Blog

‘This is the team’: Collective change on climate
‘Under The Sky We Make’ by Kimberly Nicholas. The ecological tipping points are upon us, and all is lost, unless we have a mindset change. “Look around you,” she writes. “This is the team. We are it.”

Animals want to live. Will they save us?
We are part of the world, but we don’t take it seriously. The Prophecy: They’ll renew time and heal the planet. The forest creatures find a way to show them the light. The oppressors can’t do it for themselves.

Everything around us? It’s ‘the surround.’
The word ‘environment’ puts the world in a cognitive box. ‘The environment,’ the entirety of Planet Earth, the world and its nature — so large, yet we manage to trap it in the box of our own minds.

10 ways trans people are told we shouldn’t exist
Here’s why transphobia sounds like an eradication campaign. If someone were denying your gender, would you understand them as literally telling you to stop having your gender? Comply, and everything will be OK?

Do we shine a light into the dark ages…
…or does it illuminate what we know of ourselves? Gabriele and Perry’s ‘Bright Ages’. We might see a time that isn’t “isolated, savage, primitive,” but “messy and human.” Studying medieval Europe can teach us more about ourselves.

What do we talk about when we talk about vaccines?
The 2014 book ‘On Immunity’ by Eula Biss. ‘On Immunity’ reflects on the human immune system and on vaccination. There are broad philosophical implications: balance, safety, interdependence.

3 things I learned from ‘The Disordered Cosmos’
Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein’s 2021 book on physics and identity. Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein shares meta-insights about how science and society can prevent us from asking questions and obtaining insights. Who’s included?

Does Moll Flanders know whether her mother is cheerful?
The Gettier problem in Daniel Defoe’s novel. Moll’s justified true belief (“My mother was a mighty cheerful, good-humoured old woman”) wasn’t knowledge. The novelist put an irony there.

Toward a better epistemology: Why do we care about what we know?
A reaction to the ‘Gettier problem’. Maybe there isn’t just one definition of knowledge. Maybe every type of knowledge is related in a “family resemblance.” Some are propositions. Some aren’t.