NB Philosophy

01/07/2022

According to many standard philosophical accounts, beliefs are a kind of stance one takes toward a proposition. To believe that Nashville is in Tennessee is to adopt a certain attitude towards the proposition ‘Nashville is in Tennessee’. One advantage of this view is that it seems to make clear how beliefs can be right or wrong: to believe a proposition that is false is to have a false belief, while to believe a proposition that is true is to have a true belief. But in Philosophy things are never simple. And this kind of account occasions significant difficulties. Given how central the phenomenon of believing is to everything we do, it may seem odd to say that belief is a puzzle. Yet here we are.

ON BELIEVING: Being Right in a World of Possibilities (Oxford University Press), David Hunter seeks to sort it all out. He presents a novel theory belief that stands in stark contrast with the standard view. On his view, “To believe something is to be in a position to do, think, and feel things in light of a possibility whose obtaining would make one right.” Tune in as Hunter joins us on the podcast 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/on-believing

10/06/2022

Art forms have rules, usually implicit, that govern the experiences that artists want their audiences to have: for example, a representational painting should be hung right-side-up, the same sort of paint medium should be used in restoration, and the painting should not be touched.

In IMMATERIAL: Rules in Contemporary Art (Oxford University Press), Sherri Irvin argues that contemporary conceptual art is constituted by custom rules as well as by their physical medium: the artist may specify that the work is intended to be handled, eaten, made out of anything, or even installed however the gallery or museum wants to. On Irvin’s view, such rules are essential for expressing a work’s meaning, even though they can also make that meaning difficult for audiences to grasp. In this illustrated volume, Irvin considers a wide range of contemporary works to present, elaborate, and address challenges to her view. Give her NBN interview a listen 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/immaterial

08/06/2022

The movement has forced many fans to consider what they should do when they learn that a beloved artist has acted immorally. One natural thought is that fans ought to give up the artworks of immoral artists, but according to Mary Beth Willard, it’s hard to find good reasons to do so. In WHY IT'S OKAY TO ENJOY THE WORK OF IMMORAL ARTISTS (Routledge Creative Media & the Arts), she contends that because most boycotts of artists won’t succeed, there’s no ethical reason to do so most of the time. She then argues that canceling artists is ethically risky because it encourages moral grandstanding.

In this interview, Allison Leigh talks to Mary Beth Willard about the differences between enjoyment and engagement when it comes to immoral artists, as well as whether we should enjoy artworks that have immoral outlooks and behaviors embedded in them. Their conversation ranges from the problems associated with collective versus individual actions, the positive effects that giving up the work of immoral artists may have for shifting cultural norms, and the distinction between public and private enjoyment. Tune in 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/why-its-ok-to-enjoy-the-work-of-immoral-artists

20/05/2022

Are humans the only dreamers on Earth? What goes on in the minds of animals when they sleep? WHEN ANIMALS DREAM: The Hidden World of Animal Consciousness (Princeton University Press) brings together behavioral and neuroscientific research on animal sleep with philosophical theories of dreaming. It shows that dreams provide an invaluable window into the cognitive and emotional lives of nonhuman animals, giving us access to a seemingly inaccessible realm of animal experience.

David Peña-Guzmán uncovers evidence of animal dreaming throughout the scientific literature, suggesting that many animals run “reality simulations” while asleep, with a dream-ego moving through a dynamic and coherent dreamscape. He builds a convincing case for animals as conscious beings and examines the thorny scientific, philosophical, and ethical questions it raises. Once we accept that animals dream, we incur a host of moral obligations and have no choice but to rethink our views about who animals are and the interior lives they lead.

A mesmerizing journey into the otherworldly domain of nonhuman consciousness, When Animals Dream carries profound implications for contemporary debates about animal cognition, animal ethics, and animal rights, challenging us to regard animals as beings who matter, and for whom things matter. Give Peña-Guzmán's conversation with Mark Klobas a listen 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/when-animals-dream

16/05/2022

Everything is breaking down. Chaos is increasing. Entropy is not just a metaphor, although it also that. In ENTROPIC PHILOSOPHY: Chaos, Breakdown, and Creation (Rowman & Littlefield), Shannon M. Mussett argues that while denial and nihilism are common and world-shaping responses to entropy, they are not our only options. By revaluing order and stability, chaos and decay, we can turn to entropy with care and see the possibilities for creation in destruction. Mussett makes these arguments attentive to suffering, loss, and oppression, offering a philosophy of thriving even as the whole universe inexorably moves towards heat death. PODCAST LINK 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/entropic-philosophy

03/05/2022

According to a familiar picture, a democracy is a free society of self-governing equals. This means that democratic citizens have a duty to participate in the processes of democratic governance. Moreover, it is often held that their participation should be aimed at acknowledging their fellow citizens’ status as democratic equals. On a dominant interpretation, this acknowledgement comes by way of how citizens conduct themselves in political decision-making contexts -- including especially contexts of political reasoning, disagreement, and debate. This raises the issue of the kind of reasons that one may bring to public political discourse. On a view associated with John Rawls, theorists of liberal democracy must distinguish between properly public reasons and reasons that are nonpublic. Of course, the distinction is fraught.

In his new book, PUBLIC REASON and POLITICAL AUTONOMY: Realizing the Ideal of a Civic People (Routledge Philosophy and Religion), Blain Neufeld defends a novel view of public reason in a democratic society. He makes his case on the podcast 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/public-reason-and-political-autonomy

02/05/2022

28/04/2022

THE WIVES of WESTERN PHILOSOPHY: Gender Politics in Intellectual Labor (Routledge Philosophy and Religion) fills in a rather large hole in the understanding and the substance of the generation of knowledge. This new edited volume provides an exploration of the thinking around the role of the wife, helpmeet, or intimate companion, and how political theory is created, written, and moved into the public sphere. This book also pays particular attention to what we understand to be intellectual labor, and how we have come to think about the genesis of ideas and theories as the work of a solitary individual—usually male—when others are often quite intimately involved in the generation of this labor. Learn more about the project on the podcast ↙️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-wives-of-western-philosophy

21/04/2022

P. F. Strawson was one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century. His 1962 paper "Freedom and Resentment" is one of the most influential in modern moral philosophy, prompting responses across multiple disciplines, from psychology to sociology.

In FREEDOM, RESENTMENT, and the METAPHYSICS of MORALS (Princeton University Press), Pamela Hieronymi closely reexamines Strawson's paper and concludes that his argument has been underestimated and misunderstood. Rigorous, concise, and insightful, this book sheds new light on Strawson's thinking and has profound implications for future work on free will, moral responsibility, and metaethics. The book also features the complete text of Strawson's "Freedom and Resentment." Hieronymi fills us in on the podcast 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/freedom-resentment-and-the-metaphysics-of-morals

20/04/2022

What does a Bengali intellectual and poet have in common with a British-Austrian logician and philosopher? In LANGUAGE, LIMITS, and BEYOND: Early Wittgenstein and Rabindranath Tagore (Oxford University Press), Priyambada Sarkar explores the shared fascination both of these figures have with the limitations of language, the nature of the ineffable, and the role of poetry in our appreciating both. While we know that the young Ludwig Wittgenstein read Tagore’s works to the Vienna Circle, Sarkar goes beyond this and other biographical anecdotes to demonstrate the depth of his interest in Tagore and the resonance between their approaches to language. Tune in as Sarkar discusses her work on the podcast 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/language-limits-and-beyond

15/04/2022

In the United States, tens of thousands of children are conceived every year with donated gametes. When people decide to create a child with donated gametes, they’ll typically have to make a moral decision about whether the identity of the donor will be available to the resulting person. This quickly raises additional moral and even existential questions about the value of knowing about the circumstances of our own conception.

In CONCEIVING PEOPLE: Genetic Knowledge and the Ethics of S***m and Egg Donation (Oxford Academic (Oxford University Press)), Daniel Groll argues that because donor-conceived persons are likely to develop a significant and worthwhile interest in knowing the identity of their genetic progenitor, their intended parents have an obligation to use a non-anonymous donor. He makes his case on the podcast 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/conceiving-people

15/04/2022

“One should really only do philosophy as poetry.” What could Ludwig Wittgenstein have meant by this? What was the context for this odd remark?

In WITTGENSTEIN's ARTILLERY: Philosophy as Poetry (MIT Press), James Klagge provides a perspective on Wittgenstein as a person and how his life intersected with his work, in particular in the transition from his early TRACTATUS LOGICO-PHILOSOPHICUS to the later PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS. Based on private notebooks and memoirs by some of Wittgenstein’s students, Klagge sees Wittgenstein’s interactions with his students as gradually prodding him to come grips with the problem of how to influence the frames of mind that people take to philosophical problems. Poetry, along with parables, similes, and other imaginative presentations, exemplify a way of addressing these non-cognitive attitudes – and Wittgenstein conceded that he was not entirely successful in his efforts. Klagge joins us on the podcast 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/wittgensteins-artillery

15/04/2022

D.T. Suzuki (1870-1966) reached global fame for his writings on Zen Buddhism. In this introduction to his theories of self, knowledge, and the world, Suzuki is presented as a Buddhist philosopher in his own right. Beginning with a biography of his life providing the historical context to his thought and discussing Suzuki's influences, THE ZEN BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY of D. T. SUZUKI: Strengths, Foibles, Intrigues, and Precision (Bloomsbury Academic) covers the Zen notion of the non-self and Suzuki's Zen view of consciousness, language, and religious truths. Offering the first complete overview of Suzuki's approach, reputation, and legacy as a philosopher, this book is for anyone interested in the philosophical relevance and development of Mahayana Buddhism today. Learn more on the podcast ↙️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-zen-buddhist-philosophy-of-d-t-suzuki

07/04/2022

What happens when we take children seriously as philosophical thinkers? What if we try to hear them about topics such as climate change, solitude, and the meaning of friendship? In SEEN and NOT HEARD Why Children's Voices Matter (Rowman & Littlefield), Jana Mohr Lone engages with the voices of many children in philosophical conversation to learn not only what they think, but also what hearing children can make possible for our shared world. Learn more on the podcast 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/seen-and-not-heard

28/03/2022

Mark Christian Thompson's book, PHENOMENAL BLACKNESS: Black Power, Philosophy, and Theory (University of Chicago Press), examines the changing interdisciplinary investments of key mid-century African American writers and thinkers, showing how their investments in sociology and anthropology gave way to a growing interest in German philosophy and critical theory by the 1960s. Thompson analyzes this shift in intellectual focus across the post-war decades, pinpointing its clearest expression in Amiri Baraka's writings on jazz and blues, in which he insisted on philosophy as the critical means by which to grasp African American expressive culture. PODCAST LINK ↙️

https://newbooksnetwork.com/phenomenal-blackness

21/02/2022

In BUDDHIST ETHICS: A Philosophical Exploration (Oxford University Press), Jay Garfield argues that Buddhist ethics is a distinctive kind of moral phenomenology whose ethical focus is not primarily cultivation of virtues or the achievement of certain consequences. Rather, its goal is for moral agents to shift a non-egocentric attitude about the world from recognizing its interdependence, impermanence, and lack of any essential selves. He makes this argument through investigation into a number of Buddhist thinkers, attending to both pre-modern and modern texts whose genres range from narrative to the more straightforwardly philosophical. Garfield fills us in 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/jay-l-garfield-buddhist-ethics-a-philosophical-exploration-oxford-up-2021

15/02/2022

How do we reason about causal relationships? How do we determine what the causal relationships in nature are? And how are these two things – causal cognition and causation – connected? In CAUSATION with A HUMAN FACE: Normative Theory and Descriptive Psychology (Oxford University Press), James Woodward synthesizes the normative and descriptive aspects of reasoning about causation in a way that combines a minimal realism about causal relations with the ways in which creatures like us think about and investigate these relations. Woodward joins us on the podcast 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/causation-with-a-human-face

11/02/2022

What were the key ideas and influences on Michel Foucault’s early career? In THE EARLY FOUCAULT (Polity), Stuart Elden charts Foucault’s formative intellectual years leading up to the publication of the ground-breaking HISTORY of MADNESS. The book uses a range of new archival material, much of which has been only recently accessible, to show the influence of teachers, mentors, and colleagues, as well as Foucault’s practice as an academic and writer during the 1950s and early 1960s. Telling the story of the possible intellectual trajectories, in psychology and philosophy, Foucault might have followed, along with a clear examination of the roots of his later work, the book is essential reading across the humanities and social sciences. Elden joins us on the podcast 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-early-foucault

14/01/2022

If one were to devise a motto for the art school of today, the choice between 'you too are an artist' and 'abandon all hope you who enter here' would be difficult. Despite significant changes in mainstream art education in recent decades, many anglophone art schools have not abandoned the principal tools of the masterclass or stubborn 18th-century ideas and the belief that creativity is the preserve of the artistic genius. Considering these histories can shed light on the role of the art school in the 21st century.

Michael Newall's A PHILOSOPHY of the ART SCHOOL (Routledge Creative Media & the Arts) presents a philosophical account of the underlying practices and ideas that have come to shape contemporary art school teaching in the UK, US and Europe. Listen in as Newall speaks to Pierre d'Alancaisez about the masterclass and the crit, the pervasive idea of the Romantic genius, creative disagreements with Kant, and the lessons for the future that a historical perspective may offer 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/a-philosophy-of-the-art-school

04/01/2022

Mabel Moraña's book, PHILOSOPHY and CRITICISM in LATIN AMERICA: From Mariátegui to Sloterdijk (Cambria Press) explores the complex relationships between the fields of philosophy and criticism, focusing on methodological, ideological and cultural aspects in which European canonical reflection connects, in many cases conflictively, with Latin American thought.

Philosophy and criticism analyzes aspects of the work of influential modern thinkers (Benjamin, Foucault, Bourdieu, Sloterdijk) vis a vis the proposals of representative authors of Latin American philosophy (Mariátegui, Dussel, Bartra, Echeverría), trying to discover convergences and challenges between both slopes. Delve deeper on the podcast 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/philosophy-and-criticism-in-latin-america

31/12/2021

What is a memoir? What makes a memoir both nonfictional and literary? What are the memoirist’s moral obligations to the people they write about besides themselves, and to their potential readers? And is the writing of a memoir just indulging in narcissism, or revenge?

In ARTFUL TRUTHS: The Philosophy of Memoir (University of Chicago Press), Helena De Bres examines the philosophical issues that the memoir genre raises, given the doubts we may have about whether people can write the truth about themselves, whether the demands of literature overwhelm the demands of truth-telling, and even whether there is such a thing as a unified, persisting self to write about. Tune in as De Bres deftly navigates issues in metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics, and ethics on the podcast👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/artful-truths

31/12/2021

We think of grief as a normal response to the death of a loved one. We’re familiar with the so-called “5 stages” of grief. Grief seems as an emotional episode that befalls us along life’s way, something to be endured and then gotten over. But grief isn’t as straightforward as it might seem. In GRIEF: A Philosophical Guide (Princeton University Press), Michael Cholbi bucks that trend. Instead, he offers a philosophical analysis of grief as a complex affective process that focuses attention on matters that can contribute to self-knowledge. He joins Robert Talisse on the podcast 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/grief

15/12/2021

Robert Talisse’s new book, SUSTAINING DEMOCRACY: What We Owe to the Other Side (Oxford UP) is, in a certain sense, a continuation of his work from his previous book, OVERDOING DEMOCRACY: Why We Must Put Politics in its Place (Oxford 2019). As we discuss during the podcast conversation, SUSTAINING DEMOCRACY explores the conundrum or tension that may well be inherent in democracy, the conflict between holding fast to our beliefs about what we think is just and appropriate for society, and giving our political opponents the respect they deserve even if we disagree with their beliefs about justice. Give the conversation a listen 👇

https://newbooksnetwork.com/sustaining-democracy

06/01/2021

Seemingly fleeting and barely legible insults, slights, and derogations might seem morally insignificant. They’re the byproducts of ordinary thoughtlessness and insensitivity; moreover, insofar as they inflict harm at all, the harm seems miniscule – hurt feelings, disappointment, annoyance, momentary frustration.

In THE ETHICS OF MICROAGGRESSION (Routledge Philosophy and Religion), Regina Rini takes seriously this kind of skeptical stance towards the phenomena of microaggression, instead defending an alternative conception of microaggression that preserves the experiences of those who suffer microaggression while quelling skeptical objections. Learn more on the podcast ↙

https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-ethics-of-microaggression