The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

A Philosophy Podcast and Philosophy Blog

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Ep. 221: Functionalist Theories of Mind (Putnam, Armstrong) (Citizen Edition)

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On Hilary Putnam’s “The Nature of Mental States” (1973) and David M. Armstrong’s “The Causal Theory of the Mind” (1981).

What is the mind? Functionalist theories identify the mental not with the brain exactly, but with something the brain does. So some other creature without a brain (maybe a computer) might be able to do that same thing if it could duplicate the structure of what our brains do. Is this a satisfying account of the mind?

End song: “Pain Makes You Beautiful” by Jeff Heiskell’s JudyBats, as featured on Nakedly Examined Music #5.

Ep. 220: 10-Year Retrospective of The Partially Examined Life (Citizen Edition)

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Mark, Seth, Dylan, and Wes reflect on the changing state of podcasting and public philosophy over the last decade, how our goals and interests have changed since we started we started. Why don’t colleges pay their faculty to educate the public through regular, broadcasted conversations like ours? If you think we’re snarky, take a look at actual philosophy faculty! Should we continue to do more topics that are not strictly philosophy? Also, the stalled state of the PEL book.

End song: “High Rollin’ Cult” by Mark Lint with Erica Spyres, celebrating Pretty Much Pop. Listen now to the latest episodes, including our interview with Yakov Smirnoff, at patreon.com/prettymuchpop.

Pretty Much Pop #2: Binge Watching (Advance Citizen Release)

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What counts as binge watching? Why do we do it? Is it bad for us? Mark, Erica, and Brian, the hosts of this still-not-formally launched new entertainment podcast for the PEL Network, think about what we get out of binge watching, whether it’s bad for us, what kind of shows taste better in bulk than others, and much more.

This presentation includes a bit of the bonus content that you’d hear, along with PMP #3 with Yakov Smirnoff, were you to sign up RIGHT NOW at episode 1, and if you go pledge a little support on patreon.com/prettymuchpop. One and all can hear the first episode free there and also at prettymuchpop.com.

Ep. 219: The Harder Problem of Consciousness (Block & Papineau) (Citizen Edition)

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On Ned Block’s “The Harder Problem of Consciousness” (2002) and David Papineau’s “Could There Be a Science of Consciousness?” (2003).

What would give us sufficient reason to believe that a non-human was conscious? Block thinks this is a harder problem that we might suspect. We can’t know for sure exactly what consciousness in us is, so we can’t know for sure what such a being might require (a brain? certain patterns of behavior?) for them to be enough like us that we could safely apply our own experience of our own conscious states to them. Papineau diagnoses this as a fundamental vagueness in the concepts we use to describe our conscious states.

This conversation continues from ep. 218, with guest Gregory Miller from the Panpsycast still with us.

End song: “Mindreader” by Phil Judd as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #98.

Episode 218: The Hard Problem of Consciousness (Chalmers, et al) (Citizen Edition)

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>On “Consciousness and Its Place in Nature” by David Chalmers (2003), with special guest Gregory Miller from the Panpsycast Philosophy Podcast.

Can we explain human experience using the terms of brain physiology? Chalmers thinks not, and lays out the arguments against this and the range of positions philosophers have taken in response to these objections.

End song: “Georgia Hard” by Robbie Fulks, as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #36.

Pretty Much Pop #1: Pop Culture vs. High Culture (Advance Citizen Release)

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What is pop culture? Does it make sense to distinguish it from high culture, or can something be both?

Hear in advance of the actual release the new pop culture podcast hosted by Mark, Erica Spyres, and Brian Hirt.

Get involved from the start at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This episode is available there FREE for one and all, and there’s already bonus content up there for PMP supporters.

REISSUE-Ep. 21: What Is the Mind? (Turing, et al) w/ New Intro

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Discussing articles by Alan Turing, Gilbert Ryle, Thomas Nagel, John Searle, and Dan Dennett. What is this mind stuff, and how can it “be” the brain? Can computers think? What is it like to be a bat? With guest Marco Wise.

Plus a new intro by Mark, Wes, and Seth reflecting back on this 2010 discussion, which we’re re-releasing to help you prepare for our upcoming episodes in this area.

End Song: “No Mind” by Mark Lint and the Fake Johnson Trio (1998).

PEL Audioplayers: “Life Is a Dream” by Pedro Calderón de la Barca (Citizen Edition)

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Your hosts are joined by real actors to do an unrehearsed read of the 1636 comedy by Calderón’s 1636 comedy La Vida Es Sueño, using Stanley Appelbaum’s 2002 translation. Ep. 217 will cover the philosophical issues the play raises.

Recorded in NYC on 4/7: Talene Monahon (Rosaura), David Epstein (Segismundo), Bill Youmans (Clotaldo), Erica Spyres (Estrella), Chris Martin (Basilio), Mark Linsenmayer (Clarín), Seth Paskin (Astolfo), Dylan Casey (soldier 1 and servant 1), and Wes Alwan (soldier 2 and servant 2).

Music by Jonathan Segel, as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #38.

Episode 216 Follow-Up: Reflections on the End of Game of Thrones (Citizens Only)

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Mark and Wes continue discussion of the TV show after its finale. Listen to our ep. 216 first.

Yes, of course this is now full of spoilers. How does the end of the show affect its overall political message? Was it really (as George R.R. Martin depicted) about the irreducible complexity of politics (given that any character named or unnamed can actually make a difference, at least destructively) or qua TV Show is it forced to zero-in on a select set of powerful characters that we are meant to identify with? Also, does it make sense to be performing feminist critiques on a show based on the premise of people murdering each other for power?

We welcome your feedback re. future treatment of pop culture topics (via a spin-off podcast?).

Episode 216: Game of Thrones’ Fantasy Politics (Citizen Edition)

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Discussing the TV show (2011-2019) based on the books by George R.R. Martin.

What’s the role of a mass-consumed fantasy series in today’s society? Is it our “fantasy” to have all these horrible things happen to us? Is this an edifying prompt to engage in public moral thinking, or a spectacular distraction of the kind that those Marxist theorists keep warning us about? We get into the function of fantasy and how a more “realistic” show plays with that, the extent to which we’re supposed to identify with the characters, depiction of moral complexity, low art vs. high art, identity issues, and more. With guest Sabrina Weiss.

End song: “Fire and Blood” by Sacrifice Feat. Mark Lint; hear the interview on Nakedly Examined Music #24.

Episode 215: Brave New World: PEL Live 10th Anniversary Show (Citizen Edition)

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On Aldous Huxley’s 1932 dystopian novel, recorded at Manhattan’s Caveat on 4/6/19, with audience participation.

If we harness the power of society to employ available technologies to really focus on making people happy, what would the result be? This is Huxley’s thought experiment, but is it in all respects a dystopia, and is it a fair test of the ideal of social improvement or merely of a flawed view of human nature?

You can watch this episode instead.

End song: “Brave New World” by Mark Lint. Read about it.

PEL Citizens get $10 off the commemorative T-shirt.

Episode 214: More Nietzsche’s Zarathustra (Citizen Edition)

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On the remainder of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885).

How can we keep our spirits up and avoid nihilism? We consider Nietzsche’s “solution” of eternal recurrence, why he uses a poetic, allegoric style, and his “new tablets” that tell us what habitual and destructive ideas we have to flush out of our systems before we can be vital and creative. And don’t count on reaching overman status; innovators are generally sacrifices to the future and only get the goal half right.

End song: “Upright Man” by Rachel Taylor Brown, as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #91.

Episode 213: Nietzsche’s Zarathustra (Citizen Edition)

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On Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, books 1 and 2 (1883).

What is wisdom? In this text whose style parodies the Bible, we get pithy advice and allegorical imagery to guide us away from self-defeating, life-denying attitudes and orient us toward creative self-overcoming (i.e., exertion of the Will to Power). The Last Man who no longer knows how to give birth to a dancing star is a rotten egg!

End song: “Sacrilicious” by Hedflux, i.e., Steve Young, as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #92.

Episode 212: Sartre on Literature (Citizen Edition)

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On Jean-Paul Sartre’s What is Literature? (1948), ch. 1 and 2.

What’s the purpose of literature? Why write prose as opposed to poetry? Sartre argues that while poetry is about the words themselves, prose is about the ideas, so it’s necessarily political. A written work is essentially an ethical appeal for a reader to apply his or her own faculties and experiences to complete the work through the act of reading.

End song: “Things I Shouldn’t Have Told You” by Sam Phillips, as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #90.

Episode 211: Sartre on Racism and Authenticity (Citizen Edition)

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On Jean-Paul Sartre’s Anti-Semite and Jew: An Exploration of the Etiology of Hate (1946) and “Black Orpheus” (1948).

How can we best understand the psychology of racism and reactions to it? Sartre not only condemns anti-Semitism as denying the facts of the human condition (the responsibility for fixing problems and not blaming them on a demonized other), he also thinks that the victims of oppression can be inauthentic by denying their situation or otherwise being reactive to the racist’s attitude. “Black Orpheus” further explores this idea in characterizing the “negritude” of black poetry and how uncovering one’s negritude leads to solidarity and hence political and psychological change.

End song: “Punch Bag” by Godley & Creme as discussed on Nakedly Examined Music #3.

Episode 210: Frantz Fanon’s Black Existentialism (Citizen Edition)

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On Black Skin White Masks (1952).

How does growing up in a racist society mess people up? Fanon’s “clinical study” includes phenomenology, poetry, and a lot of existentialism, which means that the “let’s embrace negritude in the face of bigotry” solution isn’t ultimately available to him: We’re all radically free, with no race-specific essence, whether positive or negative. With guest Lawrence Ware.

End song: “Malaika” by John Etheridge and Vimala Rowe; hear John interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #85.

Episode 209: Guest Francis Fukuyama on Identity Politics (Citizen Edition)

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An interview and discussion on Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment (2018).

What motivates people? Frank points to thymos, the demand for recognition, as at the root of both the “end of history” (i.e., democracy as demand for equal recognition) and our current tribalist stalemates, involving desires to be seen—in virtue of group membership—as superior. Thymos may in fact be central to self-consciousness, ethics, and the origins of political association.

End song: “Cornerstone” by Richard X. Heyman, as discussed on Nakedly Examined Music #61.

See PEL Live in NYC on April 6.

About The Partially Examined Life

The Partially Examined Life is a philosophy podcast by some guys who were at one point set on doing philosophy for a living but then thought better of it. Each episode, we pick a text and chat about it with some balance between insight and flippancy. You don’t have to know any philosophy, or even to have read the text we’re talking about to (mostly) follow and (hopefully) enjoy the discussion

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