"With psychoactive drugs, prosthetics and genetic enhancement, we are already able to fashion the fabric of the self in much more radical ways than our ancestors ever could. As we learn more about how to change and enhance our brains and bodies, we are about to gain even more power over who and what we essentially are. We are moving to a time when we are no longer satisfied with trying to understand human nature; we are now moving to prescribe it."Article in More Intelligent Life on The Ego Trick.
Thursday, 28 July 2011
We Will Get Better
Wednesday, 27 July 2011
Nozstock - Herefordshire, 29 July
I'm talking in the Tent of Temporary Thought 5pm Friday! More information here.
Tuesday, 26 July 2011
Why do we think Amy let us down?
Amid the mourning and sympathy, it is not difficult to discern a hint of condemnation for Amy Winehouse because of the talent she squandered. The world is a worse place as a result. But does that mean that she deserves to be blamed for our loss?Short comment piece in today's Independent
Monday, 25 July 2011
The Shrink & The Sage: Potential
Potential left undeveloped is nothing more than a hypothetical ability that belongs in our dreams, not as a ghostly presence in our actual lives.Latest FT Weekend Magazine column (23/24 August)
Thursday, 21 July 2011
The Secret Garden Party - Cambridgeshire, 24 July
I'm doing a talk at 2:30 on Sunday at the Forum during this quirky festival. More information on the festival website in "the Guild" section of "Explore the Garden".
Monday, 18 July 2011
John Gray on Immortality
In the latest microphilosophy podcast I talk to John Gray about some of the ideas that emerge from his latest book, The Immortalization Commission: The Strange Quest to Cheat Death. Download from this link or iTunes. The podcast was recorded at the Bristol Festival of Ideas in May, at the Arnolfini.
The Real Threat to Universities
More competition and specialised suppliers means a further fragmentation of the intellectual ecosystem. The damage to education we should fear is not a matter of money or competition as such, but the ways in which these tools end up being used as chainsaws to turn human understanding from an organic whole into dead, inert logs, fit only for burning.Latest blog at the Huffington Post
Wednesday, 13 July 2011
Video - The Ego Trick at Hay
Video of my talk on The Ego Trick, focusing on the section on character, at the How The Light Gets In Festival in Hay earlier this year. (This video can be slow to load.)
The Politics Show - BBC One
I was discussing the Royal Family on the South West region's segment of this programme on Sunday 10 July. You can watch it on the BBC iPlayer for one week here. (Starts about 45 minutes in.)
Night Waves - BBC Radio Three
"Matthew Sweet and guests, the business psychologist David de Cremer, philosopher Julian Baggini and the canon chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral, Giles Fraser, discuss the moral questions thrown up by the current phone-hacking scandal."More information and listen again available here. Broadcast 12 July.
Review of Love by Simon May
May has a remarkable ability to bring out what is most true and interesting in his sources. He is the only person I have read who has invoked Schopenhauer and made him sound insightful and prescient, rather than absurd and grandiloquent. Perhaps that simply reflects May’s claim that to love well requires skill and tutoring, and the fact that this book is itself a work of love: one which looks for what is best in its subject and, thanks to the wisdom of the lover, finds it.Review of Love by Simon May in last weekend's FT (9/10 July)
Monday, 11 July 2011
The Shrink & The Sage: Self-deception
How can one be both the deceiver and the deceived? To do that you’d have to both know something and not know it at the same time, and you can hardly pull the wool over your own eyes without realising why it is you cannot see.Latest column in FT Weekend Magazine (9/10 July)
Tuesday, 5 July 2011
The Shrink & The Sage: Doing what makes us happy
When psychology and philosophy filed for divorce about 100 years ago, they faced the common dilemma of how to divide the book collection. In the end, psychology left most of the volumes on happiness and the good life with philosophy, which dutifully left them to gather dust. Now that psychology has returned to the subject with gusto, there is an urgent need to dig them out again...Latest column in FT Weekend Magazine (2/3 July)
Friday, 1 July 2011
Ways with Words - Dartington, 17 July
I neglected to post information of this event before it happened, but have retrospectively done so to keep the wesbite comprehensive. Apologies!
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