by Rachel Robison-Greene Many of my heroes were canceled. Hume was repeatedly denied academic posts as a result of his reputation for skepticism and atheism.  Spinoza was excommunicated from the Jewish community of Amsterdam and cast out of the tribes of Israel with “all the curses of the covenant” for the positions he held.  Socrates was…

by Rachel Robison-Greene People all over the country wake in the morning and instantly dread the news headlines awaiting them on their phones. Have Americans bombed another school? Gutted one more procedural safeguard? Facilitated the reemergence of some long controlled infectious disease? Too often, we realize that one of these things has indeed happened. We…

by Rachel Robison-Greene Humans agonize over the inevitability of death. Across a range of philosophical traditions, philosophers advise people to recognize that the present moment is the only time that really exists; the past is over, and the future has not yet come. Meditation on this fact can help us to respond in healthy ways…

by Rachel Robison-Greene A woman gets shot in the head by agents of the federal government and people quickly come up with reasons to explain why she must have deserved it. Thousands of people show up to protest mistreatment of their friends and neighbors. Detractors label them thugs, lawbreakers and paid actors. From the comfort…

by Rachel Robison-Greene We spend much of our lives—perhaps more time than we realize—interacting with non-persons online. We ask for help from artificial customer service representatives. Some of us accept friend requests from bots and are, thereafter, influenced by the content they post. This is a momentous change to the nature of the public square.…

by Rachel Robison-Greene The Trolley Problem, once a thought experiment students encountered for the first time in an Introduction to Philosophy classroom, has become a well-known cultural meme. It is depicted in various iterations in cartoons across the internet. The standard story involves a person choosing to pull a lever so that a trolley runs…

by Rachel Robison-Greene I can’t know for certain that you are a conscious being with an active mental life.  I have access (I think) to my own internal states.  I feel my own anxieties, indulge in my own joy, anticipate my own future, and remember my own past.  I can’t do the same for you;…

by Rachel Robison-Greene In 1961, Dr.  Martin Luther King Jr. delivered an address before the annual meeting of the Fellowship of the Concerned.  In the speech, he defended non-violence, arguing that rising up in a spirit of hatred was not only bad for the soul, but it was also counterproductive.  He warned that doing so…

by Rachel Robison-Greene Epistemic humility is a virtue. I often tell my students that if there is one skill I hope they leave my course with, it is the ability to recognize that they might be wrong about something. Realistically, they are wrong about many things. We all are. If we are to successfully work…

by Rachel Robison-Greene From the moment that the weather warmed up, every morning I feel an irresistible pull toward my backyard garden.  I wake up and check the news.  Congress has defunded a life-saving social program.  We’ve bombed another country in the Middle East.  A politician has been caught in a lie so consequential that…

by Rachel Robison-Greene Earlier this month, “No Kings” protests set records for being among the most well attended political protests in recorded American history.  The protests were overwhelmingly peaceful.  On the same day, a politically motivated killer shot two Democratic politicians and their spouses in Minnesota, killing two and critically wounding the others.  Despite the…

by Rachel Robison-Greene Many people who have thought carefully about AI are anxious about certain uses of it, and for good reason.  Many are concerned that people (young people in particular) are increasingly offloading their critical thinking development and responsibilities to Chat GPT and other large language learning models.  We may fail to flourish as…

by Rachel Robison-Greene In my youth I used to play in the wooded area behind my parent’s house in a space that seemed, from the vantage point of a child, to be vast. Those areas exist now only in precious cloudy corners of my memory. In the external world, they have long been replaced by…

by Rachel Robison-Greene These days, there is a common unpleasant routine in the lives of well-informed, civic-minded individuals.  They wake up in the morning, check the news, and are immediately bombarded with stories about events in the world that elicit strong negative emotions such as grief, fear, helplessness, and anger.  In such disturbing times, it…

by Rachel Robison-Greene Ada sits alone at a table contemplating whether she should drink the liquid from the glass in front of her.  She’s been promised that the result of doing so will be an immediate revision to her set of beliefs.  If she drinks from the glass, she will believe only things that are…

by Rachel Robison-Greene In the past decade, we have witnessed the fallout from the largely unrestricted spread of bullshit on the internet. People have died or have become seriously ill as result of following bad medical advice that they heard on social media. A recent Healthline study found that, among those who had started a…

by Rachel Robison-Greene Public philosophy isn’t new. The image that many people conjure up when they picture a quintessential philosopher—the image of Socrates—is the image of a public philosopher. Socrates didn’t write articles. He didn’t publish in peer reviewed journals. He had conversations with members of his community about subjects that matter. The practice of…

by Rachel Robison-Greene I’ll never forget the moment when it dawned on me that I had arrived at middle age. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Nothing much had changed—my eyes were the same distance apart. My nose was in the same place. My grey hairs were still mostly hidden in my…

by Rachel Robison-Greene In 524, the Roman philosopher Boethius was imprisoned in exile awaiting his execution. He was used a as a political tool and was convicted on false charges, including the charge of sorcery. In these dire conditions, he wrote The Consolations of Philosophy in which his muse, Lady Philosophy, appears to him to…

by Rachel Robison-Greene Last weekend in Northern Utah, the fall colors in the mountains were at their peak. The days were still hot, but the mornings and evenings were cool. The sun was beginning to set a little earlier and most of the doorsteps in our quiet town were peppered with multicolored autumn gourds. An…