virtual philosopher

Addiction: Nigel Warburton interviews Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Julian Savulescu

What is addiction? Is it a disease? LIsten to this interview (11 minutes 12 seconds)

Nigel Warburton interviews Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Julian Savulescu on Addiction

Philosophy Bites: the book

You can listen to David Edmonds and Nigel Warburton discussing the forthcoming book (August 2010) Philosophy Bites here (click on the panel below - it may take a few seconds to start playing). The interview lasts 3 minutes and 51 seconds:

Philosphy Bites - The Book

You can pre-order the book here:

Julian Savulescu discussing Craig Venter's synthetic bacterium

Craig Venter has created a synthetic bacterium in the laboratory (there are many links about this on the Nature blog). What are the implications of this breakthrough? I asked Julian Savulescu, Director of Oxford University's Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics.

Click on the button below to listen to the interview which is 11 minutes 16 seconds long. It may take a few seconds before it starts to play. 

Julian Savulescu on Craig Venter's synthetic bacterium

Philosophers Football - Match Report from the Ref.

Philosophers Football Match (read an earlier post 'Was Socrates Offside?')

In a hard-fought game Socrates Wanderers asked questions of Nietzsche Albion, but in the end the German team’s sheer will to power won through. The first few minutes resembled op art with both teams playing in hoops and creating a complex Brownian motion to little avail.

As the match settled, patterns emerged, but no clear architectonic:  the Germans rigorous attack was almost paradoxical due to the presence of anarchic comedian Arthur Smith at striker and his un-Kantian resistance to acknowledge the offside law. Smith rarely troubled fellow comedian Mark Steel who heckled from the Greek goalmouth. The LSE’s Simon Glendinning demonstrated the benefits of a European training with some graceful keeping for the Germans. Meanwhile brother and sister team Bethany Hughes (TV presenter and Historian) and Simon (cricketer switching codes for the day) added co-ordination to a Greek team that included first-time footballer and Plato expert Angie Hobbs at right back – she demonstrated an Aristotelian willingness to learn from experience.


This was a game of two halves. One nil to the Greeks at half time, but a witty team talk from ex England Manager Graham do-I-not-like-that Taylor could not compete with the wisdom of Prospect’s sage A.C. Grayling who reasoned his team to a 3-1 victory. Prospect writer David Edmonds brought bite and intelligence to a congested midfield. The Germans raised their game, at times achieving transcendence. Philosopher of sport and rugby star Emily Ryall showed phenomenological pace frequently breaking through the ruins of a crumbling Greek defence.  A male streaker and a red card for Smith (for stealing the referee’s glasses) seemed to upset the logic of the Greeks and at the end of the day they were left debating what might have been. 

Nigel Warburton (ref.)

Watch former England Manager Graham Taylor giving half-time talk to Greeks (Was he thinking too hard? His team went down 3-1 after this.)

 

 

   

 

  

Index on Censorship - guest blogging on Free Speech

I'm going to be guest blogging once or twice a week for the Index on Censorship 'Free Speech' blog, starting in earnest on May 18th. In the meantime I've put up a couple of posts there already:

Danny Dyer and Free Expression

'Offensive' speech should be met with argument, not arrest

Some relevant links:

More on Free Speech here

Index on Censorship main webpage

Follow Index on Censorship on Twitter