Tenth in an ongoing series about the places where science and religion meet. The previous episode is here. At this point in our journey, let us take a moment to return to Descartes’s infamous concept of mind-body duality. The body, in his view, is one type of thing: physical matter. It is subject to the laws of physics, it gets old and degrades, it is built up of discrete Continue Reading …
Critical Thinking and/or Philosophy?
On the surface, what links Critical Voter (the book that uses the election as an educational tool to teach critical thinking skills—free on Amazon July 12 and the 19th) and Degree of Freedom (which tried to see how far one could push massive open online courses) is the belief that as new modes of technology-driven learning come to the fore, those who can take advantage of them Continue Reading …
Descartes’s Horror?
At Zero Books, we aim to be unconventional. We aim, as Tariq Goddard wrote in the founding manifesto, to be "intellectual without being academic," to be critically engaged and theoretical without being boring, and to resist the "blandly consensual culture in which we live," but it's always a challenge. At the beginning of the year, during my second month as publisher and Continue Reading …
Foucault’s Madman and His Reply to Derrida
This post was originally published on the Zero Books blog. It is the second of two posts; the first post in the series is here. To review quickly, Foucault charged Descartes with excluding madness from consideration in his Meditations on First Philosophy. The relevant passage from Foucault's Folie et Déraison: Histoire de la folie à l'âge classique follows: In the economy Continue Reading …
Madness as Ontology: Catching Foucault’s Quote Mining
This is the first of a two-post series, the second can be found here. It's probable that one could not find a weaker defense attorney for the cogito, or for what's called the Cartesian subject, than Jacques Derrida. The author of Of Grammatology, Derrida is known as the founder of deconstruction, a mode of critical analysis or hermeneutics that problematizes and complicates Continue Reading …
Topic for #43: Arguments for the Existence of God
On many episodes we've mentioned in passing, or given some author's criticism of, the classic arguments for the existence of God: -The ontological argument, whereby some quality of the idea of God itself is supposed to necessitate that such a being exists. The most famous versions are by Descartes and St. Anselm. -The cosmological argument, which deduces from the fact Continue Reading …
In Praise of Nigel Warburton
A few months back in response to a blog post where I lauded our podcast over/against other philosophy podcasts, Jon recommended Philosophy Bites, Little Atoms, and Philosophy: The Classics, among others. Two of these have in common that Nigel Warburton is involved, which is a very good thing. Warburton is a Philosopher and scholar of the history of Philosophy at The Open Continue Reading …
Ripping the Classics
An amusing article by Jeanette DeMain on Salon.com about Amazon one-star reviews of classic books caught my eye. Its thesis is that for every book our culture (or likely, you in particular) finds great, there's likely a horrific review of it posted. Now, of course many of these reviews are by semi-literate anti-intellectual assholes. Still, I think that history and other Continue Reading …
Episode 2: Descartes’s Meditations: What Can We Know?
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 …