Ian Olasov

This chapter explores the content and strategy of the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) by describing the speech that sustains and promotes the movement. It explicates the content of the movement through the protest chants and other communicative tools M4BL has borrowed from past black liberatory movements. After a brief discussion of some of the challenges facing the movement, it describes four more novel communicative tools associated with M4BL—the hashtag and slogan #BlackLivesMatter, videos of police violence, naming the dead, and stereotype engineering. Each of these tools helps address some challenge, and also bears on some questions of independent philosophical interest—how to remedy testimonial injustice, what it means to engineer a concept, what makes a mental state a moral attitude. It concludes with a brief discussion of the limitations of some of these tools.

The first anthology devoted to the theory and practice of all forms of public philosophy, _A Companion to Public Philosophy_ brings together in a single volume the diverse practices, modalities, and perspectives of this rapidly growing field. Forty-two chapters written by established practitioners and newer voices alike consider questions ranging from the definition of public philosophy to the value of public philosophy to both society and philosophy itself. Throughout the book, philosophers offer insights into the different publics they have engaged, the topics they have explored, the methods they have used and the lessons they have learned from these engagements. The _Companion_ explores important philosophical issues concerning the practice of philosophy in the public sphere, how public philosophy relates to advocacy, philosophical collaborations with political activists, locations where public philosophy can be done, and more. Many essays highlight underserved topics such as effective altruism, fat activism, trans activism, indigenous traditions, and Africana philosophy, while other essays set the stage for rigorous debates about the nature, value, and philosophical significance of the practice of public philosophy. _A Companion to Public Philosophy_ is essential reading for philosophers from all walks of life who are invested in and curious about the ways that philosophy can impact the public and how the public can impact philosophy. It is also an excellent text for undergraduate and graduate courses on the theory and practice of public philosophy as well as broader courses on philosophy, normative ethics, and comparative and world philosophy.

Spaces can make certain forms of philosophical activity more likely or more fruitful among the people who occupy them, and many public philosophers aim to promote one or another form of fruitful philosophical activity. It's helpful to distinguish four ways in which spaces can facilitate philosophical reflection and interaction: domain‐general cognitive facilitation, domain‐specific cognitive facilitation, affective facilitation, and relational facilitation. This chapter shows how philosophical spaces shape the activity of their occupants in ways of interest to public philosophers. Groups can be unjustly excluded from philosophical communities for any number of reasons, but some of that exclusion is territorial. There are a number of challenges facing the would‐be designer of a philosophical space. The chapter presents three such challenges and offers some suggestions for how designers of philosophical spaces might address them. These include: the problem of rapport, the problem of urban social psychology, and the problem of the outsider.

A collection of answers to the philosophical questions on people's minds-from the big to the personal to the ones you didn't know you needed answered. Based on real-life questions from his Ask a Philosopher series, Ian Olasov offers his answers to questions such as: - Are people innately good or bad? - Is it okay to have a pet fish? - Is it okay to have kids? - Is color subjective? - If humans colonize Mars, who will own the land? - Is ketchup a smoothie? - Is there life after death? - Should I give money to homeless people? Ask a Philosopher shows that there's a way of making philosophy work for each of us, and that philosophy can be both perfectly continuous with everyday life, and also utterly transporting. From questions that we all wrestle with in private to questions that you never thought to ask, Ask a Philosopher will get you thinking.

Public philosophers have tended to think of their audience as the public, or perhaps a public or counterpublic. In my work on the Ask a Philosopher booth, however, it’s been helpful to think of our audience as made up of a handful of characters—types defined by the way in which they engage (or decline to engage) with the booth. I describe the characters I’ve encountered at the booth: orbiters, appreciaters, readers, monologuists, freethinkers, scholars, and peers. By reflecting on these characters and their needs, we can both imagine other forms of public philosophy that might better serve them, and better articulate the values that inhere in public philosophy projects like the Ask a Philosopher booth. I conclude with a brief case for the philosophy of public philosophy.