Here you’ll find all our paywalled and ad-free regular episodes in a single feed. That includes paywalled full episodes from the back catalogue, Nightcap and (Starting in September 2020) Part 2 of all episodes. You can add this feed to the podcast app of your choice by following the instructions here….
Ep. 401: Mind/Brain Identity Theory (J.J.C. Smart) (Part Three for Supporters)
Mark and Wes further explore J.J.C. Smart's "Sensations and Brain Processes" (1959). Place had established that it's not the meanings of the words "brain" and "mind" that show their identity; they're metaphysically identical despite this difference in words. Start with part one. However, Smart claims that when referring to a mental state, a speaker is unknowingly still Continue Reading …
Ep. 401: Mind/Brain Identity Theory (U.T. Place, J.J.C. Smart) (Part Two for Supporters)
Finishing up U.T. Place's "Is Consciousness a Brain Process?" (1956) and starting on J.J.C. Smart's "Sensations and Brain Processes" (1959). Start with part one. Place (presaging Dennett), argues against the "phenomenological fallacy," which involves recognizing people's descriptions of the appearances of things as descriptions of the actual state of the world in a Continue Reading …
Ep. 401: Mind/Brain Identity Theory (U.T. Place, J.J.C. Smart) (Part One for Supporters)
On U.T. Place's "Is Consciousness a Brain Process?" (1956) and J.J.C. Smart's "Sensations and Brain Processes" (1959). Featuring Mark, Wes, Seth, and Chris Heath. Is there some a priori reason for denying that the mind can actually be the brain? Obviously those two words don't mean the same thing, but can we think of them as a single thing under two descriptions (e.g. Continue Reading …
Ep. 400: Dennett Rejects Qualia (Part Three for Supporters)
Mark and Seth rejoin to complete our treatment of Consciousness Explained. We focus on Dennett's response to Frank Jackson's "Mary the Color Scientist" example: Is there really a difference between experiencing something and making a judgment about it? Dennett says that there's no information difference, just potentially a different mode of getting information, developed Continue Reading …
Ep. 400: Dennett Rejects Qualia (Part Two for Supporters)
Continuing from part one (and before that, ep. 399) on Consciousness Explained (1991), ch. 12-14. We continue discussing Dennett's response in ch. 14 to Nagel's "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" which gets us in a whole conversation about animal consciousness. What is it like to be any languageless creature? Dennett thinks we can say a lot of things about what it can't be like, Continue Reading …
Ep. 400: Dennett Rejects Qualia (Part One for Supporters)
Continuing from ep. 399 on Dan Dennett's Consciousness Explained (1991), now focusing on ch. 12-14, and again featuring Mark, Seth, Dylan, and Chris Heath. We've given the basic outline of Dennett's positive view of what consciousness is: By advocating the multiple drafts model, he's argued that consciousness is essentially a matter of information availability, and that it's Continue Reading …
Ep. 399: Dan Dennett’s Model of Mind (Part Two for Supporters)
Continuing from part one on Consciousness Explained, ch. 5, with some reference to ch. 12. Dennett seemed to be saying that the phi-phenomenon (where we see a dot as having moved and transformed into another dot, whereas it was really just two dots shown successively in different places) showed that there's no distinction between experiencing the dot as moving and judging Continue Reading …
Ep. 399: Dan Dennett’s Model of Mind (Part One for Supporters)
On Daniel C. Dennett's Consciousness Explained (Ch. 1, 5, and a bit of 12; ep. 400 will complete ch. 12 along with 13). Featuring Mark, Seth, Dylan, and Chris Heath. What is the mind? Dennett claims that we are intuitively Cartesians: It seems like sensory input gets fed into us, processed unconsciously, and then the conscious mind examines the result (this is our stream of Continue Reading …
PEL Sunami Nightcap August 2026
Recorded 8/18/26. Chris Sunami, the editor of the PEL book, joins Mark, Wes and Seth as part of the launch of his new book, Free Your Mind, which is a series of PEL-like conversations all coming out of Chris' brain, using the model of Plato's symposium to talk about race, AI, art, religion, and more. Chris then starts us talking about what we all might want to communicate to Continue Reading …
Ep. 398: Donald Davidson on Mind vs. Body (Part Two for Supporters)
We finish up "Mental Events" (1970) and move on to "Actions, Reasons, and Causes" (1963), still with guest Chris Heath. Start with part one. Davidson gives us some more technical ways to think about the difference between the mental sphere and the physical. The failure of behaviorism to give us robust laws about the mental should be a lesson that mental explanation does not Continue Reading …
Ep. 398: Donald Davidson on Mind vs. Body (Part One for Supporters)
On "Mental Events" (1970) and "Actions, Reasons, and Causes" (1963), featuring Mark, Wes, and returning guest Chris Heath. Davidson was roughly in the "ordinary language" camp of analytic philosophy, but (like Kripke) thought that he could draw certain metaphysical conclusions from his analyses of what we mean when we talk about "mental events" and "reasons for Continue Reading …
Ep. 397: Federalist Papers LIVE (Citizen Edition)
To celebrate our nation's 250th birthday, we gathered in front of a lovely audience near Madison WI to discuss Federalist Papers 70, 78, 39, 54, 10 by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison from 1787-1788, Anti-Federalist Papers 78-80 (aka Brutus 11 and 15), and Frederick Douglass' Fourth of July Speech (1852). Is the American experiment working out as planned? After musing Continue Reading …
Ep. 396: Peirce on Knowledge (Part Two for Supporters)
Continuing from part one on "Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man" and "Some Consequences of Four Incapacities." We start by looking more closely at the idea that all mental causation is a form of reasoning, i.e. inference. Peirce sees these as valid deductive (or inductive or abductive) arguments even if they are not sound, i.e. if the premises are false. Continue Reading …
Ep. 396: Peirce on Knowledge (Part One for Supporters)
On essays by Charles Sanders Peirce: "Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man" and "Some Consequences of Four Incapacities," both from 1868. Featuring Mark, Wes, Seth and Dylan. Are there some instances of knowledge that are immediate and intuitive? These would be cognitions that are not caused by another cognition, but caused directly by the things that they Continue Reading …
Ep. 395: C.S. Lewis Argues for Christianity (Part Two for Supporters)
Continuing from part one on Mere Christianity (1952), starting with book 2, "What Christians Believe." Lewis argues that the problem of evil, far from showing that there is no good God, shows that we are endowed with that moral sense that judges the world to be evil, which was Lewis' proof for God. Many of Lewis' arguments are still common among Christian apologists today. Continue Reading …
Ep. 395: C.S. Lewis Argues for Christianity (Part One for Supporters)
On Mere Christianity, a 1952 book crafted from radio broadcasts delivered from 1941-1944. Featuring Mark, Wes, Dylan and Seth. Lewis tries to argue to a general audience that Christianity provides a unique and optimal response to the human condition. Specifically, he begins by arguing (like Kant) that we are all aware that we have moral standards that are not derived from Continue Reading …
PEL Summer of Fear Nightcap 2026
Recorded 6/9/26. Mark, Wes, and Dylan sign relief in being done with Hegel and talk phobias, metaphors vs. emotions, apperception of the ego, James Talarico (i.e. liberal Christianity), Survivor (Wes appears on the PMP episode, coming next week!), and situational/business ethics. The Donald Melzer book Wes mentions is The Claustrum. Here's a discussion Mark read about John Continue Reading …
Ep. 394: Hegel on Faith vs. The Enlightenment (Part Two for Supporters)
We conclude our treatment for the moment of the Spirit section of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (sec. 527-73). This directly continues part one, though we began on this tear back with ep. 386 in late Feb., so that's a five-month stretch on basically the same book, either reading it or reading other works discussing it and/or preparing us to understand it. The error that Continue Reading …
Ep. 394: Hegel on Faith vs. The Enlightenment (Part One for Supporters)
On Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), sec. 527-73, i.e. "Faith and Pure Insight" and "The Struggle of Enlightenment with Superstition." Featuring Mark, Wes, Seth and Dylan. We just read Hegel's earlier essay "Faith and Knowledge" to give us a clearer idea of the conclusion of this section of the Phenomenology: Faith, in this scientific age (i.e. our age as well has his Continue Reading …
Ep. 393: Kant vs. Hegel (Part Two for Supporters)
Concluding our treatment of Ch. 2 of Hegel's Faith and Knowledge (1802). Having spent part one discussing Kant, now we're back to more knowledgably deal with Hegel's critique of him. Hegel wants to connect Kant's idea in the Critique of Judgment of the "intuitive, archetypal intellect" that produces the objects given to its immediate consciousness, to the activity of the Continue Reading …