Vintage Episode (Citizen) | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

Episode 76: Deleuze on What Philosophy Is

May 14, 2013 by Mark Linsenmayer 1 Comment

On Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s What Is Philosophy? (1991).

How is philosophy different from science and art? What’s the relationship between different philosophies? Is better pursued solo, or in a group? Deleuze described philosophy as the creation of new concepts, whereas science is about functions that map observed regularities and art is about creating percepts and affects. With guest Daniel Coffeen. Learn more.

End song: “Tolerated” by New People, the new album Might Get It Right. Download the album.

Episode 75: Lacan & Derrida Criticize Poe’s “The Purloined Letter” (Citizens Only)

April 19, 2013 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

On Jacques Lacan’s “Seminar on ‘The Purloined Letter'” (1956), Jacques Derrida’s “The Purveyor of Truth” (1975), and other essays in the collection The Purloined Poe: Lacan, Derrida, and Psychoanalytic Reading. How should philosophers approach literature? Lacan read Edgar Allen Poe’s story about a sleuth who outthinks a devious Minister as an illustration of his model of the psyche, and why we persist in self-destructive patterns. Derrida thought this reading not only imposed a bunch of psychobabble onto the story, but demonstrated that Lacan just didn’t know how to read a text.

Episode 74: Jacques Lacan’s Psychology (Citizens Only)

April 3, 2013 by Mark Linsenmayer 1 Comment

On Bruce Fink’s The Lacanian Subject (1996) and Lacan’s “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience” (1949). What is the self? Is that the same as the experiencing subject? Lacan says no: while the self (the ego) is an imaginative creation, cemented by language, the subject is something else, something split (at least initially) between consciousness and the unconscious. Lacan mixes this Freudian picture with semiotics–an emphasis on systems of linguistic symbols–using this to both create his picture of the psyche and explain how psychological disorders arise. Learn more.

End song: “Something Else” by Madison Lint.

Episode 73: Why Do Philosophy? (And What Is It?) (Citizens Only)

March 22, 2013 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

Mark, Seth, Wes, and Dylan share what drove them into philosophy and keeps them there. How is philosophy different than (or similar to) science? Than religion? Art? The consensus seems that philosophy, to us, is inevitable for the curious. It’s just inquiry, unbounded (in principle at least) by any fixed assumptions. We did no formal reading for this discussion, but did tell each other to keep in mind Plato’s “Apology.” Learn more.

End song: “Wake Me” by Mark Lint and the Fake from So Whaddaya Think? (2000).

Episode 72: Terrorism with Jonathan R. White (Citizens Only)

March 9, 2013 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

We’re joined by an international terrorism expert to discuss how to define terrorism and whether it can ever be ethical. With readings by Donald Black, J. Angelo Corlett, Igor Primoratz, Karl Heinzen, Bhagat Singh, and Carl von Clausewitz. Learn more.

End song: “1000 Points of Light” by The MayTricks (1992).

Episode 71: Martin Buber’s “I and Thou” (Citizens Only)

February 15, 2013 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

On Buber’s 1923 book about the fundamental human position: As children, and historically, we start fully absorbed in relation with another person (like mom). Before that, we have no self-consciousness, no “self” at all. It’s only by having these consuming “encounters” that we gradually distinguish ourselves from other people, and can then engage in what we’d normally consider “experience,” which Buber calls “the I-It relation.” Buber thinks that unless we can keep connected to this “I-Thou” phenomenon, through mature relationships, art, and nature. With guest Daniel Horne. Learn more.

End song: “Luscious You” by Mark Lint and the Fake, from So Whaddaya Think? (2000).

Episode 70: Marx on the Human Condition (Citizens Only)

January 30, 2013 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

On Karl Marx’s The German Ideology, Part I, an early, unpublished work from 1846. What is human nature? What drives history? How can we improve our situation? Marx thought that fundamentally, you are what you do: you are your job, your means of subsistence. All the rest, this culture, this religion, this philosophy, is just a thin layer over our basic situation. Ideas are not primarily what changes the world; it’s economics.

End song: “Job” by Mark Lint and the Fake from So Whaddaya Think? (2000).

Episode 69: Plato on Rhetoric vs. Philosophy (Citizens Only)

January 12, 2013 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

On Plato’s Dialogue, “Gorgias” (380 BCE or so). Why philosophize? Isn’t it better to know how to persuade people in practical matters, like a successful lawyer or business leader? Plato (via Socrates) thinks that the “art” of rhetoric isn’t an art at all, in the sense of requiring an understanding of one’s subject matter, but merely a talent for saying what people want to hear. Learn more.

End song: “Fallen Sun” by New People. Download the album.

Episode 68: David Chalmers Interview on the Scrutability of the World (Citizens Only)

December 21, 2012 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

On David Chalmers’s book Constructing the World (2012). How are all the various truths about the world related to each other? David Chalmers, famous for advocating a scientifically respectable form of brain-consciousness dualism, advocates a framework of scrutability: if one knew some set of base truths, then the rest would be knowable from them. Learn more.

End song: “What You Want” by New People, from Might Get It Right (2013). Download the album.

Episode 67: Carnap on Logic and Science (Citizens Only)

December 7, 2012 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

On Rudolph Carnap’s The Logical Structure of the World (1928). What can we know? Carnap thinks that all the various spheres of knowledge are logically interrelated, that you can translate sentences about any of these into sentences about sets of basic, momentary experiences. This book, aka the Aufbau, is his attempt to sketch out how this system of linguistic reduction can work (it doesn’t). WIth guest Matt Teichman. Learn more.

End song: “Undershirt” by Mark Lint with Edison Carter (1996).

Episode 66: Quine on Linguistic Meaning and Science (Citizens Only)

November 21, 2012 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

On W.V.O. Quine’s “On What There Is” (1948) and “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” (1951). What kind of metaphysics is compatible with science? Quine sees science and philosophy as one and the same enterprise, and he objects to ontologies that include types of entities that science can’t, even in principle, study. Also, troubles with the concept of synonymy, i.e. “same meaning.” WIth guest Matt Teichman. Learn more.

End song: “Granted” by Mark Lint (2012).

Episode 65: The Federalist Papers (Citizens Only)

October 27, 2012 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

On Alexander Hamilton/James Madison’s Federalist Papers (1, 10-12, 14-17, 39, 47-51), published as newspaper editorials 1787-8, plus Letters III and IV from Brutus, an Anti-Federalist. What constitutes good government? These founding fathers argued that the proposed Constitution, with its newly centralized (yet also separated-by-branch) powers would be a significant improvement on the Articles of Confederation, which had left states as the ultimate sovereigns. Learn more.

End song: “Feeling Time” by Madison Lint (2002).

Episode 64: Celebrity, with guest Lucy Lawless (Citizens Only)

October 6, 2012 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

On Fame: What the Classics Tell Us About Our Cult of Celebrity by Tom Payne (2010). What’s the deal with our f’ed up relationship with celebrities? Payne says that celebrities serve a social need that’s equal parts religion and and aggression. TV’s Lucy Lawless (Xena, Spartacus, Battlestar Galactica) joins us to discuss the accuracy of this thesis. Learn more.

End Song: “Celebrity” by New People from Might Get It Right. Download the album.

Episode 63: Existentialist Heroes in Cormac McCarthy’s “No Country for Old Men” (Citizens Only)

September 21, 2012 by Mark Linsenmayer 1 Comment

On philosophical issues in McCarthy’s 2005 novel about guys running around with drug money and shooting each other, and about fiction as a form for exploring philosophical ideas. What can morality mean for people who have witnessed the “death of God,” i.e. a loss in faith in light of the horrors of war? Who knows what McCarthy himself thinks? With guest Eric Petrie. Learn more.

End song: “My Grandfather” by Dylan Casey (2001).

Episode 62: Voltaire’s Novel “Candide” (Citizens Only)

September 5, 2012 by Mark Linsenmayer 1 Comment

On Candide: or, Optimism, the novel by Voltaire (1759). Is life good? Popular Enlightenment philosopher Leibniz argued that it’s good by definition. God is perfectly good and all-powerful, so whatever he created must have been as good as it can be; we live in the best of all possible worlds. Voltaire loads this satirical adventure story up with horrific violence to demonstrate that Leibniz’s position is just silly. Life is filled with suffering, and human nature is such that even in peace and prosperity, we’re basically miserable. Yet we still love life despite this. Tend your garden! Learn more.

End song: “Woe Is Me,” from from Mark Lint & the Fake Johnson Trio (1998).

Episode 61: Nietzsche on Truth and Skepticism (Citizens Only)

August 15, 2012 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

On Friedrich Nietzsche’s “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense” (1873). What is truth? This essay, written early in Nietzsche’s career, is taken by many to make the extreme claim that there is no truth, that all of the “truths” we tell each other are just agreements by social convention. WIth guest Jessica Berry, who argues that that Nietzsche is a skeptic: our “truths” don’t correspond with the world beyond our human conceptions; all knowledge is laden with human interests. Learn more.

End song: “Stupidly Normal,” from Mark Lint & the Fake Johnson Trio (1998).

Episode 60: Aristotle: What’s the Best Form of Government? (Citizens Only)

July 22, 2012 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

On Aristotle’s Politics (350 BCE), books 1 (ch 1-2), 3, 4 (ch 1-3), 5 (ch 1-2), 6 (ch 1-6), and 7 (ch. 1-3, 13-15). Aristotle provides both a taxonomy of the types of government, based on observations of numerous constitutions of the states of his time, and prescriptions on how to best order a state. Learn more.

End song: “Don’t Forget Where You Are,” from the Mark Linsenmayer album Spanish Armada, Songs of Love and Related Neuroses (1993)

Episode 59: Alasdair MacIntyre on Moral Justifications (Citizens Only)

July 5, 2012 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

On Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (1981), mostly ch. 3-7 and 14-17. What justifies ethical claims? MacIntyre claims that no modern attempt to ground ethics has worked, and that’s because we’ve abandoned Aristotle. We see facts and values as fundamentally different: the things science discovers vs. these weird things that have nothing to do with science. In Aristotle’s teleological view, everything comes with built-in goals, so just as a plant will aim grow green and healthy, people have a definite kind of virtue towards which we do and should naturally strive.

End song: “Indefensible,” by Mark Lint, 1998.

Episode 58: What Grounds Ethical Claims? (Moore, Stevenson, MacIntyre) (Citizens Only)

June 20, 2012 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

On G.E. Moore’s Principia Ethica, ch. 1 (1903); Charles Leslie Stevenson’s “The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms” (1937), and Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue, ch. 1-2. Is there such a thing as moral intuition? Is “good” a simple property that we all recognize but can’t explain like yellow? Or are moral terms just tools we use to convince other people to like things that we like? Learn more.

End song: “When I Was Yours,” by Mark Lint, 1997.

Episode 57: Henri Bergson on Humor (Citizens Only)

May 31, 2012 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

On Bergson’s Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic (1900). What is humor? Bergson says that, fundamentally, we laugh as a form of social corrective when others are slow to adapt to society’s demands. Other types of humor are derivative from this. With guest Jennifer Dziura. Learn more.

End songs: “The Nipple Song” (1991) and “Come On, Lady” (1990, with Ken Gerber and Brian Hirt) from Mark Lint’s Black Jelly Beans & Smokes, plus Jen’s standup.