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Philosophy's value and power are greatly diminished when it operates within a too closely confined professional space. Extreme Philosophy: Bold Ideas and a Spirit of Progress serves as an antidote to the increasing narrowness of the field. It offers readers-including students and general readers-twenty internationally acclaimed philosophers who highlight and defend odd, extreme, or 'mad' ideas. The resulting conjectures are often provocative and bold, but always clear and accessible.
Ideas discussed in the book, include:
- propaganda need not be irrational
- science need not be rational
- extremism need not be bad
- tax evasion need not be immoral
- anarchy need not be uninviting
- democracy need not remain as it generally is
- humans might have immaterial souls
- human minds might have all-but-unlimited powers
- knowing might be nothing beyond being correct
- space and time might not be 'out there' in reality
- value might be the foundational part of reality
- value might differ in an infinitely repeating reality
- reality is One
- reality is vague
In brief, the volume pursues
adventures in philosophy. This spirit of philosophical risk-taking and openness to new, 'large' ideas were vital to philosophy's ancient origins, and they may also be fertile ground today for philosophical
progress.
List of contents
1. Extreme Philosophy: Some Exploratory Words
Stephen Hetherington
2. Monism and the Ontology of Logic
Samuel Z. Elgin
3. From Plotinus to Rorty: A History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps
Shamik Dasgupta
4. Spatiotemporal Projectivism
Kristie Miller
5. Nonsense + Unintelligibility = How to Understand Vagueness
Nicholas J.J. Smith
6. Science Is Irrational - and a Good Thing, Too
Michael Strevens
7. Knowing as Merely Being Correct
Stephen Hetherington
8. Is Philosophy Possible?
Neil Levy
9. Mind Unlimited?
Andy Clark
10. Disembodied Souls Are People, Too
Michael Huemer
11. Repetition and Value in an Infinite Universe
Eric Schwitzgebel
12. The Fatalist Is the Most Extreme Extremist
Roy A. Sorensen
13. A Defence of Extremism
David Coady
14. The (Ir)Rationality of Propaganda
Catarina Dutilh Novaes
15. Is Inclusion Good?
Holly Lawford-Smith
16. Corruption Empowers: Political Leadership and Moral Degeneracy
Crispin Sartwell
17. Power Inversion Democracy
Alexander Guerrero
18. Evading and Aiding: The Moral Case Against Paying Taxes
Jason Brennan, Jessica Flanigan, and Christopher Freiman
19. Suicide, Organ Donation, and Meaning in Life: Some Disturbing Reflections
Saul Smilansky
About the author
Stephen Hetherington is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of New South Wales, Australia, and former Editor-in-Chief of
Australasian Journal of Philosophy. His recent books include
What Is Epistemology? (Polity, 2019) and
Defining Knowledge (Cambridge UP, 2022).
Summary
Philosophy’s value and power are greatly diminished when it operates within a too closely confined professional space. Extreme Philosophy serves as an antidote to the increasing narrowness of the field. It offers readers twenty internationally acclaimed philosophers who highlight and defend odd, extreme, or ‘mad’ ideas.
