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Ep. 231: Descartes’s “Discourse” on Wisdom and Certainty (Part One)

December 9, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer 1 Comment

On René Descartes’s Discourse on Method (1637), an overview of his work that distills his method, outlines his famous Meditations, presents a provisional (Stoic) ethics, and considers whether he wants to be a public intellectual. This is all meant as a preface to scientific publications on geometry, optics, and meteors.

Don’t wait for part two; get the unbroken, ad-free Citizen Edition now. Please support PEL!

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Myths, Miasma, and Global Warming: Follow Your Nose

December 3, 2019 by Netta Schramm Leave a Comment

As late as the eighteenth century, plagues were believed to be caused by polluted air and mediated by creatures of putrefaction such as rodents and witches. Public health specialists agree that the sanitary efforts brought about under the miasmic paradigm were effective. If we think that current views of epidemics and pollution are devoid of the mythical thinking of our predecessors, we might humbly want to reassess our position. The mythical is still embedded in scientific inquiry today.

Ep. 230: Bruno Latour on Science, Culture, and Modernity (Part Two)

December 2, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer 5 Comments

Continuing on Latour’s We Have Never Been Modern (1993) with guest Lynda Olman.

Latour rejects the idea of objective truth totally apart from perceivers, so is he an idealist? We lay out the “Constitution” of modernity that keeps science and politics separate, how it makes it difficult for us to address issues like climate change, and what Latour thinks should replace it.

Start with part 1 or get the full, ad-free Citizen Edition. Please support PEL!

End song: “Mono No Aware” by Guy Sigsworth, as discussed on Nakedly Examined Music #109.

Sponsors: $10 off at skylightframe.com (code PEL), 20% off at hempfusion.com (code PEL), learn about St. John’s College at sjc.edu, and give effectively through givewell.org/PEL.

Ep. 230: Bruno Latour on Science, Culture, and Modernity (Part One)

November 25, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer 13 Comments

On Latour’s We Have Never Been Modern (1993) with guest Lynda Olman.

What’s the “modern” ideology of science, and is there something we should critique about it? Latour wants us to think about science not abstractly through the eternal truths it supposedly discovers, but through the concrete practices of scientists. He investigates the Modern Constitution by which science and politics are kept conceptually separate, a myth that he claims we’ve never fully bought into.

Don’t wait for part two; get your unbroken, ad-free Citizen Edition now. Please support PEL!

Sponsors: Get $10 off at skylightframe.com w/ code PEL. Get a free trial of unlimited learning at thegreatcoursesplus.com/PEL. Check out Wes’s sister’s Inner Loop Radio podcast.

Ep. 230: Bruno Latour on Science, Culture, and Modernity (Citizen Edition)

November 25, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer 5 Comments

On Latour’s We Have Never Been Modern (1993) with guest Lynda Olman.

What’s the “modern” ideology of science, and is there something we should critique about it? Latour wants us to think about science not abstractly through the eternal truths it supposedly discovers, but through the concrete practices of scientists. He investigates the Modern Constitution by which science and politics are kept conceptually separate, a myth that he claims we’ve never fully bought into.

End song: “Mono No Aware” by Guy Sigsworth, as discussed on Nakedly Examined Music #109.

Ep. 229: Descartes’s Rules for Thinking (Part Three)

November 18, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

Concluding René Descartes’s Rules for Direction of the Mind (1628).

We finish rule 12 through the end, talking about simples, the faculties of intuition and judgment, perception and imagination, necessary vs. contingent truths, and how to do Cartesian science, including what constitutes a “perfectly understood problem.”

Start with part one, or get the full, ad-free Citizen Edition. Please support PEL!

End song: “Perfect Design” by Ian Moore, as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #94.

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Boston-area listeners can see Wes live talking Joker on 11/22; see partiallyexaminedlife.com/joker.

Ep. 229: Descartes’s Rules for Thinking (Part Two)

November 11, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

Continuing on René Descartes’s Rules for Direction of the Mind (1628), covering rules 7 through the first part of the lengthy rule 12.

We try to figure out what he means by “enumeration”; the faculties of imagination, sense and memory; the virtues of perspicacity and sagacity; his psychology of the senses, the “common sense” where all sense data comes together, and the understanding; how Descartes recommends we do scientific investigation; why syllogisms stink; and whether some people are just better at philosophy than others.

Start with part 1. You don’t need to wait for part 3; get the full Citizen Edition now. Please support PEL!

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Ep. 229: Descartes’s Rules for Thinking (Part One)

November 4, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

On René Descartes’s Rules for Direction of the Mind (1628).

Is there a careful way to approach problems that will ensure that you’ll always be right? What if you just never assert anything you can’t be sure of? This is Descartes’s strategy, modeled on mathematics. We likewise carefully move step-by-step through this text.

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Ep. 227: What Is Social Construction? (Hacking, Berger) (Part One)

October 7, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer 13 Comments

On Ian Hacking’s The Social Construction of What (1999) and Peter Berger’s “Religion and World Construction” (1967).

Guest Coleman Hughes from Dilemma joins us to survey the types of social construction arguments: the “culture wars” (e.g., race, gender) and the “science wars” (scientific findings are not read off the world but emerge from history). Something can be constructed, yet still be an objective truth we have to deal with.

Don’t wait for part two; get the full, ad free Citizen Edition now. Please support PEL!

Sponsor: HempFusion.com, code PEL for 20% off/free shipping.

Ep. 226: Francis Bacon Invents Science (Part Two)

September 30, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer 7 Comments

Continuing on Sir Francis Bacon’s New Organon (1620).

We cover more of Bacon’s “idols” and how Bacon divides religion from science (and what this means politically). We then move on to book 2, including Bacon’s novel update of the term “form,” and take a look at Bacon’s method of doing science by filling out tables before actually doing experiments.

Start with part one or get the full, unbroken Citizen Edition. Please support PEL, like, get Patreon’s feed for a mere $1/month.

End song: “Stuck in a Cave” by Chrome Cranks; hear Mark talk to singer/songwriter Peter Aaron on Nakedly Examined Music #93.

Sponsor: Get three months of unlimited access to The Great Courses Plus at thegreatcoursesplus.com/PEL.

Ep. 226: Francis Bacon Invents Science (Part One)

September 23, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer 1 Comment

On Sir Francis Bacon’s New Organon (1620).

Bacon claims to have developed a new toolset that will open up nature to inquiry in a way that wasn’t possible for ancient and modern natural philosophy.

Mark, Wes, and Dylan consider how much what Bacon describes resembles modern scientific method, talk through Bacon’s “four idols” that interfere with impartial inquiry, and consider how Bacon’s method fits in with his larger political-ethical-religious views.

Don’t wait for part two; get the full, unbroken Citizen Edition now. Please support PEL!

Ep. 226: Francis Bacon Invents Science (Citizen Edition)

September 23, 2019 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

On Sir Francis Bacon’s New Organon (1620).

Bacon claims to have developed a new toolset that will open up nature to inquiry in a way that wasn’t possible for ancient and modern natural philosophy. Mark, Wes, and Dylan consider how much what Bacon describes resembles modern scientific method, talk through Bacon’s “four idols” that interfere with impartial inquiry, and consider how Bacon’s method fits in with his larger political-ethical-religious views.

End song: “Stuck in a Cave” by Chrome Cranks; hear Mark talk to Peter Aaron on Nakedly Examined Music #93.

Saints & Simulators 23: #SimulatorShowdown

August 22, 2019 by Chris Sunami Leave a Comment

As it turns out, if our purpose is to test the simulator hypothesis against religious belief, it is only in the specifics that we can easily distinguish between the two. The Deist God, who creates the universe, and then leaves it to run entirely on its own, is not easily disambiguated from the hands-off simulator. One might well call them one and the same. Similarly, the Platonic ideal of good, which remains removed and remote in eternal perfection while the demiurge creates the world in imitation of it, needs not change at all if we choose to think of the demiurge as working with pixels and electrons rather than with primal matter. Such abstract, philosophical conceptions of God are general enough that even a shift as dramatic as reconceptualizing reality itself as a simulation can be integrated relatively easily. It is more of a challenge, however, to reconfigure the simulation hypothesis in order to yield the specificity of Christ.

Science, Religion, and Secularism, Part XXXV: Justin L. Barrett—Why Would Anyone Believe in God? Part C

September 20, 2018 by Daniel Halverson 3 Comments

In our last two articles, we’ve explored one book in the exciting new field of cognitive science of religion. And we’ve seen how one of the findings in this area is that belief in God, or something like God, is natural to us, given the types of minds we have. Of course, this doesn’t show that one ought to believe Continue Reading …

Science, Religion, and Secularism, Part XXXIV: Justin L. Barrett—Why Would Anyone Believe in God? Part B

September 6, 2018 by Daniel Halverson 7 Comments

In our last article, we explored some recent findings in the cognitive science of religion (CSR). We saw how current research suggests that belief in God, or something like God, comes naturally to most human beings, most of the time, in virtue of the types of brains we have. I’d like to explore Justin L. Barrett’s arguments on this front Continue Reading …

Science, Religion, and Secularism Part XXXIII: Justin L. Barrett—Why Would Anyone Believe in God? Part A

August 16, 2018 by Daniel Halverson 8 Comments

“Belief in God is an almost inevitable consequence of the kind of minds we have.” —Justin L. Barrett

Science, Religion, and Secularism, Part XXXII: Alvin Plantinga and Reformed Epistemology

August 2, 2018 by Daniel Halverson 6 Comments

“Faith is not to be contrasted with knowledge: faith (at least in paradigmatic instances) is knowledge, knowledge of a certain special kind.” —Alvin Plantinga

Science, Religion, and Secularism, Part XXXI: William James—The Will to Believe

July 19, 2018 by Daniel Halverson 2 Comments

“To preach skepticism to us as a duty until ‘sufficient evidence’ for religion be found, is tantamount therefore to telling us, when in presence of the religious hypothesis, that to yield to our fear of its being error is wiser and better than to yield to our hope that it may be true. It is not intellect against all passions, then; it is only intellect with one passion laying down its law.” —William James

Science, Secularism, and Religion, Part XXX: William Kingdon Clifford—The Ethics of Belief

July 5, 2018 by Daniel Halverson 1 Comment

Imagine a ship owner who sells tickets for transatlantic voyages. He is at the dock one day, bidding his ship farewell, when he remembers a warning he had received from his mechanics the week before, that the integrity of the ship’s hull was questionable and that it might not be seaworthy. But on some plausible grounds or other he forms Continue Reading …

Science, Secularism, and Religion, Part XXIX: Antony Flew—The Presumption of Atheism

June 27, 2018 by Daniel Halverson 2 Comments

“If it is to be established that there is a God, then we have to have good grounds for believing that this is indeed so. Until and unless some such grounds are produced we have literally no reason at all for believing; and in that situation the only reasonable posture must be that of either the negative atheist or the agnostic.”
—Antony Flew

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