Top 10 Philosophical Issues of the 21st Century

Move Over Letterman

To mark the occasion of our 200th episode, we invited three former guests and our listeners to help us come up with a list of the 10 most pressing philosophical issues of the 21st Century. We talked about all sorts of ideas and it was hard to distill out just 10, but John and Ken summarized the suggestions and compiled them on the fly at the end of the show. But with a little more time to reflect, we decided to clean the list up a bit. So what follows is an improved version of the makeshift list that was generated during the broadcast.

10. Finding a new basis for common sensibilities and common values
The world is more economically interconnected than it has ever been. But it is still seethes with divisions and social fragmentation. Can we find a new basis for shared values that will bring us together rather than tear us apart?

9. Finding a new basis for social identification
In in a world in which distant and powerful forces, not answerable to local communities, shape so much of our lives, how can we sustain local communities with which we can identify? Or is the very idea of a local community an outmoded idea suited only to centuries gone by?

8. The Mind-Body problem. Neuroscience is revealing so much about the brain
Does this new knowledge solve age-old mysteries of the mind? Or does it reduce the mind to mere dumb matter and rob us of what we once thought was so special about us?

7. Can freedom survive the onslaught of science?
Science, especially neuroscience, is revealing more and more about the true workings of the mind, threatening to explode our ancient beliefs about things like the freedom of the will. Can our traditional practices that presuppose human freedom survive this scientific onslaught? If we are not really free is it really permissible to punish people, and even put them to death, for their wrongful acts?

6. Information and misinformation in the information age
With the glut of information coming at us from all sources, and with the demise of top-down authorities that functioned to certify some information as truth and other information at false, what are we to do to distinguish the good from the bad, the wheat from the chaff?

5. Intellectual property, in the age of re-mix culture
In the information age ideas spread like wildfire -- mixing and re-mixing in the blink of an idea. Can the very idea of intellectual property survive in the age of re-mix? Are outmoded ideas of property stifling the growth of a new culture?

4. New models of collective decision making and collective rationality
The 21st Century requires collective action on a massive scale. But we really have no models of collective rationality. Can we build them in time to guide us in meeting the challenges of this century?

3. What is a person?
The rise of cloning, of designer babies, and drugs that can alter one's personality, enhance one's memory, or make one's smarter will force us to rethink the very idea of human person.

2. New models of the human relationship to environment and resource conservation
Are we called to be stewards of the environment? Or is the environment just there for our exploitation and use? Never in the history of humankind have such questions been so pressing.

1. And the number one philosophical problem for the 21st Century: Global Justice.
What new principles of justice will help us manage distinctively 21st Century problems like preserving the environment while allowing the poorer nations of the world to improve their standards of living? The philosophy of the past has given no real models for answering such questions. It is urgent that philosopher of the 21st century do so.

Listen to to the 200th episode.