since I own my body, a foetus has the right to occupy it only if I allow it. One cannot be forced to bring a pregnancy to term because that would violate one's self-ownership. The same logic applies to speech: we have freedom of speech because we produce speech using the bodies that we own. To curtail that speech violates our self-ownership, or in a phrase: my body, my speech.
    No categories
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  18.  15
    A Too Intimate Internet: What is Wrong with Precise Audience Selection?Thomas Mitchell - 2024 - Think 23 (66):37-42.
    It is commonly recognized that the modern capacity for mass online communication carries various dangers: fake news, rampant conspiracy theories, trolling, and so forth. It is less commonly realized that moral problems remain when the contents of online communications are completely innocuous. This article discusses one of the noteworthy features of modern digital technology, the fact that it is possible to precisely target specific audiences, and argues that this can make mass communications such as advertising and political campaigns morally problematic. (...)
    No categories
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  19.  21
    All My Friends are Zombies: The Search for Consciousness.Louise Rimmer-Williams - 2024 - Think 23 (66):53-58.
    A brief introduction to the problem of other minds and knowledge of the world outside our own minds.
    No categories
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  20.  15
    Exploitation, Coercion, and Other Problems with Kidney Donation.Luke Semrau - 2024 - Think 23 (66):47-52.
    Kidney failure is a major killer. Many lives could be saved through organ donation if people were less reluctant to part with their spare kidney. Should we incentive donation by paying people to do it?
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  21.  30
    Berkeley's Master Argument.Michael Wreen - 2024 - Think 23 (66):21-26.
    One of Berkeley's best-known arguments for the view that there are no material objects is the so-called Master Argument. There are several good critical discussions of it. That invites the question: is there anything new to say? Well, it will be argued, there are a few things to say. First, although refutations by logical analogy have been advanced against the Master Argument, the strongest such refutation, one which demonstrates its incoherence, has not been. It is here. Second, there are few (...)
    No categories
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
 Previous issues
  
Next issues