Bill MeachamThe Anguish of FreedomSimone de Beauvoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity contains an extensive taxonomy of ways people try to avoid what she calls “the anguish [one]…Jun 30, 2023Jun 30, 2023
Bill MeachamLife Has No Meaning. So What?Philosophy is supposed to be able to address broad and important issues such as the meaning of life. Philosopher Rivka Weinberg’s…Feb 17, 2023Feb 17, 2023
Bill MeachamAI SentienceCould an artificial intelligence (AI) be sentient? How could we tell? A recent opinion piece in the New York Times claims that AIs are not…Aug 7, 20221Aug 7, 20221
Bill MeachamMoral confusion about abortionThe controversy about abortion-whether it should be permitted or forbidden and under what circumstances-illustrates the problem with what I…Jun 21, 2022Jun 21, 2022
Bill MeachamUtilitarianism FailsOne of the tools of contemporary analytic philosophy is the thought experiment, an imaginative scenario intended to help us clarify our…Mar 23, 2022Mar 23, 2022
Bill MeachamSelf after DeathThis essay continues my earlier “Fearing Death”. There I explored how different assumptions as to whether there is life after the physical…Apr 27, 2021Apr 27, 2021
Bill MeachamSome Aspects of Being ConsciousI have asserted that the way many people talk about being conscious, particularly the way they use the term “consciousness,” leads to…Dec 8, 2020Dec 8, 2020
Bill MeachamSloppy PhenomenologyThe twentieth-century phenomenologists — Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, de Beauvoir, et. al. — have done a great service to…Jun 1, 2020Jun 1, 2020
Bill MeachamBeing ImmortalMy essay “Fearing Death” examines whether we have any reason to fear being dead. That essay assumes that death will come to all of us…Apr 21, 2020Apr 21, 2020