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Engaging with the Indian Textual and Philosophical Universe

September 26, 2019 by Mukunda Raghavan Leave a Comment

In PEL’s foray last year into the understanding and discussing Indian thought vis a vis The Bhagavad Gita, the PEL team and their guest Shaam Amin did a great service in bringing forth the Indian system of thought to PEL listeners.  As someone who has a strong background in both Western Philosophy and Indian Philosophy and founder of a podcast Continue Reading …

A Glimpse into Philosophy: Pilot Episodes of a Short-Form Podcast for Your Consideration

April 24, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer 27 Comments

Three short episodes (on Sartre, Nietzsche, and Machiavelli) by Mark Linsenmayer of a new potential podcast for the PEL network. We’d like your feedback, and even more importantly, the feedback of your friends for whom the long-form PEL discussions are or would be just TOO MUCH.

Hume on Religion: A Video Introduction to PEL Ep. 167

June 29, 2017 by Mark Linsenmayer 2 Comments

Watch a video introduction to David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion where he considers the argument from design. Does experience ground the inference from the orderliness of nature to a divine creator?

What Epictetus Really Thinks Is in Our Power

January 17, 2017 by Greg Sadler 12 Comments

Stoicism proposes an ongoing discipline of deliberately withdrawing one’s desires and aversions from external matters and applying them to what lies within one’s own person. Getting this distinction right—what is in our power and what is not—turns out to be integral to understanding and practicing Stoic philosophy as a way of life.

Many Forms of Doing: A Surprising Source for Pluralism about Agency

March 26, 2016 by Christopher Yeomans Leave a Comment

An excerpt from Christopher Yeomans’s The Expansion of Autonomy: Hegel’s Pluralistic Philosophy of Action. Join him on the Hegel Aftershow on Sunday 3/27 at 6pm Eastern!

The Incoherence of Michael Sandel’s Critique of Liberalism

October 21, 2015 by Wes Alwan 59 Comments

Michael Sandel is one of America’s best-known political philosophers, and helped establish his reputation with a widely respected and widely taught book, “Liberalism and the Limits of Justice.” That’s surprising, given that its central argument is based on some very obvious errors in reasoning.

Moral Sentiments and Moral Responsibility: An Interview with David Shoemaker (Part 1)

September 25, 2015 by Alan Cook 1 Comment

An interview with philosopher Dave Shoemaker about his new book, Responsibility from the Margins, that discusses how our conceptions of moral responsibility depend on, or are even constituted by, our emotional reactions to the actions, omissions, and attitudes of others.

Science, Technology, and Society XIV: Ian Hacking

July 2, 2015 by Daniel Halverson 2 Comments

In “The Social Construction of What?” (1999), Ian Hacking argues that constructionist accounts of scientific theories tend to lose sight of a basic question: what, exactly, is it that’s supposed to be constructed?

Science, Technology, and Society XIII: The Sokal Hoax

June 26, 2015 by Daniel Halverson 6 Comments

In 1996, physicist Alan Sokal perpetrated a hoax by submitting a nonsense article to an academic journal of postmodern studies, and subsequently deriding the journal for publishing it. The hoax was, and remains, a significant salvo in the “Science Wars.”

Parables as a Guide to Jesus the Philosopher, Part 4: Imprudence?

June 18, 2015 by Peter Hardy 17 Comments

In contrast to Jesus’s teachings on the virtue of prudence, there are also his parables that feature strong aspects of imprudence. Whereas prudence is an intellectual virtue that involves reasoning out one’s conscience, what Jesus urges in his imagery of imprudence is that we also act from sensitivity to our emotions.

Parables as a Guide to Jesus the Philosopher, Part 3: Shocking Images

June 12, 2015 by Peter Hardy 3 Comments

According to the Parable of the Dishonest Manager, in the Gospel of Luke, the Kingdom of God is like a man who makes dishonest use of his boss’s money

Science, Technology, and Society XI: Constructive Empiricism

June 2, 2015 by Daniel Halverson 9 Comments

Because many, if not most, of the things with which science has to deal cannot be directly observed, the central question of science is not “What is the truth about nature?” but “what counts as an empirically adequate explanation?”

Camus’ Great Blasphemy and the Ethics that Followed

May 29, 2015 by Amée LaTour 23 Comments

Albert Camus often gets lumped in with twentieth-century French existentialists, a crew known for its hardline atheistic membership. But Camus was something different, something much more blasphemous: an agnostic who wouldn’t revere God even if He did exist.

Parables as a Guide to Jesus the Philosopher, Part 2: Prudence

May 27, 2015 by Peter Hardy 4 Comments

Part 1 of this series ended with my arguments that because Jesus was not a systematic philosopher, it would be helpful to elaborate his moral teachings in the framework of an ethical system, and that virtue ethics is the system best suited to this purpose, as many Christians have traditionally thought. Taking up this approach, in Parts 2 to 4 Continue Reading …

Citizen Interview with Nicholas Humphrey, a Leading Figure in Mind and Consciousness

May 22, 2015 by John Ludders 1 Comment

Having the opportunity to speak with Nicholas Humphrey was a phenomenal experience (pun intended). His accounts of discussing dreams with Francis Crick, debating the best materialist arguments with Dan Dennett, working on blindsight, describing how personhood and ethics arise out of consciousness, and positing that our minds act as artists to make us fall in love with ourselves, make for a wonderful and enlightening listen.

Epicurus’ Four Cures

May 20, 2015 by Hiram Crespo 19 Comments

The resolution to follow Epicurus is a resolution to protect one’s mind. We live in a dysfunctional consumerist society filled with anxiety and neuroses, where few people analyse their lives, most have a short attention span and are uninterested in disciplining their minds and curbing mindless desires. If philosophy is understood as the Epicureans understand it, then it becomes evident that people desperately need philosophy today.

Science, Technology and Society X: Weimar Culture and Quantum Mechanics

May 15, 2015 by Daniel Halverson 1 Comment

Because German science held such a prominent place in culture before WWI, it could not escape the fallout when the war ended in disaster. German physicists needed a way to reestablish their prestige, and this meant repudiating their prewar past in order to make room for an up-to-date theory that would not be tarnished by earlier failures.A new mania for a romantic “life philosophy,” which rejected the mechanical and mechanistic attitudes of the British in favor of an experience-based, intuitive holism became fashionable. In physics, the new model incorporated the values of “life philosophy” by rejecting causality as the principle explanatory mechanism.

Parables as a Guide to Jesus the Philosopher, Part 1: Introduction

May 14, 2015 by Peter Hardy 13 Comments

To say that Jesus was a philosopher is not to say that he was a philosopher and nothing else; he was also a religious preacher and healer. But philosophical argument is implicit in much of his teaching, especially when he is in dialogue. Moreover, his parables, as stimuli to deeper thought, are philosophical devices also.

Science, Technology and Society IX: Malthus, Darwin, and “Social Darwinism”

May 6, 2015 by Daniel Halverson 13 Comments

In a series of essays written, Robert M. Young argued that scientific theories, like all other products of the human mind, arise out of a specific social context. Theories necessarily incorporate the values and concerns of the people who create them, which are themselves expressions of their specific historical context. Therefore, if we want to understand evolution, we need to understand the history of Victorian England.

Schopenhauer’s Idealism: How Time Began with the First Eye Opening

May 1, 2015 by Mark Linsenmayer 50 Comments

How does Schopenhauer reconcile nature’s dependence on human minds (his idealism) with the belief that science can study the distant past before any minds existed?

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