In this video from the interview series Closer to Truth, the US presenter Robert Lawrence Kuhn and the UK philosopher A C Grayling peel back the layers of a question that’s been bandied about in many a Philosophy 101 classroom – ‘Why is there something instead of nothing?’ With Kuhn defending the question as a legitimate line of enquiry, and Grayling arguing that the question is ‘strictly meaningless, and for that reason unanswerable’, their discussion launches into a compelling exploration of logic and language, and the ways they intertwine.
Video by Closer to Truth
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Are zoos and natural history museums born of a desire to understand, or to control?
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Virtues and vices
Why Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith were divided on the virtues of vanity
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Beauty and aesthetics
In art, the sublime is a feedback loop, evolving with whatever’s next to threaten us
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Bioethics
What a 1970 experiment reveals about the possibility and perils of ‘head transplants’
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Beauty and aesthetics
Can you see music in this painting? How synaesthesia fuelled Kandinsky’s art
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Knowledge
Why it takes more than a lifetime to truly understand a single meadow
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Political philosophy
The radical activist couple who fought for social change in the courtroom
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Human rights and justice
Can providing humanitarian aid be illegal? A troubling case from the US-Mexico border
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Information and communication
Coverage of the ‘balloon boy’ hoax forms a withering indictment of for-profit news
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