Top News, Articles, and Interviews in Philosophy

Elisabeth Brauss at Wigmore Hall

15. October 2020 Philosophy News News
Of the recent streamed performances from Wigmore Hall, Elisabeth Brauss’s lunchtime concert of Beethoven (Op. 10 No. 3),  Mendelssohn (Variations sérieuses), and  Prokofiev (Piano Sonata No. 2) really stood out for me — and not just for me. Astonishingly good … Continue reading → The post Elisabeth Brauss at Wigmore Hall appeared first on Logic [More]
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Walter Benjamin

14. October 2020 Philosophy News News
[Revised entry by Peter Osborne and Matthew Charles on October 14, 2020. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography] Walter Benjamin's importance as a philosopher and critical theorist can be gauged by the diversity of his intellectual influence and the continuing productivity of his thought. Primarily regarded as a literary critic and essayist, the philosophical basis of Benjamin's writings is increasingly acknowledged. They were a decisive influence upon Theodor W. Adorno's conception of philosophy's actuality or adequacy to the present (Adorno 1931). In the 1930s, Benjamin's efforts to develop a [More]
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The Emotional Mind: A Control Theory of Affective States

14. October 2020 Philosophy News News
2020.10.11 : View this Review Online | View Recent NDPR Reviews Tom Cochrane, The Emotional Mind: A Control Theory of Affective States, Cambridge University Press, 2019, 244pp., $99.99 (hbk), ISBN 9781108429672. Reviewed by Colin Klein, The Australian National University Tom Cochrane's book forges into the philosophy of emotion on a new and powerful vehicle: the idea of valent representations. His project is ambitious. Cochrane uses valent representations to give models of affect, pleasure and pain, emotion, moods, expressive behavior, social intentionality, norms, collective effervescence, inner speech, sentiments, personality, and character. Philosophers interested in any of these topics will find it a rich book, full of nuance and insight. Chapter 1 introduces the idea of valent representations. They are not necessarily the only primitive kind of mental content, says Cochrane, but they have a kind of content, and form the primitive foundation for other affective states. Valent representation is built around the idea of negative feedback loops. Detection of something in... Read [More]
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The Free Rider Problem

13. October 2020 Philosophy News News
[Revised entry by Russell Hardin and Garrett Cullity on October 13, 2020. Changes to: Main text, Bibliography] In many contexts, all of the individual members of a group can benefit from the efforts of each member and all can benefit substantially from collective action. For example, if each of us pollutes less by paying a bit extra for our cars, we all benefit from the reduction of harmful gases in the air we breathe and even in the reduced harm to the ozone layer that protects us against exposure to carcinogenic ultraviolet radiation (although those with fair [More]
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