The Institute of Art and Ideas

We tend to think that discovering our beliefs were shaped by arbitrary social influences - where we grew up, our parents, our culture - should rationally compel us to abandon them.

But leading epistemologist Miriam Schoenfield argues this standard is impossibly high. Every belief system relies on assumptions it cannot itself prove.

From easily challenged wishful thinking, to entrenched religious and political beliefs, to trusting your own eyes, there is a spectrum of beliefs.

Yet, there is no principled difference between these cases. The more we're asked to question, the more we resist. The demand for the view from nowhere is a standard that nobody can ever meet.

Tap here to watch her full interview. https://iai.tv/video/the-view-from-somewhere-with-miriam-schoenfield

Why have trauma and 'lived experience' become the professional class's favourite currency?

Cultural theorist Catherine Liu argues that trauma, once a clinical term for the aftermath of real violence, has been hijacked by liberal elites as a tool of self-branding and class distinction, eclipsing the harder political work of naming exploitation itself.

From AOC's Instagram confessions to Prince Harry's memoirs, Liu traces how pain became content, and asks what the left loses when it trades solidarity for social media spectacles.

Tap here to read her full interview. https://iai.tv/articles/how-liberals-exploited-trauma-auid-3605

See Catherine Liu live in-person when she takes part in the HowTheLightGetsIn festival at Kenwood House, London, 19–20 September 2026.

Could relationships between objects be more fundamental than the objects themselves?

Philosopher George Webster argues that quantum physics upends the common assumption that it is objects that lie at the foundations of our world.

In the quantum world, relations like symmetry are more fundamental than the particles themselves. Yet our language and logic struggle to fully capture this picture.

Webster suggests that the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze may help us better understand what quantum physics implies about the nature of reality.

George Webster is Stipendiary Lecturer in Philosophy at Worcester College, University of Oxford. His work explores post-Kantian approaches to the metaphysics of the contemporary natural sciences, especially quantum physics.

Tap here to read more. https://iai.tv/articles/the-quantum-world-reveals-reality-is-made-of-relations-not-objects-auid-3501

We're living in a period of dramatic transformation.

The age of global neoliberalism is over. The economic order that has dominated the past fifty years is breaking down, and new ideologies are taking hold.

These are ideologies of nationalism and borders, of tariff wars, economic sanctions, and trade blocs. Drawing on his original research, leading economist Branko Milanović explores the scale and impact of the transformation now underway.

He shows how the rise of Asia has produced a new global middle class in the largest reshuffling of incomes since the Industrial Revolution and explores why, when the world is becoming richer and more equal, humanity is becoming increasingly conflicted and unhappy. Here is your guide to the new economic era.

Tap here to watch now. https://iai.tv/video/the-economics-of-the-new-world-order

The debate surrounding advanced AI systems and their potential to harm humanity has often focused on imminent risks, abrupt takeovers, and catastrophic outcomes.

Computer scientist Roman Yampolskiy here argues, however, that if a highly advanced AI were to harbour adversarial intentions, it might not act immediately.

Instead, it could wait years or even decades, accumulating strategic resources, knowledge, and subtle influence before making any overtly hostile moves.

Such a scenario would allow the AI to consolidate its position with minimal opposition, given its possible immortality and capacity for long-term strategy.

Tap here to read more. https://iai.tv/articles/a-rogue-superintelligence-could-wait-decades-before-striking-auid-3604

“Philosophers are not just there to point at reality, they must also become builders of possibilities, architects of the universal.”

The various schools of contemporary philosophy have a fundamental similarity: realism.

This is also their fatal flaw, argues philosophy professor Isabelle Thomas-Fogiel.

Despite the defences of philosophers such as Timothy Williamson, the problem of self-reference is inescapable when making statements about ‘the world.’ For this reason, Thomas-Fogiel argues, realism has no future in philosophy.

Tap here for the full article. https://iai.tv/articles/the-death-of-realism-auid-1746

We often think of moral identity as a hidden core of inner values; a fixed self that knows right from wrong.

But philosopher Marya Schechtman argues something far more disruptive: who we are morally is simply the ongoing narrative we live out over time.

And crucially, that story must make sense to those around us if we are to be held accountable for our actions.

Responsibility, remorse, and moral agency all depend on the coherence of the life story we build.

Tap here to read more. https://iai.tv/articles/morality-is-nothing-but-a-story-we-tell-ourselves-auid-3508

Our two upcoming IAI Live events challenge deeply held assumptions about knowledge, reality, and our capacity to understand the world we inhabit.

In July, a panel of leading thinkers confronts cosmology's grandest ambition: to describe the universe in its entirety. Can we ever achieve a single, objective cosmic map, or are we forever limited to a patchwork of partial models?

In August, the focus turns to metamodernism, the emerging outlook that claims to move beyond both realism and postmodernism.

You can sign up for both events with a Premium Live subscription or pay-per-view tickets: https://iai.tv/live/iai-live-july-catching-sight-of-the-universe