Continuing on John Dewey's Democracy and Education (1916) ch. 1, 2, 4, and 24 with guest Jonathan Haber. How is education different than mere conditioning, and how does it relate to habits and growth? Dewey (not Wittgenstein) invented "meaning as use"! We try to figure out whether he's just recommending what we've covered in our liberal education episodes, or something else. Continue Reading …
Ep. 249: Dewey on Education and Thought (Citizen Edition)
On John Dewey's How We Think (1910) ch. 1 and Democracy and Education (1916) ch. 1, 2, 4, and 24. What model of human nature should serve as the basis for education policy? Dewey sees the scientific method as a refinement of ordinary thinking: We wonder about something, and experiencing that uncomfortable uncertainty, we jump for an explanation. Education should train us to Continue Reading …
Episode 196: Guest Simon Blackburn on Truth (Part Two)
Continuing with Simon on his book On Truth (2018). We move to part two of the book, where we get down to the procedures used to obtain truth in art, ethics, and science. Simon is well known for his meta-ethics, which is descended from C.L. Stevenson's emotivism. Just as he said in part one that he agreed largely with Strawson's view that to say a sentence is true is to Continue Reading …
Episode 196: Guest Simon Blackburn on Truth (Part One)
The Cambridge/UNC-Chapel Hill/etc. prof best known for his neo-Humean meta-ethics joins Mark, Wes, and Dylan to discuss his book On Truth (2018). What is truth? A pragmatist like William James wants to define truth in terms of the procedures we actually undergo to confirm a claim. Simon instead buys into a performative/deflationist view of truth. The notion can't be defined Continue Reading …
Episode 196: Guest Simon Blackburn on Truth (Citizen Edition)
The Cambridge/etc. prof best known for his neo-Humean meta-ethics joins Mark, Wes, and Dylan to discuss his book On Truth (2018). What is truth? A pragmatist like William James wants to define truth in terms of the procedures we actually undergo to confirm a claim. Simon instead buys into a performative/deflationist view of truth. The notion can't be defined in general, but Continue Reading …
In Dreams
There’s safety in delusion. People sometimes say it takes special courage to face the world as it is, even more to face ourselves, and we know the truth doesn’t always feel good. It can be painful. Perhaps, then, a moderate amount of delusion can be, well, healthy. Ta-Nehisi Coates has something else in mind. “To awaken the Dreamers, to rouse them to the facts,” is the greatest Continue Reading …
Episode 128: Hilary Putnam on Linguistic Meaning (Citizen Edition)
On "The Meaning of Meaning" (1975). So if per Kripke (we're following the thread from #126), meaning is NOT a matter of having a description in your head, then what is it? Hilary Putnam reformulates Kripke's insight in terms of Twin Earths: If Earth-water is H2O, and on Twin Earth, they have something that looks just like water but is a different compound, then we wouldn't Continue Reading …
Topic for #128: Hilary Putnam on Linguistic Meaning
On 11/8/15, Mark, Wes, and Dylan were rejoined by Matt Teichman to continue the thread of our ep. #126 on Saul Kripke. Our primary text was his 1975 article "The Meaning of Meaning," with secondary emphasis on his earlier, preparatory essays, "It Ain't Necessarily So" (1962) and "Is Semantics Possible?" (1970). If Kripke was concerned primarily with debunking the Continue Reading …
Episode 127: John Dewey on Experience and the World
On Experience and Nature (1925), through ch. 4. What's the relationship between our experience and the world that science investigates? Dewey thinks that these are one and the same, and philosophies that call some part of it (like atoms or Platonic forms) the real part while the experienced world is a distortion are unjustified. We need to remove the unjustified split Continue Reading …
Episode 127: John Dewey on Experience and the World (Citizen Edition)
On Experience and Nature (1925), through ch. 4. What's the relationship between our experience and the world that science investigates? Dewey thinks that these are one and the same, and philosophies that call some part of it (like atoms or Platonic forms) the real part while the experienced world is a distortion are unjustified. We need to remove the unjustified split Continue Reading …
Topic for #127: John Dewey on Experience and Nature
John Dewey is primarily known for two things: being one of the big names in pragmatism, and for his highly influential claims about education, specifically pointing out the active nature of learning such that simply sitting students down and telling them things is not very effective. Mark, Wes, and Dylan met on 10/25/15 to discuss the first four chapters of his 1925 book, Continue Reading …
Not School: C. S. Peirce’s “The Fixation of Belief”
Featuring David Prentiss, Tim Clarke, Peter Oppenheim. Recorded July 19, 2015. "The Fixation of Belief" was the first of four essays he wrote for Popular Science Monthly in 1877-8. In the essay, Peirce introduces his concepts of belief, doubt, and inquiry. He also proposes four types of intellectual activity that result in fixed beliefs. His purpose in this is to show that Continue Reading …
Why Substance Matters
Samuel Johnson's refutation of Bishop Berkeley's immaterialism, which says that matter does not exist, is one of those slightly famous moments in the history of philosophy. As the story goes, Johnson and his friends stood outside a church and complained about "Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter." They did not believe the idea but did not Continue Reading …
Presidential Pragmatism
In a recent column in The Stone, Harvey Cormier considers the political oomph of pragmatists through a nice presentation of some central thinking of William James. The occasion for the piece is a recent spate of writings characterizing Obama as "a pragmatist politician." What I like best about Cormier's article is his refutation, through James, of the lame but pervasive Continue Reading …
PREVIEW-Episode 61: Nietzsche on Truth and Skepticism
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 …
Episode 61: Nietzsche on Truth and Skepticism (Citizens Only)
On Friedrich Nietzsche's "On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense" (1873). What is truth? This essay, written early in Nietzsche's career but unpublished during his lifetime, is taken by many to make the extreme claim that there is no truth, that all of the "truths" we tell each other are just agreements by social convention. The regular foursome are joined by a U. Texas Continue Reading …
Topic for #61: Nietzsche on Truth
Listen to the episode. We discussed Nietzsche's conception of truth as presented in his essay "On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense," written in 1873 but unpublished until after his death with guest Jessica Berry of Georgia State University, who published Nietzsche and the Ancient Skeptical Tradition just last year. This Nietzsche essay has been extremely influential for Continue Reading …
Meaning and Context
(Painting by Robert McCall) In his book Wittgenstein and William James,Russell Goodman makes a case that James influenced Wittgenstein's thought and he does so by detailing their shared commitment to concrete experience and actual practice over intellect. (Wittgenstein was also positively influenced by James's view of religion, especially by The Varieties of Religious Continue Reading …
Spirituality Without Religion? (James and Flanagan)
In the same way that Owen Flanagan wants to naturalize Buddhism by stripping its hocus-pocus, William James focused his attention on personal religious experience rather than the "smells and bells" of traditional institutions. As biographer Robert Richardson puts it, "much of what one usually thinks of as religion James rejects at the start". James says he has no interest in Continue Reading …
Pirsig as an American Pragmatist
Philosophology is to philosophy as art history is to painting, Pirsig says. He uses that ridiculous-sounding word to draw a distinction between comparative analysis and original thought, between critical examination and creative production. In the tradition of Emerson's famous 1837 speech, "The American Scholar", Pirsig is calling for creativity and originality. This is not to Continue Reading …