Continuing from part one with guest Theodore Brooks on the central Daoist text attributed to Laozi. We start with more discussion of practical vs. metaphysical interpretations of the first chapter. In either case, Laozi recommends not being too self-conscious; you want to be fully present in your activities, open to the subtle cues of your environment, without too much Continue Reading …
Ep. 309: Wittgenstein On Certainty (Part Two)
Subscribe to get both parts of this episode ad free, plus a supporter exclusive PEL Nightcap discussion. Continuing our discussion from part one of On Certainty (1951), we do some close reading of the text. How does he actually respond to Moore's argument about his hand? How does he extend his account to talk about mathematical and scientific statements? Is Wittgenstein a Continue Reading …
Ep. 309: Wittgenstein On Certainty (Part One)
Subscribe to get parts 1 and 2 of this now, ad-free. Discussing the notes Ludwig Wittgenstein made at the end of his life in 1951 that were published as On Certainty in 1969, featuring Mark, Wes, Dylan, and Seth. Check out the Overthink podcast and Conversations with Coleman. Attend our live show in NYC on April 15. These were in direct response to the essays by G.E. Continue Reading …
Ep. 309: Wittgenstein On Certainty (Part Two for Supporters)
Continuing our discussion from part one of On Certainty (1951), we do some close reading of the text. How does he actually respond to Moore's argument about his hand? How does he extend his account to talk about mathematical and scientific statements? Is Wittgenstein a pragmatist? You may want to review our episode on William James' pragmatist definition of truth. We Continue Reading …
Ep. 309: Wittgenstein On Certainty (Part One for Supporters)
Discussing the notes Ludwig Wittgenstein made at the end of his life in 1951 that were published as On Certainty in 1969, featuring Mark, Wes, Dylan, and Seth. These were in direct response to the essays by G.E. Moore that we discussed in episodes 307 and 308, so we talk about the status of so-called "Moorean propositions" like "physical objects exist," "the world is more Continue Reading …
Ep. 294: Quine on Science vs. Epistemology (Part Two)
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 …