Current Hot Topics in Philosophy

bhovaspack

I like to read philosophy books by established philosophers, but it struck me recently that the most current philosophical debates are probably taking place in journals, at conferences, and among philosophers who are less well established.

While I obviously don't think that this detracts from reading older works (and in some ways reading older stuff is clearly more rewarding, from the perspective that it has obviously stood the test of time and has withstood much critique), I wonder what are the debates that are being had right now at the absolute front-lines of philosophical debate.

I suppose in ethics these would probably relate to issues such as cloning, genetics, and online identity. But what about areas such as metaphysics and political philosophy?

Thanks. BP

simplistic2

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Black Swan

Some age old questions:

• “The unexamined life is not worth living” – Socrates (470-399 BCE)
• “Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily” – William of Ockham (1285 – 1349?)
• “The life of man [is] solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” – Thomas Hobbes (1588 – 1679)
• “I think therefore I am” – René Descartes (1596 – 1650)
• “To be is to be perceived (Esse est percipi).” Or, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?” – Bishop George Berkeley (1685 – 1753)
• “We live in the best of all possible worlds.” – Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646 – 1716)
• “The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.” G.W.F. Hegel (1770 – 1831)
• “Who is also aware of the tremendous risk involved in faith – when he nevertheless makes the leap of faith – this [is] subjectivity … at its height.” – Søren Kierkegaard (1813 – 1855)
• “God is dead.” – Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900)
• “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.” – Albert Camus (1913 – 1960)
• “One cannot step twice in the same river.” – Heraclitus (ca. 540 – ca. 480 BCE)

Source: http://www.neatorama.com/2007/02/06/11-most-important-philosophical-quotations/

The philosophy of cognitive science has posed several questions that range from variations on older problems to relatively new areas of philosophical inquiry. For example:

• Innateness. To what extent is knowledge innate or acquired by experience? Is human behavior shaped primarily by nature or nurture?
  
• Language of thought. Does the human brain operate with a language-like code or with a more general connectionist architecture? What is the relation between symbolic cognitive models using rules and concepts and sub-symbolic models using neural networks?
  
• Mental imagery. Do human minds think with visual and other kinds of imagery, or only with language-like representations?
  
• Folk psychology. Does a person's everyday understanding of other people consist of having a theory of mind, or of merely being able to simulate them?
  
• Meaning. How do mental representations acquire meaning or mental content? To what extent does the meaning of a representation depend on its relation to other representations, its relation to the world, and its relation to a community of thinkers?
  
• Mind-brain identity. Are mental states brain states? Or can they be multiply realized by other material states? What is the relation between psychology and neuroscience? Is materialism true?
  
• Free will. Is human action free or merely caused by brain events?
  
• Moral psychology. How do minds/brains make ethical judgments?
  
• The meaning of life. How can minds construed naturalistically as brains find value and meaning?
  
• Emotions. What are emotions, and what role do they play in thinking?
  
• Mental illness. What are mental illnesses, and how are psychological and neural processes relevant to their explanation and treatment?
  
• Appearance and reality. How do minds/brains form and evaluate representations of the external world?
  
• Social science. How do explanations of the operations of minds interact with explanations of the operations of groups and societies?

Source: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cognitive-science/#PhiRel