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You can also see them organized by topic. For episodes marked "Preview," you can access the full episode at our store, or you could become a PEL Citizen and get them from our Free Stuff for Citizens page.

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Episode 0: Introduction to the Podcast

May 11, 2009 by Mark Linsenmayer 20 Comments

Listen to this here episode first. A priori, that is. Before experiencing the world yourself. Why should you bother to go through the trouble of downloading and listening to one of the full length episodes? Who are we anyway? Why shouldn't you just go listen to some philosophy lectures posted by university professors instead of this thing? Do you need to listen to the  Continue Reading …

Episode 1: “The Unexamined Life Is Not Worth Living.”

May 12, 2009 by Mark Linsenmayer 34 Comments

Socrates

Discussing Plato's "Apology." This reading is all about how Socrates is on trial for acting like an ass and proceeds to act like an ass and so is convicted. Big surprise. On this our inaugural discussion, Mark, Seth, and Wes talk about how philosophers are arrogant bastards who neglect their children, how people of all political stripes don't usually examine their  Continue Reading …

Episode 2: Descartes’s Meditations: What Can We Know?

May 13, 2009 by Mark Linsenmayer 72 Comments

On Descartes's Meditations 1 and 2. Descartes engages in the most influential navel gazing ever, and you are there! In this second and superior-to-the-first installment of our lil' philosophy discussion, we discuss what Descartes thinks he knows with certainty (hint: it is not you), the Matrix, and burning-at-the-stake.com. Mark and Wes agree to disagree about agreeing that  Continue Reading …

Episode 3: Hobbes’s Leviathan: The Social Contract

June 7, 2009 by Mark Linsenmayer 39 Comments

Discussing Hobbes's Leviathan, Chapters 13-15. Have we implicitly signed a social contract whereby our native right to punch other people in the face is given to the President? Hobbes does things that eventually result in the U.S. Constitution and makes Wes nauseous. Plus: Star Trek and the Bible! Buy the book or read it online End song: "The Villa" by Mark Lint and  Continue Reading …

Episode 4: Camus and the Absurd

June 22, 2009 by Mark Linsenmayer 48 Comments

Discussing Camus's "An Absurd Reasoning" and "The Myth of Sisyphus" (1942). Does our eventual death mean that life has no meaning and we might as well end it all?  Camus starts to address this question, then gets distracted and talks about a bunch of phenomenologists until he dies unreconciled.  Also, let's all push a rock up a hill and like it, okay?  Plus, the fellas dwell  Continue Reading …

Episode 5: Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics

July 16, 2009 by Mark Linsenmayer 27 Comments

Discussing Books 1 and 2. What is virtue, and how can I eat it? Do not enjoy this episode too much, or too little, but just the right amount. Apparently, if you haven't already have been brought up with the right habits, you may as well give up. Plus, is Michael Jackson the Aristotelian ideal? Buy the book or read it online. End song: A newly recorded cover of  Continue Reading …

Episode 6: Leibniz’s Monadology: What Is There?

July 31, 2009 by Mark Linsenmayer 29 Comments

Have some tasty metaphysics, in mono! Leibniz thinks that the world is ultimately made up of monads, which are like atoms except nothing at all like atoms, because they're alive, and mindful, and eternal, and windowless, placed in the best kind of harmony at the beginning of time by God. Is there a concept album in all of this? Plus, does reading philosophy make you a  Continue Reading …

Episode 7: Wittgenstein’s Tractatus: What Is There and Can We Talk About It?

August 19, 2009 by Mark Linsenmayer 44 Comments

Discussing the beginning (through around 3.1) of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Mr. W. wrote that the world is made up of facts (as opposed to things) and that these facts can be analyzed into atomic facts, but then refused to give even one example to help us understand what the hell he's talking about, and so Wes and Mark argue about it per usual while Seth  Continue Reading …

Episode 8: Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (and Carnap): What Can We Legitimately Talk About?

September 4, 2009 by Mark Linsenmayer 17 Comments

Continuing last ep's discussion of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus with some Rudolph Carnap (a logical positivist from the Vienna Circle: “The Rejection of Metaphysics” from his 1935 book Philosophy and Logical Syntax) about what kind of crazy talk is outside of legitimate discourse. Carnap interprets W as simply ruling out as unscientific most of the talk we'd  Continue Reading …

Episode 9: Utilitarian Ethics: What Should We Do?

September 18, 2009 by Mark Linsenmayer 47 Comments

Discussing Jeremy Bentham’s An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation chapters 1-5, John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism, and modern utilitarian Peter Singer's "Famine, Affluence, and Morality.") Going full tilt on the Greatest Happiness principle, with talk of gladiators, consensual cannibalism, and illegal downloads. How many Pleetons were in your last  Continue Reading …

Episode 10: Kantian Ethics: What Should We Do?

October 19, 2009 by Mark Linsenmayer 53 Comments

Discussing Fundamental Principles (aka Groundwork) of the Metaphysic of Morals (1785). We try very hard to make sense of Kant's major ethical principle, the Categorical Imperative, wherein you should only do what you'd will that EVERYONE do, so, for instance, you should not will to eat pie, because then everyone would eat it and there would be none left for you, so too  Continue Reading …

Episode 11: Nietzsche’s Immoralism: What Is Ethics, Anyway?

November 10, 2009 by Mark Linsenmayer 91 Comments

Discussing The Genealogy of Morals (mostly the first two essays) and Beyond Good and Evil Ch. 1 (The Prejudices of Philosophers), 5 (Natural History of Morals), and 9 (What is Noble?). We go through Nietzsche's convoluted and historically improbable stories about about the transition from master to slave morality and the origin of bad conscience. Why does he diss  Continue Reading …

Episode 12: Chuang Tzu’s Taoism: What Is Wisdom?

December 6, 2009 by Mark Linsenmayer 36 Comments

Discussing the "Chuang Tzu," Chapters 2, 3, 6, 18, and 19. It's the second-most-famous Taoist text and the most humorous, with anecdotes about people singing at funerals and jumping out of moving coaches while drunk. What could it possibly mean to "make all things equal?" and how is the Taoist sage different from our other favorite paragons of virtue (hint: magical  Continue Reading …

Episode 13: What Are the Metaphysical Implications of Quantum Physics?

January 3, 2010 by Mark Linsenmayer 48 Comments

Werner Heisenberg

On Werner Heisenberg’s “Physics and Philosophy" (1958), and talking about it with an actual former particle physicist, Dylan Casey. What weird stuff about reality does quantum physics imply? Is Heisenberg (of the Uncertainty Principle fame) right that we need to reject "metaphysical realism" based on this very well established scientific framework? The discussion ranges  Continue Reading …

Episode 14: Machiavelli on Politics

February 7, 2010 by Mark Linsenmayer 15 Comments

Reading Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince and Ch. 1-20 of The Discourse on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy. What's a philosophically astute approach to political matters? What makes a government successful? Should you keep that fortress or sell it for scrap? If you conquer, say, Iraq, do you have to then go and live there for the occupation to work out? Is it OK to display  Continue Reading …

Episode 15: Hegel on History

February 24, 2010 by Mark Linsenmayer 35 Comments

Discussing G.W.F Hegel's Introduction to the Philosophy of History. Though he didn't actually write a book with this name, notes on his lectures on this topic were published after his death, and the first chunk of that serves as a good entrance point to Hegel's very strange system. How should a philosopher approach the study of history? Is history just a bunch of random  Continue Reading …

PREVIEW-Episode 16: Danto on Art

March 4, 2010 by Mark Linsenmayer 65 Comments

This is a 33-minute preview of a 2 hr, 13-minute episode. Buy Now Purchase this episode for $2.99. Or become a PEL Citizen for $5 a month, and get access to this and all other paywalled episodes, including 68 back catalogue episodes; exclusive Part 2's for episodes published after September, 2020; and our after-show Nightcap, where the guys respond to listener email and chat  Continue Reading …

PREVIEW-Episode 17: Hume’s Empiricism: What Can We Know?

March 29, 2010 by Mark Linsenmayer 25 Comments

David Hume

This is a 31-minute preview a vintage 2 hr, 5-minute episode. Buy Now Purchase this episode for $2.99. Or become a PEL Citizen for $5 a month, and get access to this and all other paywalled episodes, including 68 back catalogue episodes; exclusive Part 2's for episodes published after September, 2020; and our after-show Nightcap, where the guys respond to listener email and  Continue Reading …

PREVIEW-Episode 18: Plato: What Is Knowledge?

April 20, 2010 by Mark Linsenmayer 14 Comments

This is a 34-minute preview of a 2 hr, 18-minute episode. Buy Now Purchase this episode for $2.99. Or become a PEL Citizen for $5 a month, and get access to this and all other paywalled episodes, including 68 back catalogue episodes; exclusive Part 2's for episodes published after September, 2020; and our after-show Nightcap, where the guys respond to listener email and chat  Continue Reading …

PREVIEW-Episode 19: Kant: What Can We Know?

May 14, 2010 by Mark Linsenmayer 53 Comments

This is a 31-minute preview of our vintage 2 hr, 5-minute episode. Buy Now Purchase this episode for $2.99. Or become a PEL Citizen for $5 a month, and get access to this and all other paywalled episodes, including 68 back catalogue episodes; exclusive Part 2's for episodes published after September, 2020; and our after-show Nightcap, where the guys respond to listener email  Continue Reading …

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