Many are introduced to philosophy by way of a confrontation with the kind of radical skepticism associated with Rene Descartes: Might I right now be dreaming? Might everything I think I know be the product of some grand deception perpetrated by a malevolent demon? Today, many philosophers seems simply to dismiss radical skepticism as unworthy of our attention; however, the skeptical challenge lingers, and, for many, it still is a source of concern. In Epistemic Angst: Radical Skepticism and the Groundlessness of Our Believing (Princeton University Press, 2015), Duncan Pritchard offers a sustained response to radical skepticism. He first shows that radical skepticism comes in two varieties, each of which calls for its own response. He then offers a two-part solution to radical skepticism. Ultimately, Pritchard offers a cure for epistemic angst, but one that allows for ongoing insecurity about our epistemic condition. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

Although there are many deep criticisms of a scientific view of humanity and the world, a persistent theme is that the scientific worldview eliminates mystery, and in particular, the wonders and mysteries of the world’s religions. In Excellent Beauty: The Naturalness of Religion and the Unnaturalness of the World (Columbia University Press), Eric Dietrich argues that the human thirst for mystery would still be slated even if we explain away the mysteries of religion in scientific, specifically evolutionary, terms. Among the strange “excellent beauties”, he claims, are consciousness and infinity. Dietrich, professor of philosophy at Binghamton University, describes the structure of spiritual journeys, the social-bonding role of religious belief and our ineliminably “Janus-faced” nature as creatures who dislike open-ended mysteries but love magical thinking. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

The social sciences are about social entities – things like corporations and traffic jams, mobs and money, parents and war criminals. What is a social entity? What makes something a social entity? Traditional views hold that these things can be fully explained by facts about people – their bodies, their attitudes or some combination of these. In The Ant Trap: Rebuilding the Foundations of the Social Sciences (Oxford University Press, 2015), Brian Epstein argues that such views of social facts are untenably anthropocentric: social facts supervene on much more than just people. His model distinguishes two kinds of questions that a theory of social ontology must answer. When are social categories realized, or what grounds a social fact (such as the fact that someone is a war criminal)? And what explains how these categories get established, or what anchors the category? Epstein, an assistant professor of philosophy at Tufts University, also uses his model to provide a new analysis of group action and group intention. On his view, group action is not exhausted by the actions of members, and group intention depends on more than member attitudes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

Chances are that at this very moment, you are either looking at a computer screen, holding a digital device, or listening to my voice through plastic earphones. Our computers and these other devices are constructed out of materials that have their origins in lands across the globe. And oil plays a central and early role in the causal story of how we came into possession of them. Oil also plays a leading role in the major global conflicts of our day. Much of the world’s oil is sold to us by brutal tyrants who use the monetary proceeds to strengthen their tyranny. But it is arguable that tyrants who control a territory have no legitimate claim to ownership of the territory’s resources; the oil belongs to the people, not to the tyrant. So the oil that goes into creating the objects that we now possess and use is likely stolen. How is it then that your computer, which is made of oil in the form of plastic, is your property? And what can be done about the fact that out ordinary consumption habits so directly place large sums of money into the pockets of the world’s most brutal men? In Blood Oil: Tyranny, Violence, and the Rules that Run the World (Oxford University Press, 2016), Leif Wenar examines the history, sociology, and politics of the global oil trade. Although the reality depicted in the book is bleak and disturbing, Wenar’s message is ultimately uplifting. He argues that, despite all of the prevailing injustices in the world, the tools of radical reform are close at hand. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

Ever since Kant argued that there was a category of truths, the synthetic a priori, that grounded the possibility of empirical knowledge, philosophers have debated the concept of a priori knowledge in science. Are there kinds of scientific knowledge that are not based in sense experience? What is the status of mathematical claims in science? David J. Stump, professor of philosophy at the University of San Francisco, argues that there is a priori knowledge in science, but that it is a pragmatic and dynamic. In Conceptual Change and the Philosophy of Science: Alternative Interpretations of the A Priori (Routledge, 2015), Stump argues that the a priori is better understood as the ‘constitutive elements’ of science – the truths that must be presupposed for empirical inquiry to take place, but without implying that these truths are universal and fixed as Kant held. Stump provides an accessible critical understanding of post-Kantian conceptions of the a priori and contrasts his view with those of Quine, Friedman and others. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

We don’t commonly think of procreation as a moral issue. But why not? When you think about it, creating another person seems like a morally weighty thing to do. And we tend to think that procreation under certain conditions would be irresponsible, selfish, or reckless. Might there also be cases where procreation is morally impermissible? In The Risk of a Lifetime: How, When, and Why Procreation May be Permissible (Oxford University Press, 2016), Rivka Weinberg explores a broad range of questions concerning the morality of procreation. She argues that procreation is a form of risk imposition, and so is morally permissible only under certain circumstances. In taking this view, she places herself in opposition to two more popular stances, one holding that procreation is almost never impermissible, and the holding that procreation is never permissible. Employing a Rawlsian constructivist model, Weinberg proposes two principles that establish conditions for permissible procreation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

Nothing seems so obviously true as the claim that pains feel bad, that pain and suffering go together. Almost as obviously, it seems that the function of pain is to inform us of tissue damage. In What the Body Commands: The Imperative Theory of Pain (The MIT Press, 2015), Colin Klein denies both apparently obvious claims. On his view, pain is a “protective imperative” whose content is to protect the body or body part: for example, “Don’t put weight on that left ankle!” Klein, Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at Macquarie University, discusses the problem of pain asymbolia, in which people report feeling pain but are not the least bit motivated to do anything about it; considers how to explain masochistic pleasure, where we deliberately act in ways that do not protect the body; and addresses the question: why do pains (typically, but contingently) hurt? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

It seems obvious that children need to be loved, that having a loving home and upbringing is essential to a child’s emotional and cognitive development. It is also obvious that, under typical circumstances at least, for every child there are adults who should love them. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that many national and international charters and declarations specifically ascribe to children a right to be loved. But the idea that children have a right to be loved seems philosophically suspicious. Questions arise almost instantly: Could there be right to be loved? Could children hold such a right? To whom does the correlate duty to love a child fall? What would such a duty require? One might also begin to wonder: What are the implications of such a right for family, parenting, child-rearing, and adoption? In The Right to be Loved (Oxford University Press, 2015), S. Matthew Liao works carefully and systematically through all of these questions in providing a compelling defense of the idea that children indeed have a right to be loved. This is a fascinating book with a bold thesis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

Belief in magic was pervasive in Greco-Roman times, persisted through the Renaissance, and then fell off the map of intellectual respectability in the Enlightenment. What happened? Why did it become embarrassing for Isaac Newton to have sought the philosopher’s stone, and for Robert Boyle to have urged the British Parliament to repeal a ban on transmuting base metals into silver and gold? In Magic in Western Culture: From Antiquity to the Enlightenment (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Brian P. Copenhaver shows that for millenia magic was taken seriously by the learned classes, sustained by a philosophical foundation drawn from Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. In this fascinating account of the historical conceptual framework of magic, Copenhaver, who is distinguished professor of philosophy and history at UCLA, explains the difference between good and bad magic, why Catholic Church fathers endorsed some magical beliefs (but drew the line at amulets and talismans), and how the rise of mechanistic philosophy transformed magic from being reputable to being a joke. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy

We tend to think of Philosophy as a professional academic subject that is taught in college classes, with its own rather specialized problems, vocabularies, and methods. But we also know that the discipline has its roots in the Socratic activity of trying to incite debate and critical reflection among our fellow citizens. That is, we acknowledge that, apart from its existence as a technical discipline, Philosophy is a kind of civic activity that, we hope, can help us to address life’s biggest questions, even when we find ourselves deeply divided over their answers. In Teaching Plato in Palestine: Philosophy in a Divided World (Princeton University Press, 2015), Carlos Fraenkel tells the tale of his attempts to recapture Philosophy’s Socratic dimension. He recounts his adventures in doing philosophy in nonstandard contexts, with atypical interlocutors, and in unfamiliar places. Along the way, we see a hopeful and encouraging vision of philosophy emerge as a collection of rational techniques and intellectual virtues that can, indeed, rescue our individual and collective lives from impending incivility. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/philosophy