phi los o phers’ the

magazine

reporter 4news hound news, plus straw poll and mediawatch

12Darwin wars Dennett v Ruse in a sort-of public spat

15omnivore Scott McLemee on Benjamin Franklin

16let’s do Berlin! the philosopher’s guide to the German city

19word of mouse Luciano Floridi on words and images

thoughts 20success Robert Solomon asks what it means

27sci-phi can starlings grasp basic grammar?

29censorship when words stop us from acting

33provocations is policing the web a good thing?

35dress formal how to love formal philosophy

issue 35 • 3rd quarter 2006

forum 40think positive Andy Higgins looks at the growth of positive psychology

44happy warriors Richard Schoch learns from military suicides in Iraq

48Buddhist Mill Wendy Donner sees a surprising EastWest link

53crayon bliss Mark Kingwell takes lessons from Homer J Simpson

58hands off Neera Badhwar asks if happiness is the business of politicians

62good choices Dan Haybron wonders if we know what’s good for us

discussion 66my philosophy David Edmonds and John Eidinow on brainy brawls

the lowdown 79the directory listings for UK and North America

80snapshot the lowdown on Simone Weil

82conceptual carvery objective explanations of the subjective

83theory of knowledge the last in the series sees off the radical sceptic

review 85new books Shelby, Dennett, O’Hear, Appiah and fi lm as philosophy

last words 92Bertrand’s break fun and games

94letters you set us straight

70open debate readers take on Peter Fosl’s defence of blasphemy

96the skeptic Wendy Grossman arranges her intellectual autobiography

subscriptions & TPM shop page 34

The Philosophers' Magazine /3rd quarter 2006
Here’s something to try at home. Take a fi stful of coins and throw them up into the air. (Not at the top of a tall building of course.) Now have a look at how they’ve landed on the fl oor. What you’ll almost certainly fi nd is that they are not spread out evenly, but that some are in clusters, while the odd one or two might have fallen far from the rest. Amazing, eh? Not at all. This is just what you’d expect. However, in real life it seems these kinds of patterns often do surprise us. We tend to think of random events as occurring relatively evenly spaced out, and when they cluster together, people often see that as evidence of some controlling force at work. So, for instance, people think it is very unlikely that in a random group of 23 people, two will share a birthday. In fact, the chances are 50/50. The clusters of articles in this issue are not entirely the result of random forces, but they’re certainly not all the result of deliberate action either. The issue of censorship and free speech,

phi los o phers’ the phi los o phers’ the phi los o phers’ magazine phi los o phers’ magazine phi los o phers’

98 Mulgrave Road, Sutton, Surrey SM2 6LZ, UK Tel: 020 8643 1504 Fax: 0709 237 6412 editor@philosophers.co.uk www.philosophersnet.com

Editors Julian Baggini (print edition) Jeremy Stangroom (new media) Deputy editor Ophelia Benson Reviews Editor Jonathan Derbyshire reviews@philosophers.co.uk

Contributing Editors Susan Dwyer, Simon Eassom, Peter Fosl, Michael LaBossiere, Jeff Mason, Christopher Norris, Christian Perring

Illustrations/Graphics Felix Bennett (cover), Jerry Bird, Molly Crabapple, Pipo di Bressana, Susannah Gill, Michael LaBossiere, Gareth Southwell.

Contributors’ Notes Contact the editor to submit proposals. Please do not send unsolicited man u scripts.

Contributors Neera Badhwar, Wendy Donner, Luciano Floridi, Peter S Fosl, Wendy Grossman, Dan Haybron, Vincent Hendricks, Andy Higgins, Mathew Iredale, Mark Kingwell,

for example, is clearly very high in the public consciousness, so it is no surprise that pieces by Catriona MacKinnon (p29), Michael LaBossiere (p33) and Peter Fosl (p70) all tackle it in different ways. More serendipitous is the connection between this issue’s lead essay by Robert Solomon (p20) and the forum on happiness 200 years after Mill (p39). Whether this is pure chance or indicative of a renewed philosophical interest in the good life is hard to tell. The link between the recent Dennett-RuseDembski feud (p12) and the books of David Edmonds and John Eidinow (p67) is easier to explain. Edmonds and Eidinow essentially show that philosophers are always capable of behaving badly, and so it is no surprise that at any given time there is some kind of row going on. But who, if any, of Dennett, Ruse or Dembski is the miscreant? That’s a philosophical question for you to answer.

Michael LaBossiere, Megan Laverty, Johanna Lee, Scott McLemee, Catriona McKinnon, David Marriott, Duncan Pritchard, Richard Schoch, Robert Solomon, John Symons, Mark Vernon.

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© 2006, The Philosophers’ Magazine and contributors ISSN 1354-814X

All views expressed in The Philosophers’ Magazine represent those of the authors of each article and do not necessarily refl ect those of the editors or publishers.

The Philosophers' Magazine /3rd quarter 2006