The Philosophers' Magazine

“Templeton is, to all intents and purposes, a propaganda organisation for religious outlooks; it should honestly say so and equally honestly devote its money to prop up the antique superstitions it favours, and not pretend that questions of religion are of the same kind and on the same level as those of science – by which means it persistently seeks to muddy the waters and keep religion credible in lay eyes.”

“It’s not good enough to say there’s some mechanism such that you start out with amoebas and you end up with us. Everybody agrees with that. The question is in this case in the mechanical details. What you need is an account, as it were step by step, about what the constraints are, what the environmental variables are, and Darwin doesn’t give you that.”

The existence of nonhuman persons would fly in the face of everything our species has believed about its uniqueness for thousands of years. If an “animal” like a dolphin actually has all of the traits of a “person”, that would call for as fundamental, dramatic and unsettling a shift in how we see ourselves as abandoning a geocentric view of the heavens did. In the same way that Earth no longer occupied the centre of the universe, neither would humans. It would also call for a shift in how humans treat dolphins – and, very likely, many other nonhumans.

Philosophy needs to be popularised, as science needs to be popularised, and philosophy professors should be involved in the popularisation of philosophy, rather than leaving the task to well-meaning amateurs. Popular science is not necessarily pseudo-science; in fact, it rarely is. Likewise, popular philosophy does not have to be pseudo-philosophy. To democratise philosophy is not necessarily to “dumb it down” but to make it available in at least some form for all.

“Whilst philosophical counsellors recognise that philosophy is a potentially practical and useful discipline, this isn’t how many of general public or counselling service providers perceive it. Philosophy has still got a lot of persuading to do about its practical relevance and efficacy.”

“We know that the children who have been through sustained Philosophy with Children improve in almost every other academic area. Philosophers aretraditionally asked awkward questions and to come up with alternative answers, and it really breeds independent thinking. If we want a generation of people who will begin to tackle and solve the problems we have, we need people who think for themselves and who think differently.”

Some people have objected that the very idea of philosophy in business is an oxymoron. But why? Does philosophy have to be, by its very nature, other-worldly? If so, how could there be such a thing as political philosophy? Perhaps some would say that philosophers who become involved in business are engaging in a kind of intellectual prostitution. But studying business is different from being paid by business.

“I would go into a lunch of stockbrokers who would be coming to listen to the business philosopher, and I felt so nervous because I thought I was supposed to tell them where they should be putting their clients’ money on the basis of my knowledge of the history of ideas. I felt such a failure because I didn’t know what they should do with their clients’ funds.”

There is a presumption that it is the philosophers who know the truth, and the business people who need to be told it. However, business is a unique phenomenon. At no time in human history has anything quite like this been seen before. Unreflective or no, crises or no, poverty or no, something works in this system.

If you started delving into Stoic literature, you might find some of the advice repugnant, even shocking. In Epictetus, for instance, you would find this exhortation: “If you kiss your child, or your wife, say to yourself that it is a human being that you are kissing; and then you will not be disturbed if either of them dies.” So is Stoicism a life-affirming philosophy that can truly help us to live better lives in the modern world or a fiercely radical perspective, intriguing but too remote and demanding to have any real relevance to our daily conduct?

Why eschew luxury? The traditional arguments for frugality typically focus on what is good for the individual. Some see frugality as morally valuable because it tends to be associated with other virtues such as wisdom, honesty, or sincerity. Some find the natural, uncluttered, focused character of a simple lifestyle aesthetically appealing. The most common argument, though, is that simple living is the surest route – some even say the only route – to happiness.

Don didn’t grasp what would eventually come to be one of the most successful ad campaigns ever because he didn’t recognise the person presenting the evidence as being appropriately trustworthy. He failed to know because Dr Guttman’s say-so was not enough to provide justification for a belief. But why would he think that? To get to the bottom of this, we need the help of an analytical approach known as standpoint theory.