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Audiobook: W.V.O. Quine’s “On What There Is”

November 20, 2012 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

Dylan Casey reads the 1948 article, discussed on our episode 66.

Jim Holt Considering Why the World Exists

July 12, 2012 by Dylan Casey 3 Comments

Jim Holt has a new book out with the provocative title Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story, featuring encounters with the mathematician Roger Penrose, author John Updike, physicist Steven Weinberg, philosopher Adolf Grünbaum, and theologian Richard Swinburne, among others. David Ulin at the L.A. Times summarizes: That question — “Why is there something rather than nothing?” — Continue Reading …

Russell’s Atomistic Metaphysics

June 10, 2011 by Mark Linsenmayer 2 Comments

Some information about Russell’s atomism was discussed in in our Wittgenstein’s Tractatus podcast. For a bit more information, here’s his essay “The Ultimate Constituents of Matter,” pointed out to us (dismissively) by frequent blog discussion contributor Burl and mentioned on our recent episode. I leave it to you all to explore this essay as you like, but let me give Continue Reading …

Information Theory and Metaphysics

March 10, 2011 by Mark Linsenmayer 34 Comments

Courtesy of listener Matt Gantner, here’s a Scientific American article on “Why Information Can’t Be the Basis of Reality.” The author, John Horgan, criticizes information theorists like James Gleick who posit that information is somehow the basic structure of the universe (which seems to be a modern variation on Anaxagoras’s idea that mind, or Nous, is the fundamental component). Horgan Continue Reading …

Episode 27: Nagarjuna on Buddhist “Emptiness” (Citizens Only)

October 10, 2010 by Mark Linsenmayer 4 Comments

Primarily discussing “Reasoning: The Sixty Stanzas” and “Emptiness: The Seventy Stanzas,” by the 2nd century Indian Buddhist Nagarjuna. Is the world of our experience ultimately real? If not, does it have something metaphysically basic underlying it? For Nagarjuna, the answers are “no” and “no… well… not that we can talk about.” With guest Erik Douglas.

End song: “Nothing in this World” by by Mark Lint.

PREVIEW-Episode 27: Nagarjuna on Buddhist “Emptiness”

October 10, 2010 by Mark Linsenmayer 31 Comments

Primarily discussing “Reasoning: The Sixty Stanzas” and “Emptiness: The Seventy Stanzas,” by the 2nd century Indian Buddhist Nagarjuna. Is the world of our experience ultimately real? If not, does it have something metaphysically basic underlying it? For Nagarjuna, the answers are “no” and “no… well… not that we can talk about.” With guest Erik Douglas.

Looking for the full Citizen version?

Episode 24: Spinoza on God and Metaphysics (Citizens Only)

August 24, 2010 by Mark Linsenmayer 3 Comments

Discussing Spinoza’s Ethics (1677), books 1 and 2. God is everything, therefore the world is God as apprehended through some particular attributes, namely insofar as one of his aspects is infinite space (extension, i.e. matter) and insofar as one of his aspects is mind (our minds being chunks or “modes” of the big God mind).

End song: “Spiritual Insect,” by Mark Lint and the Fake from So Whaddaya Think? (2000).

PREVIEW-Episode 24: Spinoza on God and Metaphysics

August 24, 2010 by Mark Linsenmayer 25 Comments

Discussing Spinoza’s Ethics (1677), books 1 and 2. God is everything, therefore the world is God as apprehended through some particular attributes, namely insofar as one of his aspects is infinite space (extension, i.e. matter) and insofar as one of his aspects is mind (our minds being chunks or “modes” of the big God mind).

Looking for the full Citizen version?

Episode 19: Kant: What Can We Know? (Citizens Only)

May 14, 2010 by Mark Linsenmayer 4 Comments

Discussing Immanuel Kant’s Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783). Do we have any business doing metaphysics, which is by definition about things that we could not possibly experience? With guest Azzurra Crispino.

End song: “Subjectivity” by The MayTricks, from Happy Songs Will Bring You Down (1994)

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

May 14, 2010 by Mark Linsenmayer 51 Comments

Discussing Immanuel Kant’s Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783). Do we have any business doing metaphysics, which is by definition about things that we could not possibly experience? With guest Azzurra Crispino.

Looking for the full Citizen version?

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

January 3, 2010 by Mark Linsenmayer 1 Comment

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 over the uncertainty principle, relativity, wave/particle duality, Pre-Socratic metaphysics, why Kant is wrong about space, and lots of very weird things.

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. Dylan Casey’s first appearance (as a guest).

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

August 19, 2009 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

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 corrects our German pronunciation. The first 3/4 of this episode was recorded off-site from our regular equipment, making the audio quality relatively sucky. Enjoy!

End song: “Facts for a Moment (What You Are to Me),” recorded in 1992 and released on the Mark Linsenmayer album Spanish Armada, Songs of Love and Related Neuroses.

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.

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