The Philosopher's Zone - Program Podcast

The question of exactly what constitutes identity is an old and much-contested one. Is personhood located in a community? A culture? A race? Or is it something singular and immanent, located somewhere in the deepest recesses of the individual?

What does it mean when beauty moves from aesthetic choice to ethical ideal? The age-old belief that true beauty lies within is ever harder to sustain today. It was once sidelined as a 'women’s issue' but beauty is now taking its place as a subject for serious philosophical scrutiny.

We don’t routinely think of political figures as philosophers, but when but comes to Martin Luther King maybe we should. King was a deep thinker with a remarkably coherent vision of the moral life and a bracing take on some of the fundamental questions of political philosophy.

Thinking Out Loud: The Sydney Lectures in Philosophy and Society aims to bring a leading international thinker to Western Sydney University annually to present a series of public lectures. This year Rosi Braidotti will present The Human in the Age of Technology and Climate Change. The idea of ‘human’ is undergoing rapid change. Some have termed this the age of the ‘post-human’, and it might appear a moment of great promise and liberation. Yet an underside of injustice and exclusion stubbornly remains. Rosi Braidotti is optimistic.

Eugenics is a science that seems to belong back in the darkest days of the 20th century. But today, 'newgenics' has people worried, as reproductive technologies make it increasingly possible to filter out certain genetic disorders. How does this colour our notion of what constitutes a 'desirable' or 'undesirable' human subject?

We often hear that the academic Humanities and social sciences are in crisis—underfunded, out of touch with the job market, hamstrung by political correctness and moral relativism. So why study philosophy? And could a good dose of scientific method help to solve the problem—if indeed there is one?

Understanding the human condition has been the province of many disciplines, but you wouldn’t necessarily expect microbiology to be among them. Think again!

Children are natural philosophers — so why don’t we routinely teach them how to do philosophy? Some issues around that debate were aired at a recent public panel hosted by the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia.

For many of us, 'post-truth' means a culture where appeals to prejudice and emotion trump rational policy discussion. But for Steve Fuller, post-truth is just a by-product of the institutionalisation of knowledge—including scientific knowledge.

Andy Clark is a big name in what’s known as embodied and extended cognition. The theory positions the mind beyond the brain. If accurate, his ideas will have radical practical consequences well beyond the philosophy of mind.

An authentic life will risk heartbreak for the highs—sounds like parenting. Matt Beard presents his final foray into the bewildering modern world of children, parents and families.   

Every parent knows the guilt that comes from being a ‘bad parent’—after you’ve lost your temper, given in to a tantrum and spoiled your precious little angel! It might affect how the child grows up, but how to work that out?

Brothers, sisters, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, those weird second cousins you never talk to… how might we define family—and why it matters.

Should you have kids? Don’t look for sage advice—part 1 of a 4-part series.

Drop those test tubes, take off your lab coat, pull up a comfy chair and think your way to scientific truth.

Alfred Mele has four years and four million dollars trying to get to the bottom of free will. He learnt that it was like petrol.

Carlo Rovelli on the desperate need for some conceptual engineering to dig quantum thinking out of a deep black hole.

The structure of the universe is written in stone—maybe. Dana Goswick talks metaphysics.

Forget the meaning of life; an ethical definition of awesome is far more important.

She might not be in vogue these days, but for one Cambridge philosopher Enid Blyton is serious moral business.