Subscribe to get Parts 1 and 2 ad-free, plus a supporter exclusive Part 3, which you can preview. Continuing from part one on "Epistemology Naturalized" (1969), we work further through the text, getting into what this new psychology-rooted epistemology might look like. Quine remains an empiricist in that he agrees that whatever evidence there is for science must be Continue Reading …
Ep. 294: Quine on Science vs. Epistemology (Part Three for Supporters)
Concluding on W.V.O. Quine's "Epistemology Naturalized" (1969), featuring Mark, Wes, and Seth. Start with part one. We take one more stab at making sense of the indeterminacy of translation that is part of Quine's holism about linguistic meaning. Then we turn to more implications about Quine's attempt to turn epistemology into psychology. Is Quine a behaviorist? (Was Continue Reading …
Ep. 294: Quine on Science vs. Epistemology (Part One)
Subscribe to get parts 1 and 2 of this now, ad-free, plus a supporter-only part 3. On W.V.O. Quine's "Epistemology Naturalized" (1969), featuring Mark, Wes, and Seth. What justifies scientific theory? The classical epistemological project found in figures like Descartes and Locke seeks to find basic, indubitable premises that serve to ground the rest of our theorizing. Continue Reading …
Ep. 294: Quine on Science vs. Epistemology (Part Two for Supporters)
Continuing from part one on "Epistemology Naturalized" (1969), we work further through the text, getting into what this new psychology-rooted epistemology might look like. Quine remains an empiricist in that he agrees that whatever evidence there is for science must be sensory, and that we learn language through the medium of our senses (i.e. no innate knowledge). However, this Continue Reading …
Ep. 294: Quine on Science vs. Epistemology (Part One for Supporters)
On W.V.O. Quine's "Epistemology Naturalized" (1969), featuring Mark, Wes, and Seth. What justifies scientific theory? The classical epistemological project found in figures like Descartes and Locke seeks to find basic, indubitable premises that serve to ground the rest of our theorizing. Quine begins by considering Hume's attempt to do this by claiming that all we ever Continue Reading …
Ep. 290: Susanne Langer on Our Symbol-Making Nature (Part One)
Subscribe to get Part 2 of this episode. Listen to a preview. Hear this part ad-free. On Philosophy in a New Key (1942), ch. 1-5, plus as background most of us looked at Langer's main influence Ernst Cassirer via his An Essay on Man (1944), ch. 1-5. Featuring Mark, Wes, Dylan, and Seth. What is human nature, and why does natural science have such trouble studying it? Continue Reading …
Ep. 290: Susanne Langer on Our Symbol-Making Nature (Part Two for Supporters)
Continuing from part one on Philosophy in a New Key (1942), ch. 1-5. We start off by considering whether the hardware-software distinction with regard to our minds can help make sense of what Langer has proposed in saying that symbol-making is basic to us. Is she saying that we're more flexible (software-driven) than evolutionary biology would suggest, or does her claim that Continue Reading …
Ep. 290: Susanne Langer on Our Symbol-Making Nature (Part One for Supporters)
On Philosophy in a New Key (1942), ch. 1-5, plus as background most of us looked at Langer's main influence Ernst Cassirer via his An Essay on Man (1944), ch. 1-5. Featuring Mark, Wes, Dylan, and Seth. What is human nature, and why does natural science have such trouble studying it? Cassirer's massive, three-volume Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (1923-1929) provides the Continue Reading …
Ep. 252: Habermas on Communication as Sociality (Part Two for Supporters)
Continuing on Jürgen Habermas's “Actions, Speech Acts, Linguistically Mediated Interactions, and the Lifeworld" (1998), with guest John Foster. We get into the details about the validity claims that are inherent in speech: When I make an assertion, I'm not just uttering a fact without context, but am (ordinarily, like not if I'm saying this in the context of playing a part Continue Reading …
Ep. 252: Habermas on Communication as Sociality (Part One)
Subscribe to get Part 2 of this episode, or listen to a preview. Citizens can get the entire second part here. On Jürgen Habermas' "Actions, Speech Acts, Linguistically Mediated Interactions, and the Lifeworld" (1998), with guest John Foster. What's the relation between individuals and society? Habermas says it's language. But don't picture this as fully formed but isolated Continue Reading …
Ep. 252: Habermas on Communication as Sociality (Part One for Supporters)
On Jürgen Habermas' “Actions, Speech Acts, Linguistically Mediated Interactions, and the Lifeworld" (1998), with guest John Foster. What's the relation between individuals and society? Habermas says it's language. But don't picture this as fully formed but isolated animal individuals that then acquire language and thereby come together to form a society. Rather, what Continue Reading …
Ep. 240: David Lewis on Possible Worlds and Language Games (Part Two)
On “Scorekeeping in a Language Game” (1979) and “Truth in Fiction” (1978). Building on our first half, which covered Ch. 4 of Lewis's book Counterfactuals (1973), we now look to some of Lewis's ideas about language. In his "Scorekeeping in a Language Game" essay, Mark, Wes, Dylan, and guest Matt Teichman consider conversational dynamics, which in part involves thinking about Continue Reading …
Ep. 240: David Lewis on Possible Worlds and Language Games (Citizen Edition)
On Ch. 4 of Lewis's book Counterfactuals (1973) and the essays “Scorekeeping in a Language Game” (1979) and “Truth in Fiction” (1978). What makes counter-factual statements true? If you think "I might have grown up in Cleveland" is true, then what thing about the world makes that "might" statement true? Or by contrast, "I might have been a round square" is not only obviously 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 …
Ep. 191: Conceptual Schemes: Donald Davidson & Rudolf Carnap (Part One)
On Davidson's "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme" (1974) and Carnap's "Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology" (1950). What does it mean to say that we grasp the world through a conceptual scheme? Are schemes different between cultures or even individuals, such that we can't really understand each other? Davidson thinks that this doesn't make sense: For schemes to be Continue Reading …
Ep. 191: Conceptual Schemes: Donald Davidson & Rudolf Carnap (Citizen Edition)
On Davidson's "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme" (1974) and Carnap's "Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology" (1950). What does it mean to say that we grasp the world through a conceptual scheme? Are schemes different between cultures or even individuals, such that we can't really understand each other? Davidson thinks that this doesn't make sense: For schemes to be Continue Reading …
Ep. 189 Follow-Up: Authorial Intent (Citizens Only)
Thanks to you, our supporters, who by contributing your hard-earned cash have enabled us to record extra discussions like this one. Enough folks expressed appreciation for our free-speech follow-up that we thought we'd do another one. You'll want to listen to ep 189 before this. Our new text for this follow-up discussion is from the Stanford Encyclopedia on theories of Continue Reading …
Ep. 186: J.L. Austin on Doing Things with Words (Part Two)
Continuing on How to Do Things with Words (lectures from 1955), covering lectures 5–9. Austin tries and fails to come up with a way to grammatically distinguish performatives from other utterances, and so turns to his more complicated system of aspects of a single act: locutionary, illocutionary, perlocutionary. In doing so, he perlocutionarily blows our minds. Buy the Continue Reading …
Ep. 186: J.L. Austin on Doing Things with Words (Part One)
On How to Do Things with Words, a lecture series delivered in 1955. What's the relationship between language and the world? According to Austin, philosophers have generally taken language as providing descriptions: A sentence is true if it correctly describes some state of affairs. But what about sentences like "I promise…"? Austin says that when you say that, you're not Continue Reading …
Ep. 186: J.L. Austin on Doing Things with Words (Citizen Edition)
On How to Do Things with Words, a lecture series delivered in 1955. What's the relationship between language and the world? According to Austin, philosophers have generally taken language as providing descriptions: A sentence is true if it correctly describes some state of affairs. But what about sentences like "I promise…"? Austin says that when you say that, you're not Continue Reading …