Subscribe to get Part 2 of this episode. Listen to a preview. Hear this part ad-free. On the Categories (ca. 350 BCE), which purports to describe all the types of entities that exist. The participants are Mark, Wes, and Dylan. Sponsors: Get a free month of Great Courses lectures and lots of other great content at Wondrium.com/PEL. Get a free month's access to a vast Continue Reading …
Ep. 279: Aristotle’s “Categories” of Being (Part Two for Supporters)
Continuing from part one on the Categories, we finish up our discussion of substance by talking about artifacts: Only "genuine unities" are substances, and hammers and cups, for Aristotle, don't count as such unities. Should being a cup be considered instead a property like being white? Can properties be complex? We're actually not sure about natural objects like rivers, Continue Reading …
Ep. 279: Aristotle’s “Categories” of Being (Part One for Supporters)
On the Categories (ca. 350 BCE), which purports to describe all the types of entities that exist. The participants are Mark, Wes, and Dylan. The most important of these Categories is substance, a term which primarily picks out individual natural things (a particular person, animal, plant, or material) and secondarily picks out the kinds that group those things (e.g. the Continue Reading …
PREVIEW-Ep 206 Lucretius’s Epicurean Physics (Part Three)
Mark and Wes go into more textual detail re. Lucretius’s take on atomism and the metaphysical and epistemological problems it entails. Start with Part one. This is a preview; become a PEL Citizen or $5 Patreon supporter to get the full, 50 minute conversation. Lucretius believes in something like entropy: all conjoined atoms eventually break apart, but his account of the Continue Reading …
Ep. 206 Follow-Up Lucretius’s Epicurean Physics (Citizens Only)
Mark and Wes go into more textual detail re. Lucretius’s take on atomism and the metaphysical and epistemological problems it entails. Listen to the full episode discussion first. Lucretius believes in something like entropy: all conjoined atoms eventually break apart, but his account of the mechanism by which they join is less spelled out: When you get two heat atoms Continue Reading …
Ep. 206: Lucretius’s Epicurean Physics (Part Two)
More on Lucretius’s poem about Epicurean science: On the Nature of Things from the first century BCE. We talk more about how macroscopic phenomena are supposed to come out of the interaction of atoms, including mind and its processes of knowledge and illusion, including the illusion of love. One conclusion: life after death is not possible. Can the properties of the atoms Continue Reading …
Ep. 206: Lucretius’s Epicurean Physics (Part One)
On Lucretius’s poem about Epicurean science: On the Nature of Things aka De Rerum Natura from the first century BCE. How does the world work? Lucretius presents a system that is surprisingly modern, and raises philosophical issues that are still on point today: What are the basic building blocks of the universe? How could these give rise to minds? What ethical views does a Continue Reading …
Ep. 206: Lucretius’s Epicurean Physics (Citizen Edition)
On Lucretius’s poem about Epicurean science: On the Nature of Things aka De Rerum Natura from the first century BCE. How does the world work? Lucretius presents a system that is surprisingly modern, and raises philosophical issues that are still on point today: What are the basic building blocks of the universe? How could these give rise to minds? What ethical views does a Continue Reading …
Episode 198: Plato’s Forms in the “Parmenides” (Part Two)
We get down to the specific questions considered in this perplexing Platonic dialogue: Are there Forms for all adjectives? Does the Form of a property itself have that property? (Is the Form Large itself large?) How do Forms connect with particulars? How can we mortals have any connection to heavenly Forms anyway? Why even think there are Forms outside of particulars? Listen Continue Reading …
Episode 197: Parmenides on What There Is (Part Two)
Continuing with guest Peter Adamson with "On Nature" (475 BCE). We finally get to the great "fragment 8," which describes why Being must be singular and eternal, given that the notion of Non-Being is nonsense. So does it make any sense to talk of this eternal, uniform Being as a finite sphere? Would this absolute unity of Being make it impossible for us to even be Continue Reading …