Desire isn’t good or bad, it just is.  Many of our desires are necessary, rational, healthy.  We desire food, shelter, security, affection, status, and meaning in our lives – essentially Maslow’s hierarchy.  How do we meet our desires - for love, for money, for more stuff - once (or if) we’ve taken care of the basics?  How much desire is too much, or too little?  In what circumstances?  How can we meet our desires in ways that produce more social good than we’re currently harvesting from our desire industry: shiny new cars, huge houses, fall/spring fashions, etc.?  And how is desire different in places like the United States and Europe, compared to places like Calcutta and Kenya?

Past events:

Kenneth Taylor and John Perry

What is desire?  Is it just longing for something we don’t have?  How much is enough?  Ken Taylor and John Perry will explore fundamental questions like these in a live performance of their nationally syndicated show, Philosophy Talk.  Ken Taylor is Professor and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at Stanford University. He is the author of many books and articles, including Truth and Meaning, Reference and the Rational Mind, and Referring to the World.  John Perry is Henry Waldgrave Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has written over 100 articles and books, including the Internet’s most popular essay on procrastination.

Friday, January 30, 2009

Philosophy Talk Guest: William Irvine

There are two ways to have your desires fulfilled: you can either get what you want (if you're lucky enough) or change your desires.  If we can fit our desires to what we have, we're likely to be a lot happier. So why do we desire things that are out of reach?  Why do we have desires that make us unhappy?  And what can we do about it?  John and Ken discuss the relationship between our desires and our happiness with William Irvine, author of "On Desire: Why We Want What We Want."

Wednesday February 18, 2009

Helen Fisher

Why and how do we fall in love?  Helen Fisher has pioneered research on the evolution of human sex, love, marriage and gender differences in the brain and behavior. Dr. Fisher is Research Professor in the Department of Anthropology, Rutgers University, and Chief Scientific Advisor to Chemistry.com. Using data from Chemistry.com, she has written her forthcoming book, Why Him, Why Her? Dr. Fisher’s previous books on the neurobiology and evolutionary psychology of love include Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love, First Sex: The Natural Talents of Women and How They are Changing the World, Anatomy of Love: The Natural History of Monogamy, Adultery and Divorce, and The Sex Contract: The Evolution of Human Behavior.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Extreme Desire

Most of us have experienced “too much of a good thing” from time to time.  Susan Cheever has lived it. How does desire become addiction? In her latest book, Desire: Where Sex Meets Addiction, Cheever explores the shifting boundaries between the feelings of passion and addiction, desire and need. She has also explored alcohol addiction in several memoirs and her groundbreaking biography of Bill Wilson, founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. Susan Cheever is the bestselling author of eleven previous books. She is a Guggenheim Fellow, a member of the Corporation of Yaddo, and a member of the Author's Guild Council. She writes a weekly column for Newsday and teaches in the Bennington College M.F.A. program.

Wednesday April 15, 2009

Steve Fraser

Wall Street: no other place on earth is so closely identified with money and the power of money. Is the Street a stalwart defender of the commercial order? Or a center of mad ambition? Historian Steve Fraser's latest book, Wall Street: A History of Desire, explores America's love-hate relationship with Wall Street, tackling fundamental questions of wealth and work, democracy and elitism, greed and salvation.  His six previous books include Labor Will Rule: Sidney Hillman and the Rise of American Labor and Every Man a Speculator: A History of Wall Street in American Life. He is Visiting Professor at New York University and co-founder of the American Empire Project. He has written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, and the American Prospect.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Geoffrey Miller

The Evolution of Desire

Bigger houses, faster cars, two-hundred-dollar blue jeans.  Maybe we don’t need all this stuff.  But maybe we do, in an evolutionary sense.  Is this how we signal fitness, to prospective mates, competitors and collaborators?  Geoffrey Miller makes a compelling case for this thesis in his forthcoming book, Spent: Sex, Evolution and the Secrets of Consumerism.  Miller examines the applications of evolutionary psychology in product design and aesthetics, marketing, advertising, and branding.  In his earlier book The Mating Mind, Miller argues that consciousness, morality, creativity, language, and art were not just artifacts of a larger brain, but sexual attractors.  Geoffrey Miller is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of New Mexico and received his Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from Stanford University.

Scott Atran
Talking to the Enemy: The Dreams, Delusions and Science of Sacred Conflicts

Scott Atran examines the religious roots of conflict and suicide terrorism with a rare blend of intellectual and practical force.  His forthcoming book summarizes, in part, interviews with nearly 4000 Palestinians and Israelis, showing that sacred values are at least as important as "practical" issues  commonly identified over the last forty years of diplomatic stalemate.  Published in scientific journals, this work has also been featured by news and print media around the world.  Atran's books include the Cognitive Foundations of Natural History: Towards an Anthropology of Science, In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion, The Native Mind: Cognition and Culture in Human Knowledge of Nature, and the forthcoming Talking to the Enemy: The Dreams, Delusions and Science of Sacred Conflicts.  Dr. Atran is Director of Research in Anthropology at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, Presidential Scholar in Sociology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, and Visiting Professor of Psychology and Public Policy at the University of Michigan.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Edward Diener and Robert Biswas-Diener

Happiness: Desire Fulfilled?

Love, money, more stuff – what are we looking for?  Maybe it’s as simple as this: happiness. In their new book Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth, father and son, Edward Diener and Robert Biswas-Diener tackle age-old questions about happiness with some of the tools of modern science: Can money buy happiness? Is ignorance truly bliss? Can a person be too happy? Ed Diener, popularly referred to as Dr. Happy, is the Joseph R. Smiley Distinguished Professor of Psychology at University of Illinois. Robert Biswas-Diener, known to some as the “Indiana Jones of happiness research,” has extended his father’s work to diverse cultures, from Greenland to the African savannah to the slums of Calcutta. This far-ranging research gives them a global perspective on happiness.