ontology | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

Ep. 191: Conceptual Schemes: Donald Davidson & Rudolf Carnap (Part Two)

June 4, 2018 by Mark Linsenmayer 2 Comments

Finishing Davidson’s “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme” (1974) and moving on to Carnap’s “Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology” (1950).

Carnap claims that we talk about mathematical objects or subatomic particles or whatever, we’re not really (contra Quine) making metaphysical claims. Ontological questions like “Are there really numbers?” are just pretentious nonsense. With guest Dusty Dallman.

Listen to part 1 first, or get the unbroken, ad-free Citizen Edition. Please support PEL!

End Song: “Shut Up” by Chandler Travis, as heard on Nakedly Examined Music #46.

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Science, Religion, and Secularism, Part XVIII: Humanistic, Scientific, and Theistic Approaches to History

January 18, 2018 by Daniel Halverson 4 Comments

In a previous article, we finished our exploration of Michael Allen Gillespie’s Theological Origins of Modernity. One of the things I tried to show, on the basis of Gillespie’s argument, was that modern intellectual history can be mapped, more or less exhaustively, according to a three-part diagram, where the axes are defined by the place where explanation stops. The medieval Continue Reading …

Foucault’s Madman and His Reply to Derrida

August 11, 2015 by Douglas Lain 4 Comments

Michel Foucault’s response to Jacques Derrida’s assertion that Foucault misinterpreted Descartes’s Cogito.

Lacan’s Ontology

April 17, 2013 by Wayne Schroeder 11 Comments

[Editor’s Note: Wayne here is currently leading one of our Not School groups on Deleuze. Being well-versed in this area and having made some helpful comments on this blog, we asked him to clarify what he took to be Lacan’s ontology. Thanks, Wayne!] Jacques-Alain Miller once asked asked Lacan, “What is your ontology?” Lacan replied saying that we should read Continue Reading …

I and Thou: The Spreadsheet!

March 1, 2013 by Daniel Horne 9 Comments

Regardless of how or whether you relate to Buber’s vision, I and Thou makes for a frustrating read. Seemingly simple words are used in new and alien contexts. Solutions are announced rather than derived. Worse, while nominally divided into three parts, I and Thou is really more of a loose collection of 61 aphorisms. Following Buber’s reasoning by comparing his Continue Reading …

Episode 66: Quine on Linguistic Meaning and Science (Citizens Only)

November 21, 2012 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

On W.V.O. Quine’s “On What There Is” (1948) and “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” (1951). What kind of metaphysics is compatible with science? Quine sees science and philosophy as one and the same enterprise, and he objects to ontologies that include types of entities that science can’t, even in principle, study. Also, troubles with the concept of synonymy, i.e. “same meaning.” WIth guest Matt Teichman. Learn more.

End song: “Granted” by Mark Lint (2012).

PREVIEW-Episode 66: Quine on Linguistic Meaning and Science

November 21, 2012 by Mark Linsenmayer 29 Comments

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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.

Topic for #66: Quine on Language, Logic, and Science

October 17, 2012 by Mark Linsenmayer 12 Comments

Willard Van Orman Quine (1908–2000) was a prototypical American analytic philosopher. Following Frege, Russell, and Wittgenstein, he was concerned with how logic provides a foundation for mathematics, which in turn grounds physics and the other sciences. We’ll be reading two of his most famous essays, both of which can be found in the collection, From a Logical Point of View Continue Reading …

Can the Ethical be Primary?

May 12, 2012 by Seth Paskin 21 Comments

I was listening again to Mark’s interview on Douglas Lain’s Diet Soap podcast and was struck by an interesting question posed by Doug. He was talking about how ontology seemed to be the starting point for philosophy (Thales) and asked whether ontology was required for ethics and if Mark knew of any philosophical points of view where the ontological contradicted Continue Reading …

Michael Dummett on Frege: Is “the True” an entity?

March 16, 2011 by Mark Linsenmayer 6 Comments

I made heavy mention on the Frege episode of this book by Michael Dummett. I want to try to give a couple of textual references over a few posts here to elaborate points from Dummett I was trying to make during the discussion. For instance, one of the pieces we picked on Frege about was his designation of “the True” Continue Reading …

Episode 32: Heidegger: What is “Being?” (Citizens Only)

February 7, 2011 by Mark Linsenmayer 5 Comments

Discussing Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time (1927), mostly the intro and ch. 1 and 2 of Part 1.

When philosophers try to figure out what really exists (God? matter? numbers?), Heidegger thinks they’ve forgotten a question that really should come first: what is it to exist? He thinks that instead of asking “What is Being?” we ask, as in a scientific context, “what is this thing?” This approach then poisons our ability to understand ourselves or the world that we as human beings actually inhabit, as opposed to the abstraction that science makes out of this.

End song: “Find You Out” by New People. Download the album.