Continuing from part one on Dialogues on Metaphysics and Religion (1688), ch. 1-4. We talk about the character of the intelligible world: It resists certain thoughts, like you can't make 2+2=5. It has the intelligible idea of extension in it, which is what substance in the physical world is modeled after. This is an idea that is given to us as infinite: Space is infinitely Continue Reading …
Ep. 285: Nicolas Malebranche on Knowledge (Part One for Supporters)
On Dialogues on Metaphysics and Religion (1688), dialogues 1-4, featuring Mark, Wes, Dylan, and Seth. Malebranche presents a rationalist epistemology that is more like an early modern version of Plato than anyone else we've read. He comes chronologically between Descartes and Leibniz, and provided some foundational insights for Hume's take on causality, Berkeley's idealism, and Continue Reading …
Ep. 284: Mark Twain’s Philosophy of Human Nature (Part Two for Supporters)
Continuing from part one on "What Is Man" (1905). We work through Twain's metaphors for human nature: We're like engines made out of various materials, and these materials can be refined (through education, which acts to root out prejudice), though the type of material will limit its maximum capabilities even with refinement. We also get Twain's concept of instinct: Continue Reading …
Ep. 284: Mark Twain’s Philosophy of Human Nature (Part One for Supporters)
On "What Is Man" (1905) by Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain, featuring Mark, Wes, Dylan and Seth. This rare bit of philosophy wasn't published until after Twain's death (maybe because it was too bleak?), but apparently reflects the mechanistic, cynical take on humanity that informed his literary works. Twain was a tech guy; he was interested in the machines of his age, and he Continue Reading …
Ep. 283: Alain Badiou on Love (Part Two for Supporters)
Continuing from part one on "What Is Love?" (1992). We go through Badiou's account of love as the resolution of the paradox that on the one hand, Truth is trans-positional, which means there's no separate "man's truth" and "woman's truth" (or any other division like that), yet the positions of man and woman are "entirely disjunct." Badiou puts this in terms of a "humanity Continue Reading …
Ep. 283: Alain Badiou on Love (Part One for Supporters)
On "What Is Love," which is ch. 11 of Conditions (1992), supplemented by In Praise of Love (2009 with Nicolas Truong), with Mark, Wes, Dylan and Seth. In our episode introducing Badiou, we said that love is a "truth procedure," and here we see (sort of) what this means. Love is about gaining a new vantagepoint the world: seeing it through the eyes of the Two. It is not a Continue Reading …
Ep. 282: Alain Badiou: What Is Philosophy? (Part Two for Supporters)
Continuing from part one on Conditions (1992), Ch. 1 "The (Re)turn of Philosophy Itself." What makes philosophy possible? Well, there are truths, and these come out of the four "conditions," i.e. mathematics (and science more generally), politics, art, and love. This precludes skepticism about truth. Because there are many truths, Badiou's philosophy is pluralistic, but these Continue Reading …
Ep. 282: Alain Badiou: What Is Philosophy? (Part One for Supporters)
On Conditions (1992), Ch. 1 "The (Re)turn of Philosophy Itself," featuring Mark, Wes, Dylan, and Seth. Badiou is arguing against contemporary post-structuralist French philosophers like Derrida and Foucault whom he characterizes as denying the existence of truth. Philosophy as a profession has consequently devolved into just being a history of philosophy. Continue Reading …
Ep. 281: Paul Feyerabend’s Anarchist Philosophy of Science (Part Two for Supporters)
Continuing from Part One on Against Method (1975). Given that according to F., epistemological conformity (getting with the scientific program) can't proceed by an unambiguous appeal to reason, how does it proceed? Through indoctrination, propaganda, and coercion. Even when we want a free, rational society, we don't get this through reasoning with children and then citizens, Continue Reading …
Ep. 281: Paul Feyerabend’s Anarchist Philosophy of Science (Part One for Supporters)
On Against Method (1975), the introduction through ch. 5 and ch. 15-16, featuring Dylan, Wes, and Seth. This book that began as a joint call-and-response project with our last author Imre Lakatos, but then Lakatos died and couldn't respond to what Feyerabend explicitly wrote roughly in the form of a series of letters to a friend. Feyerabend agreed with much of Lakatos' Continue Reading …
Ep. 280: Imre Lakatos on Scientific Progress (Part Two for Supporters)
Continuing from Part One on "Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes" (1970). We try to clarify the difference between dogmatic falsificationism, the view commonly attributed to Karl Popper whereby a disconfirming experiment is taken to definitively refute a scientific theory, with methodological falsificationism, which is what Lakatos attributes Continue Reading …
Ep. 280: Imre Lakatos on Scientific Progress (Part One for Supporters)
On "Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes" (1970), featuring Mark, Wes, Dylan, and Seth. In what way is scientific progress rational? To understand the state of the debate by Lakatos' time, let's run quickly through some history of the philosophy of science: Early scientists like Francis Bacon saw science as providing certainty in the Continue Reading …
Ep. 279: Aristotle’s “Categories” of Being (Part Two for Supporters)
Continuing from part one on the Categories, we finish up our discussion of substance by talking about artifacts: Only "genuine unities" are substances, and hammers and cups, for Aristotle, don't count as such unities. Should being a cup be considered instead a property like being white? Can properties be complex? We're actually not sure about natural objects like rivers, Continue Reading …
Ep. 279: Aristotle’s “Categories” of Being (Part One for Supporters)
On the Categories (ca. 350 BCE), which purports to describe all the types of entities that exist. The participants are Mark, Wes, and Dylan. The most important of these Categories is substance, a term which primarily picks out individual natural things (a particular person, animal, plant, or material) and secondarily picks out the kinds that group those things (e.g. the Continue Reading …
Ep. 278: Derrick Bell on the Dynamics of Racism (Part Two for Supporters)
Continuing from part one on Faces At the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism (1992), with guest Lawrence Ware. We discuss mainly "The Racial Preference Licensing Act" (ch. 3), "Divining a Racial Realism Theory" (ch. 5), and "The Rules of Racial Standing" (ch. 6). The first of these essays plays with an idea (attributed to his fictional alter ego Geneva Crenshaw) Continue Reading …
Ep. 278: Derrick Bell on the Dynamics of Racism (Part One for Supporters)
On Faces At the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism (1992), a foundational text in critical race theory that presents stories and essays related chiefly to the philosophy of law. Lawrence Ware returns to talk with Mark, Seth, and Dylan about "The Space Traders." What is racism, and how can we measure its acuity? Bell thinks that an argument that racism in America Continue Reading …
REISSUE-Ep 35: Hegel on Self-Consciousness (Ad Free w/ New Intro)
Seth, Wes and Dylan re-introduce this episode from ten years ago on G.F.W. Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, Ch. 4A "Self-Consciousness," which features guest Tom McDonald. We've removed the "review" section of the old episode (the first half), because it's duplicative of our recent three-episode run on this book. The old discussion thus picks up in the book right where ep. Continue Reading …
Ep. 277: Hegel on Our Understanding of Physics (Part Two for Supporters)
Continuing from part one our close reading of The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), ch. 3, "Force and the Understanding." We start off with the dynamic between the expressed and merely stored up aspects of force and how this relates to the forcing and the forced entities in the interaction. Which of these is the "solicitor" and which is being solicited? Either one can be seen Continue Reading …
Ep. 277: Hegel on Our Understanding of Physics (Part One for Supporters)
On The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), ch. 3, "Force and the Understanding." What is "force" as physics describes it? And scientific law? Do these terms denote objects in the world, or models for how we describe the world? For Hegel, force is a way of talking about the metaphysical relation that one object has to other objects. Or taken from another perspective, it's the Continue Reading …
Ep. 276: Hegel on Perception (Part Two for Supporters)
We quickly finish The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), ch. 1 "Sense Certainty" and then focus on ch. 2 "Perception." Listen to part one first. Does Hegel's claim about the inadequacy of perceptual knowledge also indicate an incoherence in traditional metaphysical accounts? Since much of Hegel's emphasis in considering perception is the relationship between an object's various Continue Reading …