3:AM Magazine

Philosophy is, by its nature, a dialogue, an engagement with others over certain kinds of problems, ideas, and arguments. Sometimes the dialogue takes place in person; more often, it happens through our writing and our teaching, as we critically consider what others have said on this or that topic. Everyone who does philosophy is engaged in this kind of dialogue. It’s just that the philosophers whom those of us who do history of early modern philosophy are in dialogue with happen to be long dead.

Continuing the End Times series, Richard Marshall interviews Steven Nadler.

» Read more...

You have to understand that, under Stalin, Soviet philosophy had been codified into a rigid dogma. Ilyenkov, in contrast, took a critical, scholarly approach to Marx’s ideas, mining them for philosophical insights. By focusing on Marx’s method, Illyenkov was able to explore issues about explanation in science and social science; concept formation and development; the limits of positivism and empiricism, the nature of value; the social character of knowledge; and so on.

Continuing the End Times series, Richard Marshall interviews David Bakhurst.

» Read more...

My account reverses the standard liberal picture and shows that civil disobedience is more conscientious and more defensible than private objection is. As such, civil disobedience has the better claim to the protections that liberal societies tend to give to conscientious breaches of law. True conscientiousness requires not just that we act as we think we ought to act, but also that we be willing to be seen to hold the views we have. We must be willing to communicate our views to others and to bear the costs for our dissent.

Continuing the End Times series, Richard Marshall interviews Kimberley Brownlee.

» Read more...

I also hold, defeasibly, that all the real patterns discernible in biology, and via the social sciences, will be explicable in these terms, though not “reducible” in any simplistic ways. (I don’t expect economics to “reduce” to chemistry, but I think the regularities of economics are higher-order regularities of physical, chemical, biological structures.) And I think that such human phenomena as art, music, literature, humor, and ethics can be explained with theories that build on the same foundations.

Continuing the End Times series, Richard Marshall interviews Daniel Dennett.

» Read more...

Just as we can hold an individual responsible for what she should have known, so, too, can we hold a group responsible for what it should have known. This is highly relevant to the collective knowledge doctrine in the law, since one of the main reasons for its existence is to discourage the deliberate compartmentalization of knowledge by groups in an effort to avoid culpability.

Continuing the End Times series, Richard Marshall interviews Jennifer Lackey.

» Read more...

I think that the whole idea that women are put off by or unsuited to the aggressive, argumentative style of philosophy is crap. Discursive intensity and tenacity, a high premium on verbal sparring and cleverness, and a fundamentally critical dialogical method have been central to philosophy since its birth, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. The fact is, most people, regardless of gender, find that kind of discourse difficult, overwhelming, and somewhat threatening; the Athenians didn’t crack out the hemlock for no reason.

Continuing the End Times series, Richard Marshall interviews Rebecca Kukla.

» Read more...

In claiming that a just society must embody a significant degree of civic friendship (and an unjust one necessarily a lack), I do not mean that all citizens must be personal friends with one another (which is impossible). Nor do I mean that there must be some fuzzy warm feeling all citizens have for one another, or the like. Rather, my claim is that at least three essential traits of all friendship – a reciprocal awareness of equality, reciprocal good will and practical doing — must now be evidenced and operate publicly, at least to a certain degree, in a society’s laws, its social and economic institutions, as well as expressed in the everyday habits and practices of citizens.

Continuing the End Times series, Richard Marshall interviews Sibyl A. Schwarzenbach.

» Read more...

Habermas has a rare and enviable capacity to sense the issues that are relevant to the present. In the mid-1980s he was among the most vocal opponents of the right-wing historiographers in the Historian Controversy, whom he accused of wanting to relativize the crimes of the Nazi regime, in the interests of normalizing West German foreign policy. More recently he has engaged in debates around gene technology and their threat to our self-understanding as autonomous moral persons. He has been true to his own view that the task of the public intellectual is to “stir up critical developments when everyone else is still doing business as usual.” Philosophers should do more of that. As a bunch, we tend to be too inward looking.

Continuing the End Times series, Richard Marshall interviews Gordon Finlayson.

» Read more...

A science of concepts would be like a science of Tuesdays. As you can imagine, not all psychologists are thrilled!

But this view has a silver lining for psychologists. If I am correct, there are a bunch of exciting empirical questions that have been ignored by psychologists, and that should be tackled urgently. These include, How are the concepts organized? Do some concepts have priority over others? How are resulting conflicts resolved? Are they triggered in different contexts? And what is the relevant mechanism? How are different types of concepts acquired?

Continuing the End Times series, Richard Marshall interviews Edouard Machery.

» Read more...

Hegelian scholars have often divided themselves between “metaphysical” and “non-metaphysical” readings of his work. This distinction is misleading. It leads to the mistaken view that non-metaphysical readings of Hegel’s work deny there is metaphysics to be found. A further problem is that “metaphysical” readings will often overemphasise Hegel’s views about Geist and religion – as if their opponents deny their relevance – which defend a reading of Hegel’s text at the expense of making them more penetrable or defensible. “Non-metaphysical” readings typically overstate other elements presenting a reading perhaps more philosophical defensible, but at a lack of deep connection with the text. Too often a claim about “Hegel’s theory of x” is perhaps more a reflection of “my new theory of x” concealed behind the illusion that Hegel argues for the same.

Continuing the End Times series, Richard Marshall interviews Thom Brooks.

» Read more...