philosophy

#252 Patricia Churchland: Conscience, Morality, and Moral Philosophy

Nov 7, 2019

Dr. Patricia Churchland is a Canadian-American Philosopher noted for her contributions to neurophilosophy and the philosophy of mind. She is UC President's Professor of Philosophy Emerita at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). She has also held an adjunct professorship at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies since 1989. She is a member of the Board of Trustees Moscow Center for Consciousness Studies of Philosophy Department, at Moscow State University. In 2015, she was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. She’s also the author of a number of books, including Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind-Brain, Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us about Morality, and Conscience: The Origins of Moral Intuition. More»
#240 Paul Katsafanas: Nietzsche and Moral Psychology

Oct 10, 2019

Dr. Paul Katsafanas is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Boston University. He works on ethics, moral psychology, and nineteenth-century philosophy. He’s the author of the books Agency and the Foundations of Ethics: Nietzschean Constitutivism, and The Nietzschean Self: Moral Psychology, Agency, and the Unconscious. More»
#234 Samir Okasha: Natural Selection, From Genes To Groups

Sep 26, 2019

Dr. Samir Okasha is a Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of Bristol. He is a winner of the Lakatos Award for his book Evolution and the Levels of Selection. He was appointed a Fellow of the British Academy in 2018, and he is also the President of the European Philosophy of Science Association. He has broad philosophical interests, though most of his research falls into two main areas: (i) philosophy of biology / evolutionary theory; and (ii) epistemology /philosophy of science. Within philosophy of biology, he is especially interested in foundational and conceptual questions surrounding evolutionary theory. For many years, his research focused on the 'levels of selection' question in evolutionary biology, and the related issue of individual versus group conflicts of interest. More»
#226 Patrick Lee Miller: The Philosophy of Black Mirror

Sep 6, 2019

Dr. Patrick Lee Miller is an associate professor of Philosophy at Duquesne University, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is the author of Becoming God: Pure Reason in Early Greek Philosophy (Bloomsbury, 2012), and co-editor of Introductory Readings in Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy (Hackett, 2015). He also writes for Quillette. More»
#222 Sven Nyholm: Self-Driving Cars, Love Enhancement, And Sex Robots

Aug 29, 2019

Dr. Sven Nyholm is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Ethics at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). His main areas of research are applied ethics (especially the ethics of technology), ethical theory, and the history of ethics. More specifically, he has recently published on love-relationships and biomedical enhancements, sex robots, motivation-enhancements, accident-algorithms for self-driving cars, deep brain stimulation, happiness and well-being, meaning in life, and interpersonal respect and moral reasoning. His work also focuses on the ethics of automated driving, human-robot collaboration, deep brain stimulation (including its effect on the self), and disability and the goods of life. He is especially interested in how robotization and other types of automation affect traditional human values, as well as in existential questions raised by new technological developments. More»
#218 Sabina Leonelli: Science in the World of Big Data

Aug 19, 2019

Dr. Sabina Leonelli is Professor of Philosophy and History of Science at the University of Exeter. She pursues an approach to philosophy of science that is grounded on the empirical study of scientific practices, as informed by historical research, ethnographic methods used in the social and anthropological studies of science and technology, and collaboration with practicing scientists. She has a strong interest in topics like Data-Intensive Science and Practices of Data Sharing and Re-Use, Open Science and Open Data, Bio-Ontologies, and Historic and Epistemic Status of Model Organism Research. She’s the author of Data-Centric Biology: A Philosophical Study, and “La ricerca scientifica nell’era dei Big Data” (“Scientific Research in the Era of Big Data”). More»
#215 Peter Adamson: The Origins of Philosophy, and the Pre-Socratics

Aug 12, 2019

Dr. Peter Adamson is Professor of Philosophy at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and at King's College London. He has written articles, monographs and edited books, mostly on philosophy in the Islamic world and ancient philosophy. He is the host of the weekly podcast "History of Philosophy without any gaps", which by 2014 had more than four million downloads and led to the publication of a book series. He received the Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2003, for "outstanding research achievements of young scholars of distinction and promise based in UK institutions" and received a grant from the same institution in 2010. More»
#213 Paulo Castro: Philosophy of Quantum Physics, Pilot Wave Theory, And the EmDrive

Aug 8, 2019

Dr. PauIo Castro graduated in Anthropology at the NOVA University of Lisbon in 1996 after studying Physics at the University of Lisbon. He taught Mathematics and IT in Secondary and Polythecnical schools. In 2014 he obtained his PhD in the Philosophy of Contemporary Thought at the Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias, with the dissertation “The Epistemology of Choice – On the possibility of artificial simulation of human intelligence”. In 2015 Dr. Castro became a member of the Center for Philosophy of Science of the University of Lisbon in the Philosophy of Nature Sciences Research Group, working on Philosophy of Quantum Physics. Recently, and pursuing more foundational questions in Physics, he’s started working on the Philosophy of Quantum Gravity. He is also very interested in both Artificial Intelligence and Environmental Philosophy, related to Sustainability. More»
#206 Derek Leben: Ethics for Robots, Contractarianism, Self-Driving Cars

Aug 3, 2019

Dr. Derek Leben is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, Johnstown. He works at the intersection of ethics, cognitive science, and emerging technologies. In his new book, Ethics for Robots, Dr. Leben argues for the use of a particular moral framework for designing autonomous systems based on the Contractarianism of John Rawls. He also demonstrates how this framework can be productively applied to autonomous vehicles, medical technologies, and weapons systems. More»
#211 Catherine Wilson: Epicureanism, Atomism, Materialism, And Modernity

Aug 2, 2019

Dr. Catherine Wilson was until recently Professor of Philosophy at the University of York, and is now teaching part-time at the City University of New York, and also a writer. She holds degrees in Philosophy from Yale, Oxford and Princeton and has taught in the USA, Canada, and Germany. Dr. Wilson teaches and writes in the history of modern philosophy and on early modern science and also works in the areas of ethics and aesthetics with a special interest in the evolution of morality and the science behind visual experience. She’s the author of books like Moral Animals: Ideals and Constraints in Moral Theory, Epicureanism at the Origins of Modernity, and Epicureanism: A Very Short Introduction, and Metaethics from a First Person Standpoint: An Introduction to Moral Philosophy. More»