In ‘When God is your Therapist‘, (New York Times, 13 April 2013) T.M Luhrmann suggests that the evangelical relationship with God often resembles that between client and therapist: I soon came to realize that one of the most important features of these churches is that they offer a powerful way to deal with anxiety andContinue reading “God as Therapist, Existent or Non-Existent”
Category Archives: Philosophy
What the Brain Can Tell Us About Art (and Literature)
In ‘What the Brain Can Tell Us About Art‘ (New York Times, April 12, 2013), Eric R. Kandel writes: Alois Riegl….understood that art is incomplete without the perceptual and emotional involvement of the viewer. Not only does the viewer collaborate with the artist in transforming a two-dimensional likeness on a canvas into a three-dimensional depictionContinue reading “What the Brain Can Tell Us About Art (and Literature)”
Get Your Computer’s Hands off my Students’ Essays
Last week, the New York Times alerted readers to the possibility of computers grading college-level student essays. As with any news featuring the use of ‘artificial intelligence’ to replace humans, reactions to this announcement feature the usual skewed mix of techno-boosterism, assertions of human uniqueness, and fears of deskilling and job loss. First, a sampleContinue reading “Get Your Computer’s Hands off my Students’ Essays”
Land, Ownership, Property, and Nationalism
A few days ago, a dinner-time conversation with some friends turned to the matter of property disputes within families. Both my wife and I spoke with some feeling about the fierce passions they evoked, their seeming intractability, and of course, in the context of modern real estate pressures, their ever-increasing ferocity. It reminded me, yetContinue reading “Land, Ownership, Property, and Nationalism”
Returning to Writing (And How It Sucks)
On Wednesday, I resumed work on a philosophy book project that has been on the back-burner for a while. More precisely, I have not worked on it since July 2012. (The fall semester of 2012 saw me teaching three classes, all of them essentially new preparations, and then, like, a baby was born.) Back inContinue reading “Returning to Writing (And How It Sucks)”
Marriage: It Ain’t a Religious Thing
Last year, I wrote a post on same-sex marriage, or rather, on Barack Obama’s evolving views on it. In that post, I handed out some unsolicited advice to the President, suggesting he view marriage in its social and economic context, and noting that there were too many similarities between the explicitly institutionalized racism of theContinue reading “Marriage: It Ain’t a Religious Thing”
Academic Arguments, Sports, and Urban Policing as ‘War’
In the introduction to The Social Construction of What? Ian Hacking writes: Labels such as ‘‘the culture wars,’’ ‘‘the science wars,’’ or ‘‘the Freud wars’’ are now widely used to refer to some of the disagreements that plague contemporary intellectual life. I will continue to employ those labels, from time to time, in this book, for my themesContinue reading “Academic Arguments, Sports, and Urban Policing as ‘War’”
Ten Years After: War Criminals Still Walk Free
You call someone a ‘mass-murdering war criminal’, you best not miss. And so, when I use that term to describe the unholy troika of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld–as I have in the past–I should have very good reasons for doing so. Fortunately, that isn’t hard to do: a pretty systematic caseContinue reading “Ten Years After: War Criminals Still Walk Free”
Physical and Psychological Affordance
According to Wikipedia, ‘an affordance is a quality of an object, or an environment, which allows an individual to perform an action. For example, a knob affords twisting, and perhaps pushing, while a cord affords pulling.’ (A photograph of a tea set in the Wikipedia entry bears the caption, ‘The handles on this tea set provide anContinue reading “Physical and Psychological Affordance”
Nietzsche on the Lazy Faithful
Those who read Nietzsche often find him very funny. (Some of those who read him find him extremely unfunny too, especially when the joke is on them.) His humor sometimes sneaks in on you in the most unexpected of places. A good example is found in the following: On the future of Christianity. – As to theContinue reading “Nietzsche on the Lazy Faithful”
Samir Chopra 