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Today is Easter Sunday for the majority of the world’s 2.4 billion Christians (most Orthodox Christians will wait until May 1st to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus). After the long penitential season of Lent, Christians are greeting each other with joyful exclamations of “He is risen,” and hearing in glad response, “He is risen indeed, hallelujah!”

The post The God-man resurrected: a philosophical problem for the Incarnation appeared first on OUPblog.

This January, the OUP Philosophy team has chosen David Hume as their Philosopher of the Month. Born in Edinburgh, Hume is considered a founding figure of empiricism and the most significant philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment. With its strong critique of contemporary metaphysics, Hume’s 'Treatise of Human Nature' (1739–40) cleared the way for a genuinely empirical account of human understanding.

The post How well do you know David Hume? [quiz] appeared first on OUPblog.

What is happiness and how can we promote it? These questions are central to human existence and human flourishing now plays a central role in the assessment of national and global progress. Paul Anand shows why the traditional national income approach is limited as a measure of human wellbeing and demonstrates how the contributors to happiness, wellbeing, and quality of life can be measured and understood across the human life course. The following extract looks at the connection between income and wellbeing.

The post “The economics of happiness” – an extract from Happiness Explained appeared first on OUPblog.

Understanding the relationship between the mind and the body remains one of the most vexed problems in philosophy, cognitive science, and neuroscience. Physicalism has not reigned unchallenged, however. A number of arguments have been raised which promote dualism in its place -- the view that fundamentally, the mind and body are separate.

The post Imagining zombies appeared first on OUPblog.

Sure, imagination is powerful. But can it really change the world? Indeed, it is tempting to answer “no” here -- to disagree with Glaude about the transformative power of imagination. After all, imagination is the stuff of fancy, of fiction, of escape. We daydream to get away from the disappointing monotony of daily life.

The post The power of imagination appeared first on OUPblog.

That life is energy, is evident. What is equally evident is the truth that life-energy, or prana, flows in many channels: the energy of dance, of music, of thought, and of literature; and also the energy at the stock exchange. It assumes many forms: the energy in earth and in water, and the energy of the human mind and of the human heart.

The post Paradox of Energy appeared first on OUPblog.

A theory is inconsistent if we can prove a contradiction using basic logic and the principles of that theory. Consistency is a much weaker condition that truth: if a theory T is true, then T consistent, since a true theory only allows us to prove true claims, and contradictions are not true. There are, however, infinitely many different consistent theories that we can construct.

The post The consistency of inconsistency claims appeared first on OUPblog.

Two hundred years ago, William Lawrence blew the roof off the Hunter Lecture Series at the Royal College of Surgeons by adding the word "biology" to the English language to discuss living physiology, behavior, and diversity as a matter of gunky chemistry and physics, sans super-added forces.

The post The true meaning of cell life and death appeared first on OUPblog.

You walked out the door this morning. Why did you do it? Perhaps because you wanted to stretch your legs. Perhaps because you wanted to feel the fresh air on your face and the wind blowing through your hair. Is that it? Not quite. I bet you also walked out the door this morning because the phone didn’t ring a second earlier.

The post Why we do what we do appeared first on OUPblog.

The OUP Philosophy team have selected Plato (c. 429–c. 347 BC) as their February Philosopher of the Month. After his death in 347 BC, educators at the Academy continued teaching Plato’s works into the Roman era. Today he is perhaps the most widely studied philosopher of all time.

The post How well do you know Plato? [quiz] appeared first on OUPblog.

Guy and Doll have agreed that Guy will act as Doll directs, and that Doll is entitled to use force or punishment to get Guy to do as she directs if he ever demurs or falls short. Guy has contracted to be Doll’s slave. Such contracts are familiar from fiction and from history; and some people may have familiarity with them in contemporary life. It is common for philosophers to argue that such contracts are impossible.

The post Slavery contracts appeared first on OUPblog.

The OUP Philosophy team have selected Plato (c. 429–c.347 BC) as their February Philosopher of the Month. The best known and most widely studied of all the ancient Greek philosophers, Plato laid the groundwork for Western philosophy and Christian theology. Plato was most likely born in Athens, to Ariston and Perictione, a noble, politically active family.

The post Philosopher of the month: Plato appeared first on OUPblog.

How is human freedom really possible in the natural world as correctly described by modern physics, chemistry, biology, and cognitive neuroscience? Or, given the truth of modern science, are you really free? By 'real freedom,' I mean 'real free will and real rational agency'.

The post Are you really free? Yes: a new argument for freedom appeared first on OUPblog.

Most people have a good idea what it is to have a Stoical attitude to life, but what it means to have an Epicurean attitude is not so obvious. When attempting to decipher the true nature of Epicureanism it is first necessary to dispel the impression that fine dining is its central theme.

The post Epicureanism: eat, drink, and be merry? appeared first on OUPblog.

While out driving one afternoon, I notice a bus speeding down the road towards me. As it approaches, the bus drifts into my lane, forcing me to swerve and strike a parked car. The bus doesn’t stop and, while I glimpse some corporate logo on the side, I’m shaken and I don’t manage to make it out.

The post When probability is not enough appeared first on OUPblog.

Towards the end of his lecture on ‘techniques of the body’, delivered to a meeting of the Société Française de Psychologie in 1934, the sociologist and anthropologist Marcel Mauss discussed the methods of breathing practiced by Daoist priests and Yogic mystics. Far from being instinctive, these techniques require a lengthy apprenticeship.

The post Bodies of breath, bodies of knowledge, and bodies of culture appeared first on OUPblog.

There has been much recent talk about a possible robot apocalypse. One person who is highly skeptical about this possibility is philosopher John Searle. In a 2014 essay, he argues that "the prospect of superintelligent computers rising up and killing us, all by themselves, is not a real danger".

The post Does the ‘Chinese room’ argument preclude a robot uprising? appeared first on OUPblog.

A creatively vital use of an emerging medium

The human brain is a most wonderful organ: it is our window on time. Our brains have specialized structures that work together to give us our human sense of time. The temporal lobe helps form long term memories, without which we would not be aware of the past, whilst the frontal lobe allows us to plan for the future.

The post Time and perception appeared first on OUPblog.

This January, the OUP Philosophy team has chosen Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret (G.E.M.) Anscombe as their Philosopher of the Month. G.E.M. Anscombe (1919 - 2001) was a British analytical philosopher best known for her contributions in the fields of philosophy of the mind, action, language, logic, and ethics. Test your knowledge of this famous female philosopher.

The post Test your knowledge of G.E.M. Anscombe appeared first on OUPblog.

Can a robot be conscious? I will try to discuss this without getting bogged down in the rather thorny issue of what consciousness –– really is. Instead, let me first address whether robot consciousness is an important topic to think about. At first sight, it may seem unimportant. Robots will affect us only through their outward behavior, which may be more or less along the lines of what we tend to think of as coming along with consciousness, but given this behavior, its consequences to us are not affected by whether or not it really is accompanied by consciousness.

The post Can a robot be conscious? appeared first on OUPblog.

On leaving school, my advisor reminded me to always take time to think. That seemed like a reasonable suggestion, as I trudged off to teach, write, and, of course, think. But the modern academy doesn’t share this value; faculty are increasingly prodded to “produce” more articles, more presentations, more grant applications, and more PhD students.

The post No time to think appeared first on OUPblog.

The Liar paradox is often informally described in terms of someone uttering the sentence: I am lying right now. If we equate lying with merely uttering a falsehood, then this is (roughly speaking) equivalent to a somewhat more formal, more precise version of the paradox that arises by considering a sentence like: "This sentence is false".

The post Lying, belief, and paradox appeared first on OUPblog.

Religious belief has been allied, for centuries, with fundamentalism and intolerance. It’s possible to have one without the other, but it requires a degree of self-criticism that is not easily acquired. When Calvin endorsed the execution of Michael Servetus in 1553, he justified his decision by appeal to the certainty of his own religious faith.

The post Religious belief, fundamentalism, and intolerance appeared first on OUPblog.

Atheism is the absence of belief that God, and other deities, exist. How much do you know about this belief system? Julian Baggini, author of Atheism: A Very Short Introduction, tells us the ten things we never knew about atheism.

The post 10 surprising facts about atheism appeared first on OUPblog.