Continuing from part one on Dialogues on Metaphysics and Religion (1688), dialogue 7 where he gets into his occasionalist theory of causality. We talk about how this theory relates to mind-body interaction and the student character Aristes argues that there's nothing more intimate than the relation of mind to body and how the teacher character Theodore smacks that claim Continue Reading …
Ep. 285: Nicolas Malebranche on Knowledge (Part Two for Supporters)
Continuing from part one on Dialogues on Metaphysics and Religion (1688), ch. 1-4. We talk about the character of the intelligible world: It resists certain thoughts, like you can't make 2+2=5. It has the intelligible idea of extension in it, which is what substance in the physical world is modeled after. This is an idea that is given to us as infinite: Space is infinitely Continue Reading …
Ep. 285: Nicolas Malebranche on Knowledge (Part One for Supporters)
On Dialogues on Metaphysics and Religion (1688), dialogues 1-4, featuring Mark, Wes, Dylan, and Seth. Malebranche presents a rationalist epistemology that is more like an early modern version of Plato than anyone else we've read. He comes chronologically between Descartes and Leibniz, and provided some foundational insights for Hume's take on causality, Berkeley's idealism, and Continue Reading …
Ep. 253: Leibniz on the Problem of Evil (Part One for Supporters)
On Gottfried Leibniz’s Theodicy (1710), as considered by Mark, Wes, Dylan, and Seth. Why does God allow so many bad things to happen, from diseases and other natural afflictions to violence insane and premeditated? This question is often used as a challenge to the existence of a good God as offered by traditional religion. If He's all-powerful and all-knowing, He could Continue Reading …
Ep. 229: Descartes’s Rules for Thinking (Part Three)
Concluding René Descartes's Rules for Direction of the Mind (1628). This text proved too much for us for one session, so we picked it up (without Seth, who was sick) a week later to finish rule 12 through the end. We talk about simples and complexes, the faculties of intuition and judgment, perception and imagination, necessary vs. contingent truths, and how to do Cartesian Continue Reading …
Ep. 229: Descartes’s Rules for Thinking (Part Two)
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 Continue Reading …
Ep. 229: Descartes’s Rules for Thinking (Part One)
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're just really careful to never assert anything you can't be sure of? This is Descartes's strategy, modeled on mathematics. This early, incomplete work lays out 21 rules for careful thinking (out of a planned 36) Continue Reading …
Ep. 229: Descartes’s Rules for Thinking (Citizen Edition)
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're just really careful to never assert anything you can't be sure of? This is Descartes's strategy, modeled on mathematics. This early, incomplete work lays out 21 rules for careful thinking (out of a planned 36) Continue Reading …
REISSUE-Ep. 24: Spinoza on God and Metaphysics
On Baruch Spinoza's Ethics (1677), books 1 and 2. Time warp to 2010 when Mark, Seth, and Wes recorded this lo-fi burst of energy, made available to you now to kick of our June Spinoza-fest, with two full discussions coming out over the next four weeks on Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. Dylan and Mark have recorded a new introduction connecting the two works. Our Continue Reading …
Henri Bergson and William James on Vicious Intellectualism
"If I had not read Bergson," William James wrote in A Pluralistic Universe, "I should probably still be blackening endless pages of paper privately." James had been engaged in a very long philosophical debate with the leading Idealists of his day, F.H. Bradley and Josiah Royce, when Bergson came to the rescue. James thought that Bergson supplied him with the concepts he needed Continue Reading …
PREVIEW-Episode 62: Voltaire’s Novel “Candide”
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 62: Voltaire’s Novel “Candide” (Citizens Only)
On Candide: or, Optimism, the novel by Voltaire (1759). Is life good? Popular Enlightenment philosopher Leibniz argued that it's good by definition. God is perfectly good and all-powerful, so whatever he created must have been as good as it can be; we live in the best of all possible worlds. Voltaire loads this satirical adventure story up with horrific violence to Continue Reading …
Episode 24: Spinoza on God and Metaphysics (Citizens Only)
Discussing Spinoza's Ethics (1677), books 1 and 2. We mostly discuss his weird, immanent, non-personal conception of God: God is everything, therefore the world is God as apprehended through some particular attributes, namely insofar as one of his aspects is infinite space (extension, i.e. matter) and insofar as one of his aspects is mind (our minds being chunks or "modes" Continue Reading …
PREVIEW-Episode 24: Spinoza on God and Metaphysics
This is a 32-minute preview of a 1 hr, 36-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 …
Episode 19: Kant: What Can We Know? (Citizens Only)
On Immanuel Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783), which is a shorter, dumbed-down version of his Critique of Pure Reason. Do we have any business doing metaphysics, which is by definition about things that we could not possibly experience? Kant says that yes, we can, to a limited extent, but that everyone before him did it wrong, because they didn't Continue Reading …
PREVIEW-Episode 19: Kant: What Can We Know?
This is a 31-minute preview of our vintage 2 hr, 5-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 Continue Reading …
Episode 18: Plato: What Is Knowledge? (Citizens Only)
On the Theaetetus and the Meno, two dialogues about knowledge. We're returning to Plato for a somewhat more thorough treatment than we gave him in Episode 1. This should be considered part two (Hume being #1) of three discussions intended to convey the main conflict in the history of epistemology between the empiricists (like Hume) and the rationalists (like Plato). We Continue Reading …
PREVIEW-Episode 18: Plato: What Is Knowledge?
This is a 34-minute preview of a 2 hr, 18-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 …
Episode 2: Descartes’s Meditations: What Can We Know?
Discussing Descartes's Meditations 1 and 2. Descartes engages in the most influential navel gazing ever, and you are there! In this second and superior-to-the-first installment of our lil' philosophy discussion, we discuss what Descartes thinks he knows with certainty (hint: it is not you), the Matrix, and burning-at-the-stake.com. Mark and Wes agree to disagree about Continue Reading …