will | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

Episode 180: More James’s Psychology: Self and Will (Part Two)

January 8, 2018 by Mark Linsenmayer 4 Comments

Concluding on William James’s Psychology, the Briefer Course (1892). We briefly cover emotions and spend the bulk of our time on will. James’s introspective method allows us to distinguish reflex or coerced actions from voluntary, free-seeming ones, and gives us the vocabulary to attribute moral virtue to those who have enough willpower to keep those inconvenient truths in mind (if you eat this, you’ll get fat!) that allow us to successfully resist temptation.

Listen to part one first, or get the unbroken, ad-free Citizen Edition. Support PEL!

End song: “Join the Zoo/Live Again” by Craig Wedren; listen to him on Nakedly Examined Music #15.

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Episode 180: More James’s Psychology: Self and Will (Citizen Edition)

January 1, 2018 by Mark Linsenmayer 1 Comment

On Psychology, the Briefer Course (1892), chapters on “The Self,” “Will,” and “Emotions.”

Continuing from ep. 179, we talk about the “Me” (the part of me that I know) vs. the “I” (the part of me that knows), including personal identity. James thinks that emotions are just our experience of our own physiology. Finally, we tackle will, veering into ethics, free will, and more.

End song: “Join the Zoo/Live Again” by Craig Wedren, heard on Nakedly Examined Music #15.

Episode 122: Augustine on Mind and Metaphysics (Citizen Edition)

August 21, 2015 by Mark Linsenmayer 1 Comment

A second discussion on The Confessions (400 CE), this time on books 10–13. What is memory and how does it relate to time and being? We also discuss discuss language, knowledge, hermeneutics, creation, and more on will and keeping God-oriented.

This continues our previous discussion on the earlier parts of the book. Listen to the Aftershow featuring James Wetzel.

Episode 121: Augustine on Being Good (Citizen Edition)

August 8, 2015 by Mark Linsenmayer Leave a Comment

On The Confessions (400 CE), books 1–9.

The question is not “What is virtue?” because knowing what virtue is isn’t enough. The problem, for Aurelius Augustinus, aka St. Augustine of Hippo, is doing what you know to be right.

Episode 120: A History of “Will” with Guest Eva Brann

July 27, 2015 by Mark Linsenmayer 10 Comments

We discuss Un-Willing: An Inquiry into the Rise of Will’s Power and an Attempt to Undo It (2014) with the author, covering Socrates, Augustine, Aquinas, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Sartre, compatibilism, the neurologists’ critque of free will, and more.

End song: “I Insist” by Mark Lint. Read about it.

Episode 120: A History of “Will” with Guest Eva Brann (Citizen Edition)

July 25, 2015 by Mark Linsenmayer 4 Comments

End song: “I Insist” by Mark Lint. Read about it.

Topic for #120: Guest Eva Brann on Will (and Aquinas, Augustine, Heidegger, etc.)

July 24, 2015 by Mark Linsenmayer 10 Comments

Eva Brann (from our Heraclitus episode) returns to talk with us about her 2014 book, Un-Willing: An Inquiry into the Rise of Will’s Power and an Attempt to Undo It, which gives an intellectual history of the notion of will and diagnoses a the current pernicious effect of the concept in our philosophy and culture.

Topic for #114: Schopenhauer on Will

April 24, 2015 by Mark Linsenmayer 4 Comments

We’ll read book 2 of The World as Will and Representation about how the only reality is a singular Will outside of space and time that manifests itself as the multitude of our experience.

PREVIEW-Episode 30: Schopenhauer on Explanations and Knowledge

December 19, 2010 by Mark Linsenmayer 40 Comments

Discussing Arthur Schopenhauer’s On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, published in 1847 (as an expansion of his doctoral thesis from 1813). What kinds of explanations are legitimate? S. thought that causal and logical explanations are often confused, resulting in philosophical errors. In laying out the four types of explanation — the four versions of the principle of sufficient reason — he clearly elaborates his modernized Kantian epistemology.

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