Subscribe to get more vintage episodes like this and an expanded version of this new introduction. Discussing Martin Heidegger's Being and Time (1927) back in 2011, mostly the intro and Ch. 1 and 2, featuring Mark, Seth, and Wes. But first, a retrospective introduction by all four of us. When philosophers try to figure out what really exists (God? matter? numbers?), Continue Reading …
Ep. 191: Conceptual Schemes: Donald Davidson & Rudolf Carnap (Part Two)
Finishing Davidson's "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme" (1974) and moving on to Carnap's "Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology" (1950). Carnap's paper comes 22 years after his Aufbau project that we covered in ep. 67, and is really a response to Quine's 1948 paper "On What There Is," which we covered in ep. 66. His point is that when we use a certain vocabulary, Continue Reading …
Science, Religion, and Secularism, Part XVIII: Humanistic, Scientific, and Theistic Approaches to History
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
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 …
Lacan’s Ontology
[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 both Badiou and Continue Reading …
I and Thou: The Spreadsheet!
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 different uses of Continue Reading …
Episode 66: Quine on Linguistic Meaning and Science (Citizens Only)
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. In these two highly influential essays, he first tells how to Continue Reading …
PREVIEW-Episode 66: Quine on Linguistic Meaning and Science
This is a short preview of the full episode. Buy Now Purchase this episode for $2.99. Or become a PEL Citizen for $5 a month, and get access to this and all other paywalled episodes, including 68 back catalogue episodes; exclusive Part 2's for episodes published after September, 2020; and our after-show Nightcap, where the guys respond to listener email and chat more Continue Reading …
Audiobook: W.V.O. Quine’s “On What There Is”
Dylan Casey reads the 1948 article, discussed on our episode 66. Read about the essay. Continue Reading …
Topic for #66: Quine on Language, Logic, and Science
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?
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 the ethical. Continue Reading …
Michael Dummett on Frege: Is “the True” an entity?
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" and "the False" as objects in his ontology, which was done Continue Reading …
Episode 32: Heidegger: What is “Being?” (Citizens Only)
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 Continue Reading …
PREVIEW-Episode 32: Heidegger: What is “Being?”
This is a 33-minute preview of a 1 hr, 52-minute episode.Buy Now Purchase this episode for $2.99. Or become a PEL Citizen for $5 a month, and get access to this and all other paywalled episodes, including 68 back catalogue episodes; exclusive Part 2's for episodes published after September, 2020; and our after-show Nightcap, where the guys respond to listener email and chat Continue Reading …