Philosopher's Zone

Epizódok

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  Habermas and the retreat of reason 13.08.2026 42p

  The great German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, who died in March, wrote in his later works about what he called Unheimlichkeit — roughly translated as "the unease of the times" — to describe the global retreat of liberal democracy, the fraying of the rules-based international order, and the increasing polarisation and hostility of public discourse. And yet, to the end he defended Enlightenment reason and the utility of rational debate. In a world that seems to be losing its democratic bearings, has Habermas' day passed? Or is the problem more that we haven't read him carefully enough? Guest: Peter J. Verovšek, Assistant Professor in the History of European Integration, University of Groningen, The Netherlands Producer: David Rutledge Did Jürgen Habermas's death also mark the end of his vision of democratic life? - Peter Verovšek for ABC Religion & Ethics
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  Visual art as philosophy 06.08.2026 32p

  When it comes to the ideal philosophical medium, most of us would identify the written word - or maybe the spoken word, if we're fans of Socratic dialogue - and this is because for centuries, philosophy has been a linguistic practice. But this week we're arguing that visual art can be philosophy, and looking at how visual art can represent concepts in ways that haven't traditionally been recognised by Western epistemic traditions. Guest: Taylor-Jai McAlister, clinical psychologist and postdoctoral Research Fellow in Philosophy, Macquarie University, Sydney Producer: David Rutledge Defining Aboriginality - Taylor-Jai McAlister on The Philosopher's Zone, November 2023
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  How smart are machines, anyway? 31.07.2026 32p

  Ever since AI was founded in the 1950s, people have talked and written about 'intelligence' as though we all broadly agree on what that word means. But there's considerable debate on that score, and among the debaters are philosophers - like this week's guest - who question the degree to which machines can be said to be intelligent at all, and think that claims of intelligence can all too easily deflect attention from the real ethical issues around AI. Guest: Tim Crane, Professor of Philosophy at the Central European University (CEU) in Vienna, Austria Producer: David Rutledge
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  Hegel: The philosopher with the (one) big idea 24.07.2026 36p

  GWF Hegel (1770-1831) wanted to construct nothing less than a complete explanation of reality - nature, consciousness, art, history, politics, the lot - based on a single self-explanatory idea. Whether or not he succeeded is an interesting question (spoiler: he didn't), but more interesting is the question of why philosophy has become so much less ambitious since then, and what we can learn from Hegel today.
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  Eco-grief and environmental loss 17.07.2026 28p

  Philosophers have traditionally thought of grief as something that attaches to immediate loss - the death of a loved one, something terrible that's happened to us personally. But as the environmental crisis continues to wreak havoc on human and non-human lives, the philosophy of emotions needs a concept that captures a response to loss that perhaps hasn't happened yet, or loss that affects other people we may never meet: eco-grief.
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  Colonising space 10.07.2026 32p

  There's something about space that's always captured the human imagination, but what happens when space begins to capture the imagination of billionaire tech entrepreneurs? In the past, we've visited space for scientific purposes, but now the grand vision is colonisation, permanent human settlement on the Moon, Mars and even further afield, with such ventures along the way as asteroid mining, which promises to deliver untold riches. The technical challenges are immense - as are the ethical ones.
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  Can pregnancy be a job? the ethics of commercial surrogacy 03.07.2026 32p

  Commercial surrogacy - the practice of paying someone to gestate your child and then hand it over when it's born - is banned in Australia, but it has its supporters. Defenders of commercial surrogacy argue that it should be legal for someone to receive payment for the labour of carrying a child, on the grounds that surrogacy constitutes a legitimate form of work. But are there some things that just shouldn't be for sale? This week we're testing the arguments.
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  Belief, emotion and trust 25.06.2026 35p

  The traditional philosophical view of belief is that it's a rational cognitive affair, evidence based and directed toward truth. According to this account, things like delusion and religious belief are "edge cases", exceptions that prove the rule. But this week we're considering not only that belief may be closely tied to emotion, but that it may actually be a form of emotion itself.
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  Communication in an age of crisis 17.06.2026 34p

  Collins Dictionary made "permacrisis" their word of the year in 2022 - a prescient choice because since then, the crises have just kept coming. Permacrisis is forcing us to take a close look at the way we communicate, because while free public discourse is one of the cornerstones of democracy, there's something about the nature of today's public discourse that fuels crisis, and keeps us frozen in a fight-or-flight posture.
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  Can sport survive AI? 12.06.2026 37p

  Elite sport is traditionally a celebration of the human, but for how much longer? We watch in awe as athletes perform feats of skill, strength and endurance,  and experience the high drama of triumph and defeat -  but it's all on a human scale, or at least it has been until now. Sport and technology have always been intertwined, but with the advent of AI, this week we're wondering if the human element of sport - the physical dimension, but also the ethical - might be under threat.
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  Purity, filth and 'promiscuous defecators': why we're weird about poo 05.06.2026 36p

  Why are we so repelled yet fascinated by bodily waste? Today we're talking purity, pollution, colonial sanitation regimes, medicine and public health, and how they've been shaped by our deeply ambivalent attitudes to the stuff we all produce (ideally) every day, but rarely think about deeply.
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  Bad faith and 'just asking questions' 28.05.2026 28p

  There's a certain kind of question that raises suspicion as to the motives of the person asking it. 'Was the Holocaust really as bad as historians have made out?' 'Is there really a scientific consensus on climate change?' 'How do we now for sure that vaccines aren't harmful?' These kinds of questions can be read on the surface as innocent enquiry, but sometimes they can function as a kind of epistemic sabotage, casting doubt on settled issues and seeking to undermine confidence in established truth. How can we tell the difference between sincerity and bad faith? And how should we respond to the latter?
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  'Natural' disasters and climate justice 22.05.2026 31p

  To call the effects of a fire, flood or cyclone these days a 'natural' disaster only tells part of the story, as climate change makes us realise that vulnerability to harm is often the result of factors that actually have little to do with weather events. Land theft, displacement, poverty and the legacies of colonial rule can all multiply climate harms, which means that climate justice is more than simply a matter of sustainable energy development or transitioning to a greener economy.
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  Where am I? Buddhist philosophy and the self 13.05.2026 39p

  Behind the familiar Buddhist doctrine that "there is no self" lies a centuries-long tradition of dispute and disagreement. Reductionists believe that the self is no more than a bundle of sense impressions and mental states that add up to nothing of substance or permanence, while emergentists believe that the self is something more - something related to these impressions and mental states, but not reducible to them. We're not going to settle the argument this week, but we will be exploring the ethical ramifications and asking what's at stake.
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  Common sense vs reason: when philosophy gets weird 08.05.2026 35p

  There are certain things about the world that we think we know for sure, and yet philosophical reason tells us cannot be true. Can you fly? are you real? is the world a hallucination? The answers seem self-evident, but this week we're exploring philosophical thought experiments that pull the rug out from under common sense and intuitive certainty.
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  Adam Smith, economics and moral philosophy 01.05.2026 32p

  Scottish philosopher Adam Smith (1723-1790) is often described as an arch capitalist, the "father of modern economics" - and at a glance it's easy to see why. His Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations provided the theoretical foundation for free market capitalism and the economic policies that prevailed throughout the Industrial Revolution. But to see Smith as an extreme free market ideologue is to get him badly wrong.
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  Can AIs be friends? 23.04.2026 36p

  Artificial intelligence is beginning to revolutionise many aspects of human existence - but how does it rate on friendship? The question is less theoretical than it seems: media reports of people developing 'relationships' with chatbots are becoming more common, and while we may instinctively recoil from this prospect, it's not clear that AIs could never deliver at least some of the benefits of genuine friendship.
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  Kant and religion 16.04.2026 35p

  It's often claimed that the Enlightenment was a time when Europeans awoke from their superstitious slumber, discovered rationality, got started on science and threw religion in the bin. But a surprising number of Enlightenment philosophers had religious commitments — including Immanuel Kant, whose work at the time was understood as not just a religion, but a rival to Christianity.
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  Speech acts and AI 10.04.2026 34p

  Speech acts - utterances that have the power to make things happen in the world - are increasingly being created by AI, especially in certain workplaces where it's not uncommon to receive orders and instructions from an algorithm. The power of a speech act is often understood as emanating from the intention of its author - but if AI lacks the capacity for intention, how much authority do AI-generated workplace commands really have?
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  'Being a burden' and assisted dying 02.04.2026 29p

  Caring for a terminally ill person can place huge pressure - financial, emotional, physical - on the caregivers, who are often family members. And it's not uncommon at the end of life for someone for feel as though they're a 'burden' to those around them. But how should perceptions of burdensomeness play into decisions around medically assisted dying?