PHILOSOPHY IS HARD.

Or at least that's what the career academics want you to believe so that they can justify their terrible life choices.

Three Minute Philosophy began as a animated web series that sought to both stretch the definition of "animated" about as far as anyone's willing to concede, and help beginners learn about philosophy and have fun doing it.

Since the original series back in 2007 (which remains more popular on YouTube because I swore a lot) people have actually started utilising Three Minute Philosophy as an educational resource. Well, you chose the damn elective so that's your perogative. I'll promise to try to be accurate if you promise to stop asking for Ayn Rand (you won't).

Oh and hi, look at this website where I will put up the new episodes and also write some philosophy articles for you to read and hopefully get something useful out of. I just ended a sentence with a preposition and I don't even care.

LATEST EPISODE:
EPICURUS AND THE STOICS

Some guys who thought some things about ethics.




VIEW THE FULL SERIES HERE!

LATEST ARTICLES:
Perhaps you would like to read them.


You Probably Have No Free Will

Sorry about that. But if it's any consolation, it's a really complicated and unsettled debate. From pre-Socratic times through to Aristotle and the modern era, the question about what exactly "free will" means and what it entails has taken up a considerable amount of time in which philosophers could be doing something more with their lives. Covers determinism, fatalism, libertarianism, and a bunch of stuff in between.


Zombies vs Vampires: The Political Explanation

As bizarre as it sounds, the popularity of zombies or vampires in fiction tends to relate directly to who is in charge of the White House in any particular era. As one of the few horror movie philosophers likely to exist, here's my analysis on the situation. [Hosted by CRACKED.com]



Frege, Kripke and the Philosophy of Names

Gottlob Frege and Saul Kripke have a lot to say about names because theirs are particularly stupid ones. Namely (ha!) the question dates back to Aristotle about how names actually work. How do words relate to facts about the world? You might be surprised to know that we are still arguing about it because the Morning Star and the Evening Star are actually the same thing and it's not a star at all and apparently that just messes up everything.


The Dawkins Delusion

This essay will attempt to put this self-destructive and absurd superstition to rest once and for all, and to demonstrate that a truly scientific mind must eliminate these counter-intuitive contrivances if we are to ever progress as a society. I will prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is not now, nor has there ever been, a Richard Dawkins.



The Ontology of Twilight

Why do actors get caught up in their own fictions? Why do we get confused about what is or isn't real about movies and the actors cast in them? What do gossip magazines have to do with all of this? Why the hell am I writing about Twilight? Does philosophy hold the answers? Maybe!


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

S Peter Davis is an Australian based author and a freelance editor for Cracked.com. When not writing reams of largely unpublishable fiction, he works as a university librarian to earn the money to feed his family (his family consists entirely of his fish, Marlin Brando). He has been featured in the New York Times Bestselling book You Might Be a Zombie, and likes to think he has a promising career ahead of him. He also likes to speak of himself in the third person, as this is a rhetorical device used to allow a person to speak of oneself without appearing egocentric.

You can contact him at trojan_masters@hotmail.com