Discussing Michel de Montaigne's Essays: "That to Philosophize is to Learn to Die," "Of Experience," "Of Cannibals," "Of the Education of Children," and "Of Solitude" (all from around 1580) with some discussion of "Apology for Raymond Sebond." Renaissance man Montaigne tells us all how to live, how to die, how to raise our kids, that we don't know anything, and a million Continue Reading …
Episode 32: Heidegger: What is “Being?” (Citizens Only)
Discussing Martin Heidegger's Being and Time (1927), mostly the intro and ch. 1 and 2 of Part 1. When philosophers try to figure out what really exists (God? matter? numbers?), Heidegger thinks they've forgotten a question that really should come first: what is it to exist? He thinks that instead of asking "What is Being?" we ask, as in a scientific context, "what is this Continue Reading …
Episode 31: Husserl’s Phenomenology (Citizens Only)
Discussing Edmund Husserl's Cartesian Meditations (1931). How can we analyze our experience? Husserl thinks that Descartes was right about the need to ground science from the standpoint of our own experience, but wrong about everything else. Husserl recommends we "bracket" the question of whether the external world exists and just focus on the contents of our consciousness Continue Reading …
Episode 30: Schopenhauer on Explanations and Knowledge (Citizens Only)
Discussing Arthur Schopenhauer's On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, published in 1847 (as an expansion of his doctoral thesis from 1813). What kinds of explanations are legitimate? S. thought that causal and logical explanations are often confused, resulting in philosophical errors. In laying out the four types of explanation -- the four versions of Continue Reading …
Episode 29: Kierkegaard on the Self (Citizens Only)
Discussing Soren Kierkegaard's "The Sickness Unto Death" (1849). What is the self? For K. we are a tension between opposites: necessity and possibility, the finite and the infinite, soul and body. He thinks we're all in despair, whether we know it or not, because we wrongly think we're something we're not, or we reject what we are, or we just don't pay attention to this Continue Reading …
Episode 28: Nelson Goodman on Art as Epistemology (Citizens Only)
On Goodman's Ways of Worldmaking (1978). What's the relationship between art and science? Does understanding works of art constitute "knowledge," and if so, how does this relate to other kinds of knowledge? Goodman describes art as a symbol system (including art like instrumental music that doesn't seem representative), which can symbolize successfully or not. While there is no Continue Reading …
Episode 27: Nagarjuna on Buddhist “Emptiness” (Citizens Only)
Primarily discussing "Reasoning: The Sixty Stanzas" and "Emptiness: The Seventy Stanzas," by the 2nd century Indian Buddhist Nagarjuna. Is the world of our experience ultimately real? If not, does it have something metaphysically basic underlying it? For Nagarjuna, the answers are "no" and "no... well... not that we can talk about." Mark and Seth are joined by guest Erik Continue Reading …
Episode 26: Freud on the Human Condition (Citizens Only)
Discussing Civilization and its Discontents (1930). For Wes Alwan's summary of this book, go here). What's the meaning of life? Well, for Sigmund Freud, an objective purpose rises or falls with religion, which he thinks a matter of clinging to illusion, so to rephrase: what do we want out of life? To be happy, of course, yet he sees happiness as a matter of fulfillment of Continue Reading …
Episode 25: Spinoza on Human Nature (Citizens Only)
Discussing Books II through V of the Ethics. Continues the discussion from Ep. 24. What is the relation between mind and body? How do we know things? What are the emotions? Is there an ethical ideal for us to shoot for? What is our relationship to God? Our rational nature prevails over urges to scream, sleep, or slap each other as we plow to the end of this strange and Continue Reading …
Episode 24: Spinoza on God and Metaphysics (Citizens Only)
Discussing Spinoza's Ethics (1677), books 1 and 2. We mostly discuss his weird, immanent, non-personal conception of God: God is everything, therefore the world is God as apprehended through some particular attributes, namely insofar as one of his aspects is infinite space (extension, i.e. matter) and insofar as one of his aspects is mind (our minds being chunks or "modes" Continue Reading …
Episode 23: Rousseau: Human Nature vs. Culture (Citizens Only)
Discussing Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Discourse in Inequality (1754) and book 1 of The Social Contract (1762). What's the relationship between culture and nature? Are savages really slavering beasts of unquenchable appetites, or probably more mellow, hangin' about, flexin' their muscles, just chillin', eh? Rousseau engages in some wild speculation about the development of Continue Reading …
Episode 22: More James’s Pragmatism: Is Faith Justified? What is Truth? (Citizens Only)
On William James's "The Will to Believe" and continuing our discussion from Episode 20 on James's conception of truth as described in his books Pragmatism and The Meaning of Truth, again including Dylan Casey. Does pragmatism give ground for religious belief, like if I say it feels good for me to believe in God, is that in any sense a legitimate grounds for that belief? Is Continue Reading …
Episode 21: What Is the Mind? (Turing, et al) (Citizens Only)
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? No? What if they're really sexified? Then can they think? Can the mind be a computer? Can it be a room with a guy in it that doesn't speak Chinese? Can science completely understand it? ...The mind, that Continue Reading …
Episode 20: Pragmatism – Peirce and James (Citizens Only)
On Pragmatism (1907) by William James and "The Fixation of Belief" (1877) and "How to Make Our Ideas Clear" (1878) by Charles Sanders Peirce. Is truth a primitive relation between our representations and things objectively in the world, or is it an analyzable process by which propositions "prove their worth" by being useful in some way, like by fitting well with other Continue Reading …
Episode 19: Kant: What Can We Know? (Citizens Only)
On Immanuel Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783), which is a shorter, dumbed-down version of his Critique of Pure Reason. Do we have any business doing metaphysics, which is by definition about things that we could not possibly experience? Kant says that yes, we can, to a limited extent, but that everyone before him did it wrong, because they didn't Continue Reading …
Episode 18: Plato: What Is Knowledge? (Citizens Only)
On the Theaetetus and the Meno, two dialogues about knowledge. We're returning to Plato for a somewhat more thorough treatment than we gave him in Episode 1. This should be considered part two (Hume being #1) of three discussions intended to convey the main conflict in the history of epistemology between the empiricists (like Hume) and the rationalists (like Plato). We Continue Reading …
Episode 17: Hume’s Empiricism: What Can We Know? (Citizens Only)
On David Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748). David Hume thinks that all we can know are our own impressions, i.e. what our moment-to-moment experiences tell us. Funny thing, though: he thinks that no experience shows us one event causing another event. We only experience one thing happening, then another, and these sequences tend to display a lot of Continue Reading …
Episode 16: Danto on Art (Citizens Only)
What effect should the avant garde have on our understanding of what art is? We read three essays by modern, first-rate American philosopher Arthur Danto, all published in The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art (1986): the title essay, "The Appreciation and Interpretation of Works of Art," and "The End of Art." I understand you may not have heard of Danto, and you may Continue Reading …