Inviting celebrity guests for debate or any contribution

I haven't considered it, and on old PF it seemed like a lot of trouble for nothing very interesting or exciting. Others may think differently, so I'm not saying it won't happen.

Thinking about this some more...

What might work better than inviting celebrity philosophy professors, as on PF, is inviting popular bloggers or podcasters on philosophy (or politics, sociology, science,etc.), many of whom are academics of some sort but, crucially, are always ready to engage with others online.

Partially Examined Life seems a really good site, been perusing some of their articles of late. Could be some synergy between the two sites.

Quoting m-theory

I was wondering if the mods had considered inviting intellectual celebrities to participate in the forum?

So what am I, chopped liver?

Reply to Bitter Crank Your posts are invariably witty and often insightful, but if you're a celeb, you hide it well. X-)

Reply to Wayfarer So how about Mr. Chopped Liver himself -- Woody Allen. Not a chance, I'm sure, but he'd be a good guest.

Quoting Wayfarer

Partially Examined Life

I checked out The Partially Examined Life and listened to a bit of their podcast on Richard Rorty. It started out with these 4 would-be philosophers-who-thought-better-of-it introducing themselves with a bit too much male giggling for my taste, but then they got on with it. I listened to some of the podcast... points raised:

• not getting stuck in our evil national past, any sort of "original sin", which leads to passivity.
• remain an "agent" and self-loathing is something that "agents" and nations can not afford.
• have (get, maintain) hope and pride in the national project projected into the future. A complete lack of national pride also leads to passivity.
• the Left should be hopeful, not just critical, and it needs to hold onto anti-authoritarianism
• the society we work toward should be characterized by less needless suffering and more diversity in remarkable--larger fuller imaginative individual--human beings

I recommend a visit.

Reply to Bitter Crank Ah yes, Woody Allen, now you mention it I remember the quote. I've been watching a few of his movies again lately. On PEL I'm reading the essay on whether the Trump presidency ought to be considered illegitimate.

Quoting m-theory

I was wondering if the mods had considered inviting intellectual celebrities to participate in the forum?

How are such events organized here?

Years ago in the old thread I organised for Paul both David Chalmers and Graham Priest to visit and answer questions, but it was rather pointless because the questions were pretty absurd and they both had little time to respond to any of the good ones. I think inviting academics who may have the time to discuss or talk about the work of celebrity philosophers would be more productive.

Reply to m-theory Intellectual celebrities by today's standards are pretty much not worth discussing with, in my frank opinion. I wouldn't gain much out of a chat with Searle, or Chalmers, or (God forbid) Pinker or any of those names. There's some lesser known - not celebrity status - professional philosophers who would be much more interesting to have a chat with.