How can philosophy advance biology? How can biology influence philosophy? In this in-depth series on Philosophy of Biology, featuring pioneers and leaders of this burgeoning field, Closer to Truth explores its insights, novelties, challenges and implications. We ask evolution how life on earth came to be as it is, and how humans came to be…
Explore evolution—its scope and depth. How did life on earth come to be as it is, and how did humans come to be as we are? What are the deep principles driving evolution? What are evolution’s challenges and open questions? Featuring interviews with Elliott Sober, Richard Dawkins, Samir Okasha, John Dupré, Denis Noble, and Michael…
The ultimate questions of vast existence, human sentience, and human futures from the perspectives of Global Philosophy of Religion, featuring diverse religions/traditions (alphabetically): African, Buddhist, Chinese, Christian, Hindu, Islamic, and Jewish. Is God ultimate? Is Consciousness ultimate? What is the person? Why evil and suffering? Is there life after death? What is the world to…
Art delights us, but how and why? What makes art transcendent and how does the art-transcendence nexus engage the mind? Explore art, appreciate art, with cognitive science, neuroscience, philosophy of art, philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion, art history, theology, sociology, and more. Art Seeking Understanding is a long-term strategy and program of the Templeton…
How do Buddhism, Chinese traditions, and Hinduism address Final Things—eschatology—life after death and the ultimate transformation of the world? What are reincarnation and non-dual pure consciousness in Hinduism? What are rebirth and Nirvana in Buddhism?
How do Buddhism, Chinese traditions, and Hinduism address the ultimate essence of all things, the ground of being? What are transcendence, oneness, interconnectivity, ineffability? Compare Dao in Daoism to Brahman in Hinduism. Compare Wu in Daoism with Emptiness in Buddhism. Does God fit in?
How do Buddhism, Chinese traditions, and Hinduism address the perennial problems of suffering, ethics, ritual and contemplative practices? Why is suffering so important in Buddhism? Why karma in Hinduism? Why systems of nature in Chinese traditions?
How do Buddhism, Chinese traditions, and Hinduism address the essence of human sentience? What is consciousness? What is the self? What is qi? Do humans have souls or spirits? Are humans dualistic beings? Or pure souls/spirits?
How do Buddhism, Chinese traditions, Hinduism, and Shintoism address causality, consciousness, energies, God, ultimate reality? What is non- dualism? How is the world interconnected? How are metaphysics and morality related?
How do Eastern traditions address the Big Questions of existence and sentience—Closer To Truth’s pillar categories of Cosmos, Life, Consciousness, Meaning? How do Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism, and Hinduism address fundamental questions: deep nature of the world; human person; evil and suffering; contemplative practices; essence and existence, the nature of being, ontology; and ultimate futures, life…
What could life be as we don’t know it? Three transitions in astrobiology. Non-life to life. Life to intelligent life. Intelligent life to technological civilization. For alien life, would Darwinian evolution hold? Fermi’s Paradox is profound: with at least 10^22 planets in the known universe, we find no evidence of alien life, anywhere, much less…
Race is obviously real—historically, socially, politically. What about biologically? We explore biological facts about race and their implications. What’s the relationship between color and race? Are human races subspecies of homo sapiens? Is race a “natural kind?” How to form a coherent theory of race?