One familiar definition of a metaphor is that it is essentially a figure of speech which uses one thing to mean another by ...

The fact that one was deceived by adults about the existence of Santa, yet eventually discovered the deception, is good evidence that one is developing the ability to find and discard false beliefs.

The Art of Living Seneca On Anger Massimo Pigliucci tells us how to avoid becoming irate. Got an anger problem? If you decide to read just one book on the topic, it should be On A ...

Sophia Gottfried meditates on the emptiness of non-existence. In philosophy there is a lot of emphasis on what exists. We call this ontology, which means, the study of being. What is less often ...

Our philosophical science correspondent Massimo Pigliucci takes a dose of it. I’m a scientist by original training, so I tend not to believe in anything that isn’t made of either matter or energy ...

Manuel Carta talks with Prof. Maurizio Ferraris of the University of Turin, another leading exponent of New Realism. Professor Ferraris, are there any keywords you’d like to give our readers to help ...

Terri Murray responds to an article in Issue 91 that argued that our moral dispositions should be improved by the use of drugs. “Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or ...

Willow Verkerk considers what Nietzsche has to teach us about love. What could Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) have to teach us about love? More than we might suppose. Speculations about his sexuality ...

Linda Williams spots jewels within Nietzsche’s aphoristic archive of sexism. At the beginning of Book Two of The Gay Science, Nietzsche presents a series of aphorisms on women. At the end of this ...

J.J.C. Smart investigates the meaning of purpose. It can be tempting to suppose that those who agonize about ‘The Meaning of Life’ are the victims of a simple use-mention confusion, that is, confusing ...

Andrew Brower Latz traces two core problems for the modern mind. In Sam Lipsyte’s satirical novel The Ask, set in contemporary New York, the protagonist says, “We were stuck between meanings. Or we ...

Alan Haworth on Karl Popper, his vision of a pragmatic, liberal society, and his assessment of its philosophical enemies. It is now one hundred years since the birth of Karl Popper, and almost sixty ...