Caught in the web
By Antonia Case “Can anyone doubt today that all the millions of individuals and all the innumerable types and characters constitute an entity,…
Illusions
Essays, interviews and ideas from New Philosopher.
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How much time do I have left?
No one can really know how much time they have left to live, though some have a better idea than others – the terminally…
The mystery of time
Zan Boag: You’ve delved into the mystery of time over the course of your life, a journey that has ultimately led to you writing…
The art of Amistics
In his most recent novel, Seveneves, sci-fi author Neal Stephenson coins an intriguing term: “Amistics”. Amistics describes “the choices that different cultures made as…
Dumb luck and entitlement
There’s a certain disappointment – maybe there’s a word for it in German – that comes from realising a quote you like is actually…
Are your best days ahead?
If philosophy is good at one thing, it’s pointing out things that seem so obvious we don’t even notice them and making them suddenly…
The price of immortality
The Continental adventure was not going to plan for John Polidori. A young English doctor dreaming of literary acclaim and resentful of his father’s…
Thinking ahead
Søren Kierkegaard famously pointed out that the only way we can understand life is backwards – we are compelled to live moving forwards, but…
Would you upload yourself?
By Russell Blackford If our minds are essentially what happens when our brains perform certain kinds of complex computations, then very powerful computers should…
The Media Effect
Sociologists have long known that most of us are pretty nice. We work well in groups and take care of one another. We generally…
On the shortness of life
It is a general complaint among mankind, Paulinus, that Nature is niggardly: our allotted span is brief, and the term granted us flies by…
Perception and reality
By Keith Wilson Taken at face value, the picture of reality suggested by modern science seems radically opposed to the world as we perceive…
