Rebecca Goldstein, Plato at the Googlepex - Authors@Google

Philosopher-novelist Rebecca Goldstein (wife of Steven Pinker) has a new book out, Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away (2014). Recently, she stopped by Google to talk about her new book.

Rebecca Goldstein - Authors@Google

Published on Mar 27, 2014

Goldstein returns to Google, this time with Plato, to talk about her new book.

Abstract from Goldstein's site: "At the heart of the latest work from acclaimed philosopher and novelist Rebecca Newberger Goldstein lies one question: is philosophy obsolete? In PLATO AT THE GOOGLEPLEX (Pantheon Books/March 4, 2014), Goldstein proves why philosophy is here to stay -- and in fact more relevant today than ever before -- by revealing its hidden (though essential) role in today's debates on religion, morality, politics, and science. Goldstein does so in a wholly unique way -- by imagining Plato (the original philosopher) come to life in the twenty-first century. As he embarks on a multicity speaking tour, Goldstein asks: how would Plato handle a host on FOX News who denies that there can be morality without religion? How would he mediate a debate between a Freudian psychoanalyst and a Tiger Mom on how to raise the perfect child? How would he answer a neuroscientist who, about to scan Plato's brain, argues that science has definitively answered the questions of free will and moral agency? And what would Plato make of Google, and the idea that knowledge can be crowdsourced rather than reasoned out by experts? Goldstein also provides an in-depth study of Plato's views, while examining the culture responsible for producing them. With scholarly depth and a novelist's imagination and wit, she probes the deepest issues confronting our time, by allowing us to understand the source of Plato's theories, and to eavesdrop as he takes on the modern world."

Omnivore - Religion in the Public Sphere

From Bookforum's Omnivore blog, here is a collection of recent links on the role of religion in the public sphere, everything from religious pluralism to religious fanaticism to a supposed "global war" on Christianity.

Religion in the Public Sphere

Feb 17 2014 

3:00PM

• Chang Yau Hoon (Singapore Management): Rethinking Religious Tradition and Authority in the Postmodern World. 
• Eva Sadia Saad (Dhaka): Religious Pluralism: A Critical Review. 
• Kristine Kalanges (Notre Dame): Religious Liberty: Between Strategy and Telos. 
• Jonas Jakobsen (Tromso): Habermas, Taylor and Religion in the Public Sphere. 
• Frederick Mark Gedicks (BYU) and Pasquale Annicchino (EUI): Cross, Crucifix, Culture: An Approach to the Constitutional Meaning of Religious Symbols. 
• Domenico Melidoro (LUISS): Is Religion Special? A Question on the Possibility of Singling Out Religion. 
• Karen Jordan (Louisville): A Christian Vision of Freedom and Democracy: Neutrality as an Obstacle to Freedom. 
• Danny Cohen-Zada and Oren Rigbi (Ben-Gurion) and Yotam M. Margalit (Columbia): Does Religiosity Affect Support for Political Compromise? 
• The new intolerance: In this provocative challenge to the left, Cristina Odone argues that liberalism has become the new orthodoxy — and there is no room for religious believers to dissent (and a response). 
• What is this thing called law? Joshua Berman on the Jewish legal tradition and its discontents. 
• Beyond the Catholic-Protestant divide: Brenna Moore reviews Brad Gregory’s The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society. 
• Dwight Longenecker on the global war on Christians. 
• Are there really 100,000 new Christian martyrs every year? 
• Craig Considine on what Europe's far-right parties can learn from Islam. 
• Andrew F. March reviews The Impossible State: Islam, Politics, and Modernity’s Moral Predicament by Wael Hallaq and Questioning Secularism: Islam, Sovereignty, and the Rule of Law in Modern Egypt by Hussein Ali Agrama. 
• Plato’s mistake: One person’s religious fanatic is another person’s freedom fighter; hardly an excuse, more like a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea.

Debate: After Relativism - The Institute of Art and Ideas

From the Institute of Art and Ideas (iai), this is a cool conversation (debate) about the meaning of the world after relativism.

Topics:

• Relativism is a patronising and unhelpful mistake
• The lessons of relativism can improve scientific practice
• The theory of closure offers a powerful means of overcoming the problems of relativism
• Is relativism an error?
• Is truth an illusion?
• After relativism

After Relativism

Participants

Michela Massimi, Simon Blackburn. Hilary Lawson, Shahidha Bari (host)

"Everything is relative" has become the mantra of our age - in ethics, in art and in science. But does this in fact mean we are lost? Should we retreat to the safe havens of absolute truth, or is there an alternative adventure beyond postmodernity? 

The Panel

Author of Truth: A Guide, Simon Blackburn, non-realist philosopher and Closure theorist (Closure: A Story of Everything) Hilary Lawson, and philosopher of science Michela Massimi, author of Pauli's Exclusion Principle: The Origin and Validation of a Scientific Principle, explore ways forward from postmodernity.