Philosophical Dialogues on Contemporary Problems
About the Book Series
Philosophical Dialogues on Contemporary Problems uses a well-known form – at least as old as Socrates and his interlocutors – to deepen understanding of a range of today’s widely deliberated issues. Each volume includes an open dialogue between two or more fictional characters as they discuss and debate the empirical data and philosophical ideas underlying a problem in contemporary society. Students and other readers gain valuable, multiple perspectives on the problem at hand.
Each volume includes a foreword by a well-known philosopher, topic markers in the page margins, and an annotated bibliography.
Dialogues on Minds, Machines, and AI
1st Edition
By Rocco J. Gennaro
January 21, 2026
Dialogues on Minds, Machines, and AI invites readers into a series of thought-provoking debates among three college seniors bound for graduate school: Sue, completing her double major in philosophy and cognitive science; John, a computer engineering specialist; and Amy, a psychology major. Through ...
Dialogues on the Meaning of Life
1st Edition
By Michael Hauskeller
December 23, 2025
What does it mean to live a meaningful life? Can life be meaningful at all, and if it can, what exactly makes it so? This new volume in the Philosophical Dialogues on Contemporary Issues series addresses these questions through fictional dialogues that relate the theoretical problems that ...
Dialogues on Free Will
1st Edition
By Laura W. Ekstrom
December 15, 2025
What kinds of conversations might take place when two intelligent and informed young people – one a strong believer in free will and the other just as certain that we don’t have it – get together to discuss their viewpoints? This new volume in the Philosophical Dialogues on Contemporary ...
Dialogues on Immigration and the Open Society
1st Edition
By Chandran Kukathas
June 16, 2025
After some friendly pestering from six of his students curious about his thinking about immigration, a philosophy professor invites them to present their own ideas to him over a series of meetings throughout the term. This book is about their conversations. These dialogues introduce the reader to ...
Dialogues on Ethical Vegetarianism
2nd Edition
By Michael Huemer
June 02, 2025
Worldwide every year, 83 billion animals are slaughtered on factory farms, at the end of brief lives full of suffering. Is it wrong to buy the products of this industry? In this book, two college students – a meat-eater and an ethical vegetarian – discuss this question in a series of dialogues ...
Dialogues on Democracy
1st Edition
By Julia Maskivker
December 03, 2024
Dialogues on Democracy offers a panoramic overview of recent and classical debates on the meaning of democracy as a philosophical ideal. It features some of the most central discussions that exist in the literature regarding its value, its purpose, and its (possible) flaws. Accessibly written ...
Dialogues on Human Enhancement
1st Edition
By Nicholas Agar
September 14, 2023
We face an emerging range of technologies that can be applied to our human natures with the goal of enhancing us. There are nootropic smart drugs and gene editing that influence the development of the brain. The near future promises cybernetic technologies that can be grafted onto our brains and ...
Dialogues on Gun Control
1st Edition
By David DeGrazia
April 03, 2023
What happens when two intelligent American college students with different attitudes about guns launch into a careful exploration of the ethics of gun policy? What might a European exchange student add to the mix? All three characters in this book are fictional, the creation of author David ...
Dialogues on Climate Justice
1st Edition
By Stephen M. Gardiner, Arthur Obst
September 26, 2022
Written both for general readers and college students, Dialogues on Climate Justice provides an engaging philosophical introduction to climate justice, and should be of interest to anyone wanting to think seriously about the climate crisis. The story follows the life and conversations of Hope, a ...
Dialogues on the Ethics of Abortion
1st Edition
By Bertha Alvarez Manninen
May 17, 2022
What happens when two intelligent and highly informed fictional college students, one strongly pro-choice and the other vigorously pro-life, are asked to put together a presentation on abortion? Their conversations over five days – friendly but lively, charitable but clear – are captured in ...