Politicians are too simple. Two Ig Nobel Prize winners — both, as it happens, professors at Stanford University — each gives part of the explanation. (As with many simple facts, the explanation is a bit complex.) Politicians’ simple debates Professor John Perry, a philosopher, looked at politicians’ televised debates. In an essay for the New […]
Tag: philosophy
What, exactly, is ‘Stuff’?
To a philosopher, pinning down ‘Stuff’’ (water, sugar, salt, cement, apple pulp &etc) is a far from trivial task. Dr. Kristie Miller, for example, (Research Fellow and Research Adviser at the University of Sydney, Australia) has investigated ‘Stuff’ in a paper for American Philosophical Quarterly, 46(1): 1-19 – entitled ‘Stuff’. Dr. Miller suggests that to […]
The Philosophers’ Rubber Duck
Of all the things you might imagine you’d find in a professional philosopher’s toolkit, a rubber duck might not be the first to spring to mind. But they are there – and in some abundance. One of the first scholars to hint at their utility was Frances Howard-Snyder, Professor of Ethics, Religion, Metaphysics departments at […]
Philosophy of a prize-winning procrastinator
The Stanford Daily interviewed John Perry, the father of Structured Procrastination: Philosophy of a prize-winning procrastinator Joining the elite company of the mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania (who rolled a tank over a parked car in an attempt to deter illegal parking) and a group of doomsday forecasters (who have all incorrectly predicted the end of […]