Videos

In this video, Professor Jonathan Anomaly (Duke and UNC – Chapel Hill) discusses collective action problems, which include any situation in which there is a conflict between individual rationality and social welfare, so that individuals working in isolation produce a worse outcome than they might if they could find a way to coordinate.

In this video, Dr. Geoffrey Sayre-McCord (UNC-Chapel Hill) explains the prisoner's dilemma. The prisoner's dilemma is a scenario where all parties making rational choices ensures a less desired result for each than if each actor had chosen individually less-preferred options.

Victor Kumar (Michigan) introduces the problem of moral luck and surveys potential solutions. We see how the problem arises out of a clash between intuitive reactions to cases and an abstract principle of moral responsibility.

Why do people see mass incarceration as a racial problem? What does race have to do with incarceration and what does either have to do with philosophy?

In this video, Elmar Kremer (University of Toronto) introduces two theories of the nature of God: classical theism and theistic personalism. In part 2, he considers several arguments for and against classical theism.

In this video, Geoff Pynn (Northern Illinois University) follows up on his introduction to critical thinking by exploring how abductive arguments give us reason to believe their conclusions. Good abductive arguments don't guarantee their conclusions, but give us very good reasons to believe their conclusions. This sort of inference is called "inference to the best explanation."

Agustín Rayo (M.I.T.) explains the grandfather paradox, one of the classic paradoxes of time travel.

In the first of two videos, Adela Deanova (Duke) introduces Margaret Cavendish, an early modern English philosopher, and discusses the background to her critique of experimental philosophy. This video is a part of a series of videos coming from Project Vox (Duke), a project recovering the lost voices of women philosophers.

Does our ordinary notion of a “true self” simply pick out a certain part of the mind? Or is this notion actually wrapped up in some inextricable way with our own values and ideals?