To be happier, focus on what’s within your control
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.
This is...
Philosophy in the Bedroom
For 250 years, the Marquis de Sade's writing was outlawed. Yet Fifty Shades has turned the exploration of pain and pleasure into an oddly...
The Humanities go to Washington: An Interview with Robert Bowen
On March 13, 2017, I joined approximately 200 humanities advocates in downtown DC to receive training in effective lobbying (the event was organized by...
Moral grandstanding: there’s a lot of it about, all of it bad
We’ve done it. You probably have, too. No matter what we believe about morality or politics, we’ve all used moral talk to project an...
Enlightenment’s Wake
Many assume Enlightenment values will triumph over violence and prejudice. But in the wake of ISIS and a resurgent far-right political movement, victory seems...
Trauma, Transformation and the Rationality of Desire
Amber Rose Carlson presented a paper for the U.S. Midwest Society for Women in Philosophy (SWIP) session at the APA Central Division Meeting in March 2017 in...
Thinking Afresh
We take pride in holding morally and intellectually consistent views about the world. Yet these shift wildly over time, and some see consistency as...
Asking Shannon Vallor Anything
Shannon Vallor is the William J. Rewak S. J. Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Santa Clara University. She recently hosted a philosophy Reddit AMA, which...
Philosophy Through Fiction Winner!
Our Philosophy Through Fiction contest had 704 submissions, more than 10 times the number we expected. A dedicated team of readers at Sci Phi...
How playing Wittgensteinian language-games can set us free
We live out our lives amid a world of language, in which we use words to do things. Ordinarily we don’t notice this; we...