The Australian-based philosophy magazine, New Philosopher, has a fun and quick interview feature called “13 Questions” and in the latest issue, I’m the one answering them.
They actually asked me 16 questions. However, the hard copy of the magazine, which I received in the mail recently, includes just 13, with some answers abridged.
An unabridged version will be appearing online eventually, at which point I’ll include a link to it here. [UPDATE (5/17/24)]: The full interview is online here.
Below is a sampling of five of the questions & answers:
What is your demon?
I don’t know, but perhaps it’s related to the fact that I’d never answer this question sincerely in public.
What do you doubt most?
To any answer I give to the question of what I doubt the most we can add something that makes it even less believable. It’s like asking someone for the highest number they can think of; to any “n” you can always append “+ n”. For example, I’m an atheist, so I doubt there’s a god. But is that what I doubt the most? I probably doubt more that there are two gods. And probably more than that, I doubt there are three gods, and so on. Well, perhaps not “and so on.” It may be more plausible that there are four or more gods, as there is a bit too much “this looks like the result of committee work” in the world. But you get the idea. More doubtable than “there’s three gods” is “there are three gods and they’re made of pizza,” or even “there are three gods and you’re reading this sentence.”
What does it mean to be human?
I take it this is not a question about biological taxonomy, as in “what does it mean to be fungal?” Rather, it’s a question that’s typically taken to be asking about a distinctly human aim or problem. Getting to the office on time is a distinctly human aim and flat tires are a distinctly human problem, but both of those lack the grandiosity expected of answers to this kind of question. But so would probably any answer plausibly true of any human-wide aim or problem. So rather let me talk about what it means to be human in terms of opportunities. Given biology and culture, to be human is to have a massive amount of opportunities other beings do not: opportunities to think, to create, to achieve, to appreciate, to act. The extent of these opportunities vary across time and place and other variables, of course, but still, they are there. Note that I’m not saying that being human means taking advantage of these opportunities, or even thinking about them. I’m not making any universal declarations about what people need to do. Rather, I’m just describing the seemingly distinctive situation we’re in.
What would you never do, no matter the price?
P & -P
The question you’d most like to ask others?
What’s something you think is beautiful, that you think many people would disagree with you about?
justin weinberg 
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