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No Dogs or Philosophers Allowed

Television That Makes You Think

Instructional video now on DVD!

No Dogs or Philosophers Allowed®, North America's premier philosophy television program, features leading thinkers discussing issues vital to the human condition. Philosopher Ken Knisely leads these spirited discussions that combine Socratic inquiry with modern television technology, providing a model for philosophical contributions to public discourse in the electronic age. No Dogs or Philosophers Allowed is available on some cable networks around the country, and these programs are being used in classrooms at dozens of universities. Each program is available from the Philosophy Documentation Center in DVD, VHS, PAL, or SECAM format, and the purchase price for each video includes non-public performance broadcast rights for classroom use. Customers also have permission to digitally encode up to 10 minutes of any program and post it to a web site for students outside the classroom. Forthcoming and currently available programs are listed below.

"No Dogs or Philosophers Allowed will engage an audience with its usually spirited discussion on the burning philosophical issues of the day." — The Washington Post

"A philosophical feast .... a Socratic symposium devoted to skepticism, the pursuit of truth, and the application of philosophical enquiry to everyday life." — Talk of the Nation, National Public Radio

Forthcoming

  • The Joy of Logic - The show that blows open the sordid career and shaky ontological grip of this widely respected core of philosophical thought. Just what kind of relationship does logic have with the world—and with our minds? With Dominic Balestra (Fordham University), Ashok Gangadean (Haverford College), and Cara Spencer (Howard University).

Currently Available Programs

DVD (zone 1) or VHS video · $80.00 · PAL or SECAM formatting $25 additional per video

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About (Romantic) Love - A rigorous and wide-ranging discussion of the most ballyhooed emotion of all--and its surprising role in making us who we are. With Robert Solomon, Verna Gehring, and John Loughney.
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Art - How can we judge the value of art? What are we to make of the idea of "found art" posited by Duchamp? Should artists pay any attention to making a living from their work? With John Brough, John Lynch, and Jon Eig.
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Artificial Intelligence - ill we make machines as smart, as dumb, as creative, as whiny, as human beings—or are we wasting our time trying? What makes human cognition unique and irreplaceable—if anything? With James Moor (Dartmouth College), Drew Arrowood (Queens College), and Valerie Hardcastle (Virginia Tech).
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Beyond Morality - Are moral systems actually impediments to leading a truly good human life? What is good and what is not good? Do we need anyone to tell us these things? With Russ Shaffer-Landau, Bryan Van Norden, and Richard Garner.
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The Bioethical Challenge - What are the moral stakes involved when we will have the same power to engineer our bodies as we do our automobiles? Which specific bioethics problems will put the most pressure on our ethical traditions? What should we do now to prepare for this brave new world? With Greg Loeben, Ronald Munson, and Wade Robison.
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Blasphemy - Should defaming the name of God be of concern even for those who do not have faith in Him? With Gregory Reichberg and Farzad Mahootian.<
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Boundaries of Life - How should we think about the beginnings and endings of humans' biological lives? Is an ethical system based on natural law the only way to safeguard the value of individual human life? Does holding a secular perspective on the boundaries of human life necessarily leave one on a slippery slope? With Peter Caws and Sr. Regina Geiger.
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Computer Ethics: Encryption - Should all digital communication be accessible to government inspection? Is robust cryptography in the hands of the public a threat to our national security? With Dorothy Denning and Patrick Sullivan. .
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The Conscious Mind - Are we on the threshold of the final explanations of consciousness and self-consciousness? Is there a relationship between the insights of quantum theory and the conscious mind? With Verna Gehring, Daniel Kolak, and Bruce Umbaugh.
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Consciousness - So who is that behind the face in the mirror? Better yet, what is that? What is the uncanny sense that one is an experiencing agent, a reflecting self? Can we explain consciousness? With Jay Lambert, Peter Caws, and Floyd Tesmer.
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Cosmology - Do the results of scientific study of the physical world give us any inkling about the value of doing metaphysics? Or is the construction of a philosophy of everything upon the insights of science building on sinking sand? With Matt Hunter, Natasha Kyburg, and Farzad Mahootian.
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Creationism - With the rise of scientific methods of understanding the natural world, tensions have arisen between traditional religious narratives of our origins and scientific models. Is there a way to bridge this gap, or is creationist thinking just a wooly-headed vestige of a fading theistic world view? With Hubert Yockey, Edna Ponikvar, Father Gerald Corigan, and Floyd Tesmer.
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Critiquing Feminisms - Has some of the fruit of feminism begun to rot on the vine? Or is the work of feminist philosophy just beginning? Are we still in thrall to pervasive sexist assumptions at the roots of our thinking and our language? With Marjorie Jolles, Ellen Klein, and Helen Mitchell.
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Disabled Rights - Can the rights of the disabled be justified by John Locke's theory of natural rights? Does an "ethics of caring" offer a better framework for considering these rights? When can we end a human life? With Anita Silvers, Patrick Sullivan, and John Loughney.
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Drugs & Happiness - Is there a moral duty to stay in this reality, without drugs, whatever its ontological status? If a drug has no physical health risks, would it then have the potential for making life better and people happier? With Natsha Kyburg, Kevin Zeese, and Rob Chestnut.
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Enviroethics: The Rights of Future Generations - What duties, if any, do we the living have to future generations regarding the quality of the environment we shall bequeath to them? Does our responsibility diminish as we look further into the future? Do we (did we) have such a claim on those came before us? With Nat Heiner and Nikki Roy.
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The Ethics of Consumption - In a hyper-consuming society, what questions should we ask ourselves as we survey the increasingly crowded planet on which we find ourselves? What are the moral effects of living amid unprecedented material plenty? With David Crocker, Lisa Newton, and Judith Lichtenberg.
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Euthanasia - Does each of us have the right to terminate our own existence if we so decide? Can we delegate this task to others? With what methods can we decide these questions? With Michele Carter, John Loughney, and Patrick Sullivan.
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Everyday Ethics - Do the grand and intricate moral theories spun out by philosophers have much to do with the everyday ethical quandaries we grapple with? Just how do humans make ethical decisions anyway? With Claudette Jones, Nat Heiner, and Natash Kyburg.
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Evidence for God - "For the heavens declare the glory of God..." Or do they? What are we to make of the many ideas of gods that are held by our species? And what would count as evidence for or against our own declarations about a Supreme Being? With Frank Ambrosio, Rabbi Charles Arian, and Natasha Kyburg.
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Freedom - From Locke to Kierkegaard to those annoying car ads that promise “No Boundaries”— Is our use of the word 'freedom' still coherent. Was it ever coherent? Is it significant that this fuzzy term is so often used to carry so much rhetorical force? With Larry Hatab (Old Dominion University), David Walsh (Catholic University), and Mark Murphy (Georgetown University).
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Friendship - Aristotle and the shape of modern friendships. With John McCarthy and Matthew West.
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Genetic Engineering - What are the ethical implications of our use of new methods and tools for reading and recoding our genetic information? What is the state of our knowledge of the human genome, including the connection between certain genes and diseases? What are some possible moral guidelines for fiddling around with the immense genetic archive within each of us? Do we - as individuals and as a species - have the right to do so? With Peter Keating and Rhoda Perozzi.
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Got Rights? - What is a right? Why do we say that individual humans have rights? Do humans have a unique moral status or do other living beings also have rights? Can animals ever be moral agents? Is there a tension between the animal rights movement and those whose see the environment as possessing some manner of rights? With Grace Clement, Bonnie Brown, and Mark Parascondola.
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Just War Theory - How should the citizens of a democracy decide when the ends of armed conflict are worth the costs of combat? How well can we relay on a theory of "just war" to inform a superpower's actions? With Scott Hibbard and Natasha Kyburg.
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Justice: Critical Legal Theory - What makes the law the Law? Are the rules set by society based on immutable truths and forms of nature, or are they more like an evolving draft of guidelines for human conduct? Is the law the product of disinterested reason, or do the critical legal theorists have a point when they trace the shape of the law to the centers of power in our society? With Mark Tushnet, Andy Altman, and Jude Dougherty.
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Justifying Terrorism - Can the use of terror as a political weapon ever be justified? What are the political implications of the struggle to define the concept of "terrorism"? Was the attack on the USS Cole a terrorist act? What role do the intentions of the terrorist and the state of mind of the victims play? Does the modern concept of the nation-state necessarily require the radical devaluation of the use of terror for political ends? With Robert Rafalko, Philip Devine, and Scott Hibbard.
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Liberty & Equality - Is political discourse an impotent spectator to the ongoing exercise of political power? Can we ever resolve the tensions between the political values of liberty and equality? With Drew Arrowood, Lawrence Hatab, and James Sterba.
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The Methods of Science - What is science, and what is it not? Is falsifiability the key to drawing this line? How and why does science work? Should we worry whether science is talking about a "real" world? And should we stop thinking there is a single thing we can call "the scientific method"? With Deborah Mayo, Robert Rynasiewicz, and Drew Arrowood.
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Minds & Bodies - Is believing in "minds" as qualitatively distinct from "bodies" just wrong headed? Did René Descartes set us off on a four hundred year wild goose chase? How should we think about this traditional dichotomy? With Wayne Alt, Alicia Juerrero, and Daniel Robinson.
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Money, Markets, Morality - How should we evaluate the economic environment we live in? Does anyone really believe in capitalism? How good are the philosophical judgments that inform the structures and habits of our economic lives? With David Schweickart (Loyola University, Chicago), David Haslett (University of Delaware), and Ronald Duska (Villanova University).
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Music & Morality - Can music have an effect on our moral education? Can we train ourselves and our children to be better people by listening to the kinds of music that can better us? With Stanley Lake, Lisa Figueroa, and Young Chan Ro.
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Numbers - How is it that numbers can magically map the world around us? Are numbers really Real? Was Pythagoras completely crazy when he seemed to regard numbers as divine entities capable of revealing the truth about things around us? With Michael Moses, Ihran Izmirlih, and Michael Stein.
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Obscenity - What are the stakes when we allow sexually explicit images to have wide circulation in our culture? How can we judge the moral status of pornography and erotica? Is the arousal of desire by a depiction and not another person essentially dehumanizing? With Natsha Kyburg, Peter Jemma, and Mark Casale.
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The Philosophical Implications of Quantum Mechanics - What’s the deal with the really, really, weird-acting stuff that everything is made of? Can we ever take in our everyday world the same way again if we fully understand the nature of the quantum world? With Jeffrey Bub (University of Maryland), Tim Maudlin (Rutgers University), and Drew Arrowood (Queens College).
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Race and Racism - Is racism an act of the will? A disease? A bad habit? A result of lost virtues or of historical economic forces? Can we reliably claim that racism is an affront to justice? How does our scientific understanding of "race" affect our ethical considerations (and our census questions)? How can we ever know if we are acting from racist assumptions? With Leonard Harris, Naomi Zack, and Hugh Taft-Morales.
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Rationality - Reason and rationality are thought to be the paradigmatic tools of the philosopher. But just what are they? What is the relationship of language to rational thinking? How good a tool is rationality in the search for truth? With Bruce Umbaugh, Natasha Kyburg, and Floyd Tesmer.
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Relativism - Can humans truly be the measure of all things? Is relativism a corrosive concept, undermining any chance we have of getting clear about things? Should we seek foundations for our values, or is such an effort a waste of time? With David Gallagher, Shannon Jordan, and Joshua Halberstam.
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Right to Health Care - To what extent can individuals make a claim on their community to provide for upkeep and healing of their bodies? Can the philosophy of natural rights that animates the American political tradition be applied usefully to the health care debate? With Michael Boylan, Helen John, and Patrick Sullivan.
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Suffering - Why are we seemingly born to only to suffer and to die? Does suffering offer us a way of getting closer to God, or is it just an annoying problem that calls for better therapy? Indeed, what counts as suffering? Do Jews and Christians share any assumptions about what suffering is and what it means for our spiritual life? With Rabbi Charles Arian and Reverend Robert Slye.
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The Thinking of Evolution - What are the philosophical implications of the theory of evolution? What beliefs about man can we rule out in light of scientific knowledge of the theory of natural selection? Are there different ways to interpret the Darwinian revolution? How should we regard the evolutionary musings of thinkers such as Henri Bergson or Teilhard de Chardin? With H. James Birx, John Loughney, and Drew Arrowood.
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Time - Why is thinking about time so confusing, yet time itself seems to be... well, right now? And then? Can we get a better handle on time than did the good bishop of Hippo, who was clear about time - until he thought about it? With Verna Gehring and Farzad Mahootian.
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Tolerance - How can we know if a social order is threatened by the coexistence of different kinds of people living by different values? Does "tolerance" mean acceptance, or should it aspire only to benign neglect? Is intolerance a sign of community strength or weakness? With Shannon Jordon, Floyd Tesmer, and Don Peple.
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Violence, Reason and Justice - Who gets to use force and when? How are we supposed to justify the use of violence in achieving political goals and establishing and maintaining political communities and structures? With Anthony Ellis (Virginia Commonwealth University), David Garren (United States Naval Academy), and Scott Hibbard (Johns Hopkins University).
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Visit the No Dogs or Philosophers Allowed website for more information or to view video clips from the shows.
 
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