In Appreciation of the Purposelessness of Philosophy

By Dylan Skurka, February 2021. “Oh… What do you hope to do with that?” As any philosophy student knows, there is no question more soul-crushing than that one. Maybe it was a concerned friend wondering how you were going to make any money when you were out of school or someone you met at a party…

The Zhuangzi: A Therapeutic Text for the Ages

By Dylan Skurka, December 2020. "When a drunken man falls from a cart, he may be hurt but he will not be killed. His bones and joints are no different from those of other men, but the degree of harm done by the fall differs radically, for the spiritual in him forms one intact whole.…

York University 11th Annual Philosophy Graduate Conference: Philosophy of Emotion

Please join us April 25-26 2019 in Vanier College 001 (Renaissance room) for our Annual Graduate Conference. The talk schedule and abstracts for keynotes can be found below. Thursday, April 25th  10:00-10:30 Coffee, Registration, Brief Opening Remarks 10:30-11:30 Rachel Lehmann (Georgia State) : Feeling Insulted is Being Insulted Comments by Jef Delvaux 11:30-12:30 Sanja Sreckovic (Belgrade): The role of emotions in…

Hope and Video Games

By Brandon Tinklenberg, February 2019.   During the second grade, I was obsessed with the video game called Oregon Trail. The game was first developed in 1971 by three Minnesota high school history teachers, who famously created the game in just two weeks. It was later redesigned by the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC) and…

CFA: 11th Annual York Philosophy Graduate Conference

Our 11th annual conference, which will be held on April 25-26 2019, will focus on the nature and significance of emotions. We will accept submissions on epistemology, ethics, metaethics, aesthetics, philosophy of action, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and political philosophy. Papers that address any of the following questions are especially encouraged: What are…

Holding Publishers Responsible for Fake News

by Daniel Saunders, November 2018. In the Black Mirror episode, ‘Nosedive’, Lacie lives in a world in which even her smallest social interactions are rated and figured into a score. Lacie engages in rigorous self-discipline to keep her score high but after a series of unfortunate events, she loses control, her score plummets and she…

Are Captive Primates Robbed of their Culture?

By Brandon Tinklenberg, August 2018. Abigail died at 41 years of age in April of 2001. She was suffering from kidney failure. She was a Sumatran Orangutan who spent most of her life in zoo enclosures in Toronto. She was first acquired by the Riverdale Zoo in the early 1960s. Toronto’s first zoo, Riverdale was…

‘Political Correctness’ – Whoopty Do, what does it all mean Basil??

By Lauren Edwards, May 2018. The term “political correctness” echoes in the current cultural chatter. One side shouts about “thought and language policing!” and “political correctness gone too far!”. The other roars about “sensitivity and safe spaces!” and “anti-political correctness gone mad!”. The conversation divides and devolves into nonsense: “I say you can’t say that…

Field Report on Men’s Rights Activism.

By Anonymous SJW, April 2018. On March 2nd, 2018, I attended York University Men’s Issues Inaugural Event, “Growing Up Fatherless,” a talk by Karen Straughan. The poster gave little indication that the event was any different from one of the many feminist-oriented talks about gender on campus.  Eager to hear what I thought would be…

What We’re Reading

In the first of an ongoing weekly segment, the Brainwandering team would like to give a short report on interesting articles we've read over the past week. Susanna Schellenberg will be guest blogging all this week over at Brains Blog about her new book on the nature of perception. Adam Grant in the Atlantic reflected…