philosophy

#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»
#205 Laura Cabrera: The Philosophy of Human Enhancement

Jul 31, 2019

Dr. Laura Cabrera is Assistant Professor in the Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences and the Department of Translational Science & Molecular Medicine at Michigan State University. Dr. Cabrera's interests focus on the ethical and societal implications of neurotechnology and neuroscientific advances. She has been working on projects that explore the media coverage and the attitudes of the general public toward pharmacological and novel neurosurgical interventions for the treatment of psychiatric disorders. She has also worked on the public perceptions towards the use of different modalities of neuromodifiers for enhancement purposes, as well as their normative implications. Her current work focuses on the ethical and social implications of environmental changes for brain and mental health. She’s also the author of the book Rethinking Human Enhancement: Social Enhancement and Emergent Technologies. More»
#209 Cecilia Heyes: Cultural Evolutionary Psychology, Imitation, And Mindreading

Jul 29, 2019

Dr. Cecilia Heyes is a Professor of Psychology and Senior Research Fellow in Theoretical Life Science at All Souls College, University of Oxford. She was trained as an experimental psychologist at University College London (UCL, 1978-84). As a Harkness Fellow in the United States (1984-6), she studied evolutionary epistemology with Donald T. Campbell and philosophy of mind with Daniel Dennett. She’s done experimental work, initially in animal cognition and later in cognitive neuroscience, and more recently her group developed and tested an associative account of the origins of imitation and the mirror neuron system. She’s the author of Cognitive Gadgets: The Cultural Evolution of Thinking. More»
#196 Peter Singer: Ethics, Veganism, And Effective Altruism

Jul 25, 2019

REUPLOAD OF PETER SINGER'S INTERVIEW More»
#180 Joseph Bulbulia: Religion, Cognition, Ritual, Morality, And Meaning

May 23, 2019

Dr. Joseph A. Bulbulia is a Professor in the School of Humanities, Faculty of Arts at the University of Auckland, where he was appointed the Maclaurin Goodfellow Chair in Theological and Religious Studies in 2018. Dr. Bulbulia is regarded as one of the founders of the contemporary evolutionary religious studies. He is a past President of the International Association for the Cognitive Science of Religion and is currently co-editor of Religion, Brain & Behavior. Dr. Bulbulia is one of four on the Senior Management Team of the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study, a 20-year longitudinal study tracking over 15,000 New Zealanders each year. He is an associate investigator for Pulotu, a database of 116 Pacific cultures purpose-built to investigate the evolutionary dynamics of religion. In 2016, Dr. Bulbulia won a Research Excellence Award at Victoria University. More»
#170 Steven Hales: Philosophy of Luck, Relativism and Perspectivism, And Evolutionary Psychology

Apr 29, 2019

Dr. Steven Hales is Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at Bloomsburg University, US. His areas of specialization include epistemology and metaphysics. He’s the author of books like Metaphysics, A Companion to Relativism, Nietzsche’s Perspectivism, and This Is Philosophy. More»