Carnap on Language and Logic - Partially Examined Life
On Rudolph Carnap’s The Logical Structure of the World (1928). What can we know? Carnap thinks that all the various spheres of knowledge (e.g. particle physics, attributions of mental states, moral claims, the economy) are logically interrelated, that you can in fact translate sentences about any of these into sentences about sets of basic, momentary experiences. This book, better known as the...
1hr 47m Dec 07, 2012
1hr 47m
Quine on Linguistic Meaning - Partially Examined Life
On W.V.O. Quine’s “On What There Is” (1948) and “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” (1951). What kind of metaphysics is compatible with science? Quine sees science and philosophy as one and the same enterprise, and objects to ontologies that include types of entities that science can’t, even in principle, study. In these two highly influential essays, he first tells how to determine what ontological co...
1hr 57m Nov 21, 2012
1hr 57m
Celebrating 2 Million Downloads Highlight Reel - Partially Examined Life
As of 11/7/2012 we hit two million downloads; the screenshot above shows our stats as of this morning. (For those of you keeping track, we hit 1 million last May.) In honor of this, we’ve got some special recycled audio for you all.#Philosophy
7m Nov 08, 2012
7m
Existentialist Heros in No Country for Old Men - Partially Examined Life
On philosophical issues in McCarthy’s 2005 novel about guys running around with drug money and shooting each other and about fiction as a form for exploring philosophical ideas. What can morality mean for people who have witnessed the “death of God,” i.e. a loss in faith in light of the horrors of war? For both the protagonist and antagonist in “No Country for Old Men,” morality is about being...
1hr 49m Sep 21, 2012
1hr 49m
Voltaire's Candide - Partially Examined Life
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 demonstrate that Leibniz’s position is just silly. Life is filled with suffering, an...
1hr 27m Sep 05, 2012
1hr 27m
Nietzsche on Truth - Partially Examined Life
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 This essay, written early in Nietzsche’s career but unpublished during his lifetime, is taken by many to make the extreme claim that there is no truth, that all of the “truths” we tell each other are just agreements by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 grad school classmate, Jessica Berry from Georgia State University. She argues that Nietzsche is ...
1hr 49m Aug 15, 2012
1hr 49m
Aristotle on the Best Form of Government - Partially Examined Life
On Aristotle’s Politics (350 BCE), books 1 (ch 1-2), 3, 4 (ch 1-3), 5 (ch 1 -2), 6 (ch 1-6), and 7 (ch. 1-3, 13-15). Aristotle provides both a taxonomy of the types of government, based on observations of numerous constitutions of the states of his time, and prescriptions on how to best order a state. These are meant to be practical; though he does spend some time on the “ideal” government, he...
1hr 41m Jul 23, 2012
1hr 41m
MacIntyre on Moral Justification - Partially Examined Life
On Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (1981), mostly ch. 3-7 and 14-17. What justifies ethical claims? MacIntyre claims that no modern attempt to ground ethics has worked, and that’s because we've abandoned Aristotle. We see facts and values as fundamentally different: the things science discovers vs. these weird things that have nothing to do with science. In Aristotle...
1hr 44m Jul 05, 2012
1hr 44m
Bergson on Humor - Partially Examined Life
On Bergson’s Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic (1900). What is humor? Bergson says that, fundamentally, we laugh as a form of social corrective when others are slow to adapt to society’s demands. Other types of humor are derivative from this: just as the clown falls on his face because of a (pretended) physical flaw, as if he’s a machine that doesn't work and so becomes noticeable...
1hr 43m May 31, 2012
1hr 43m
Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations - Partially Examined Life
On Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, Part I, sections 1-33 and 191-360 (written around 1946). What is linguistic meaning? Wittgenstein argues that it’s not some mysterious entity in the mind, but that it is a public matter: you understand a word if you can use it appropriately, and you know the context in which it’s appropriate to use it and how to react when you hear it in t...
1hr 52m May 02, 2012
1hr 52m
More Buddhism and Naturalism - Partially Examined Life
Continuing our discussion of Owen Flanagan’s The Bodhisattva’s Brain: Buddhism Naturalized (2011). Are the basic tenets of Buddhism compatible with a respect for science? In episode 53, Owen Flanagan outlined a science-friendly project of comparative ethics, and touched on Buddhism’s empiricist theory of knowledge and its metaphysics of impermanence. If that was the lecture, this episode is th...
1hr 37m Apr 06, 2012
1hr 37m
Owen Flanagan on Buddhism Naturalized (with Flanagan as guest) - Partially Examined Life
Discussing The Bodhisattva’s Brain: Buddhism Naturalized (2011) with Owen Flanagan. What philosophical insights can we modern folks with our science and naturalism (i.e. inclination against super-natural explanations) glean from Buddhisim? Flanagan says plenty: Buddhism is founded on common human experience (not faith), and we can profitably put Buddhist ethics in dialogue with familiar types ...
2hr 3m Mar 26, 2012
2hr 3m
Philosophy and Race (DuBois, Martin Luther King, Cornel West) - Partially Examined Life
*W.E.B. DuBois’s “Of Our Spiritual Strivings” (1903)*Cornel West’s “A Genealogy of Modern Racism” (1982)*Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (1963) and “The Black Power Defined” (1967)*Malcolm X’s “The Black Revolution” (1963). What kind of philosophical lessons come out of the history of black oppression in America? Historian and intellectual DuBois describes the “double co...
1hr 52m Mar 17, 2012
1hr 52m
Semiotics and Structuralism - Partially Examined Life
On Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics (1916) (Part I and Part II, Ch. 4), Claude Levi-Strauss’s “The Structural Study of Myth” (1955), and Jacques Derrida’s “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” (1966). What is language? What is the relation between language and reality? Saussure argued that a language at a given time has a structure, where you c...
1hr 47m Feb 24, 2012
1hr 47m
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Partially Examined Life
On Robert M. Pirsig’s philosophical, autobiographical novel from 1974. What’s the relationship between science and values? Pirsig thinks that modern rationality, by insisting on the fundamental distinction between objects (matter) and subjects (people), labels value judgments as irrational. Society therefore largely ignores aesthetic considerations in the buildings and machines that litter our...
1hr 26m Feb 03, 2012
1hr 26m
Foucault on Power and Punishment - Partially Examined Life
Discussing Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish (1975), parts 1, 2 and section 3 of part 3. Are we really free? Kings no longer exert absolute and arbitrary power over us, but Foucault’s picture of the evolution from torture and public executions to rehabilitative, medical-style incarceration is not so much a triumph of liberty but a shift to more subtle but more pervasive exertions of powe...
1hr 42m Jan 11, 2012
1hr 42m
Merleau-Ponty on Perception and Knowledge - Partially Examined Life
Discussing Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s “Primacy of Perception” (1946) and The World of Perception (1948). What is the relation of perception to knowledge? In M-P’s phenomenology, perception is primary: even our knowledge of mathematical truths is in some way conditioned by and dependent on the fact that we are creatures with bodies and senses that work the way they do. Science is great, but it doe...
1hr 41m Dec 17, 2011
1hr 41m
Hume and Smith on Moral Sense - Partially Examined Life
Discussing parts of David Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature (1740) and Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). Where do we get our moral ideas? Hume and Smith both thought that we get them by reflecting on our own moral judgments and on how we and others (including imaginary, hypothesized others) in turn judge those judgments. Mark, Wes, Seth, and guest Getty Lustila, a phil grad stu...
1hr 45m Oct 29, 2011
1hr 45m
Episode 44: New Atheist Critiques of Religion
Discussing selections from Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel C. Dennett. Should we be religious, or is religion just a bunch of superstitious nonsense that it’s past time for us to outgrow? Does faith lead to ceding to authority and potential violence? Can a reasonable person be religious? We say lots of rude Read more...
1hr 50m Oct 11, 2011
1hr 50m
Episode 43: Arguments for the Existence of God
Discussing the arguments by Descartes, St. Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, William Paley, Kant, and others, as analyzed in J.L. Mackie’s The Miracle of Theism: Arguments For and Against the Existence of God (1983), chapters 1-3, 5-6, 8, and 11. Are the ontological, cosmological, and teleological (argument from design) arguments for God’s existence any good? Mackie, a Read more...
1hr 42m Sep 15, 2011
1hr 42m
Episode 42: Feminists on Human Nature and Moral Psychology
Discussing Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s utopian novel Herland (1915) and psychologist Carol Gilligan’s In a Different Voice (1983). How does human nature, and specifically moral psychology, vary by sex? Charlotte Perkins Gilman claims that when philosophers have described human nature as violent and selfish, they have in mind solely male nature. Females, left to themselves in Read more...
1hr 35m Sep 05, 2011
1hr 35m
Churchland on the Neurobiology of Morality (with Churchland as guest) - Partially Examined Life
We spoke with Patricia Churchland after reading her new book Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us About Morality. We also discussed David Hume’s ethics as foundational to her work, reading his Treatise on Human Nature (1739), Book III, Part I and his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), Section V, Parts I and II. What does the physiology of the brain have to do with ethics? Wh...
1hr 44m Jul 19, 2011
1hr 44m
Episode 40: Plato’s Republic: What Is Justice?
Discussing The Republic by Plato, primarily books 1 and 2. What is justice? What is the ideal type of government? In the dialogue, Socrates argues that justice is real (not just a fiction the strong make up) and that it’s not relative to who you are (in the sense that it would always be just Read more...
1hr 36m Jul 12, 2011
1hr 36m
Episode 39: Schleiermacher Defends Religion
Discussing Friedrich Schleiermacher’s “On Religion; Speeches to its Cultured Despisers” (1799, with notes added 1821), first and second speeches. Does religion necessarily conflict with science? Schleiermacher says no: the essence of religion is an emotional response to life; it doesn’t give knowledge or even tell us what to do exactly. Moreover, this attitude is a Read more...
1hr 43m Jun 10, 2011
1hr 43m
Episode 38: Bertrand Russell on Math and Logic
Discussing Russell’s Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1919), ch. 1-3 and 13-18. How do mathematical concepts like number relate to the real world? Russell wants to derive math from logic, and identifies a number as a set of similar sets of objects, e.g. “3″ just IS the set of all trios. Hilarity then ensues. This book Read more...
1hr 30m May 25, 2011
1hr 30m
Episode 37: Locke on Political Power
Discussing John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government (1690). What makes political power legitimate? Like Hobbes, Locke thinks that things are less than ideal without a society to keep people from killing us, so we implicitly sign a social contract giving power to the state. But for Locke, nature’s not as bad, so the state is Read more...
1hr 34m May 06, 2011
1hr 34m
Episode 36: More Hegel on Self-Consciousness
Part 2 of our discussion of G.F.W. Hegel’s “Phenomenology of Spirit,” covering sections 178-230 within section B, “Self-Consciousness.” Part 1 is here. First, Hegel’s famous “master and slave” parable, whereby we only become fully self-conscious by meeting up with another person, who (at least in primordial times, or maybe this happens to everyone as they Read more...
1hr 31m Apr 11, 2011
1hr 31m
Episode 35: Hegel on Self-Consciousness
Discussing G.F.W. Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), Part B (aka Ch. 4), “Self-Consciousness,” plus recapping the three chapters before that (Part A. “Consciousness”). This is discussion one of two: here we only get as far as “The Truth of Self-Certainty,” i.e. sections 166-177. This is plenty, though, as this may be the most difficult text Read more...
1hr 27m Apr 02, 2011
1hr 27m
Episode 34: Frege on the Logic of Language
Discussing Gottlob Frege’s “Sense and Reference,” “Concept and Object” (both from 1892) and “The Thought” (1918). What is it about sentences that make them true or false? Frege, the father of analytic philosophy who invented modern symbolic logic, attempted to codify language in a way that would make this obvious, which would ground mathematics and Read more...
1hr 47m Mar 13, 2011
1hr 47m
Episode 33: Montaigne: What Is the Purpose of Philosophy?
Discussing Michel de Montaigne’s Essays: “That to Philosophize is to Learn to Die,” “Of Experience,” “Of Cannibals,” “Of the Education of Children,” “Of Solitude,” and “Of Solitude” (all from around 1580) with some discussion of “Apology for Raymond Sebond.” Renaissance man Montaigne tells us all how to live, how to die, how to raise our Read more...
1hr 40m Feb 18, 2011
1hr 40m
Episode 32: Heidegger: What is “Being?”
Discussing Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time (1927), mostly the intro and ch. 1 and 2 of Part 1. When philosophers try to figure out what really exists (God? matter? numbers?), Heidegger thinks they’ve forgotten a question that really should come first: what is it to exist? He thinks that instead of asking “What is Being?” Read more...
1hr 51m Feb 08, 2011
1hr 51m
Episode 31: Husserl’s Phenomenology
Discussing Edmund Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations (1931). How can we analyze our experience? Husserl thinks that Descartes was right about the need to ground science from the standpoint of our own experience, but wrong about everything else. Husserl recommends we “bracket” the question of whether the external world exists and just focus on the contents of Read more...
1hr 49m Jan 10, 2011
1hr 49m
Episode 27: Nagarjuna on Buddhist “Emptiness”
Primarily discussing “Reasoning: The Sixty Stanzas” and “Emptiness: The Seventy Stanzas,” by the 2nd century Indian Buddhist Nagarjuna. Is the world of our experience ultimately real? If not, does it have something metaphysically basic underlying it? For Nagarjuna, the answers are “no” and “no… well… not that we can talk about.” Mark and Seth (Wes Read more...
1hr 44m Oct 10, 2010
1hr 44m
Episode 25: Spinoza on Human Nature
Discussing Books II through V of the Ethics. Continues the discussion from Ep. 24. What is the relation between mind and body? How do we know things? What are the emotions? Is there an ethical ideal for us to shoot for? What is our relationship to God? Our rational nature prevails over urges to scream, Read more...
1hr 37m Sep 10, 2010
1hr 37m
Episode 24: Spinoza on God and Metaphysics
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 Read more...
1hr 36m Aug 24, 2010
1hr 36m
Episode 23: Rousseau: Human Nature vs. Culture
Discussing Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Discourse in Inequality and book 1 of The Social Contract. What’s the relationship between culture and nature? Are savages really slavering beasts of unquenchable appetites, or probably more mellow, hangin’ about, flexin’ their muscles, just chillin’, eh? Rousseau engages in some wild speculation about the development of humanity from the savage to Read more...
1hr 28m Jul 29, 2010
1hr 28m
Episode 22: More James’s Pragmatism: Is Faith Justified? What is Truth?
Discussing William James’s “The Will to Believe” and continuing our discussion from Episode 20 on James’s conception of truth as described in his books Pragmatism and The Meaning of Truth, again featuring guest podcaster Dylan Casey. Does pragmatism give ground for religious belief, like if I say it feels good for me to believe in Read more...
1hr 38m Jul 18, 2010
1hr 38m
Episode 14: Machiavelli on Politics
Reading Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince and Ch. 1-20 of The Discourse on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy. What’s a philosophically astute approach to political matters? What makes a government successful? Should you keep that fortress or sell it for scrap? If you conquer, say, Iraq, do you have to then go and live Read more...
1hr 33m Feb 07, 2010
1hr 33m
Episode 12: Chuang Tzu’s Taoism: What Is Wisdom?
Discussing the “Chuang Tzu,” Chapters 2, 3, 6, 18, and 19. It’s the second-most-famous Taoist text and the most humorous, with anecdotes about people singing at funerals and jumping out of moving coaches while drunk. What could it possibly mean to “make all things equal?” and how is the Taoist sage different from our other Read more...
1hr 50m Dec 06, 2009
1hr 50m
Episode 11: Nietzsche’s Immoralism: What Is Ethics, Anyway?
Discussing The Genealogy of Morals (mostly the first two essays) and Beyond Good and Evil Ch. 1 (The Prejudices of Philosophers), 5 (Natural History of Morals), and 9 (What is Noble?). We go through Nietzsche’s convoluted and historically improbable stories about about the transition from master to slave morality and the origin of bad conscience. Read more...
1hr 51m Nov 10, 2009
1hr 51m
Episode 8: Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (and Carnap): What Can We Legitimately Talk About?
Continuing last ep’s discussion of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus with some Rudolph Carnap (a logical positivist from the Vienna Circle: “The Rejection of Metaphysics” from his 1935 book Philosophy and Logical Syntax) about what kind of crazy talk is outside of legitimate discourse. Carnap interprets W as simply ruling out as unscientific most of the talk Read more...
1hr 37m Sep 04, 2009
1hr 37m
Episode 7: Wittgenstein’s Tractatus: What Is There and Can We Talk About It?
Discussing the beginning (through around 3.1) of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Mr. W. wrote that the world is made up of facts (as opposed to things) and that these facts can be analyzed into atomic facts, but then refused to give even one example to help us understand what the hell he’s talking about, and so Read more...
1hr 40m Aug 19, 2009
1hr 40m
Episode 6: Leibniz’s Monadology: What Is There?
Have some tasty metaphysics, in mono! Leibniz thinks that the world is ultimately made up of monads, which are like atoms except nothing at all like atoms, because they’re alive, and mindful, and eternal, and windowless, placed in the best kind of harmony at the beginning of time by God. Is there a concept album Read more...
1hr 39m Jul 31, 2009
1hr 39m
Episode 0: Introduction to the Podcast
Listen to this here episode first. A priori, that is. Before experiencing the world yourself. Why should you bother to go through the trouble of downloading and listening to one of the full length episodes? Who are we anyway? Why shouldn’t you just go listen to some philosophy lectures posted by university professors instead of Read more...
10m Jul 25, 2009
10m
Episode 5: Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics
Discussing Books 1 and 2. What is virtue, and how can I eat it? Do not enjoy this episode too much, or too little, but just the right amount. Apparently, if you haven’t already have been brought up with the right habits, you may as well give up. Plus, is Michael Jackson the Aristotelian ideal? Read more...
1hr 41m Jul 16, 2009
1hr 41m
Episode 4: Camus and the Absurd
Discussing Camus’s “An Absurd Reasoning” and ”The Myth of Sisyphus” (1942). Does our eventual death mean that life has no meaning and we might as well end it all?  Camus starts to address this question, then gets distracted and talks about a bunch of phenomenologists until he dies unreconciled.  Also, let’s all push a rock up Read more...
1hr 37m Jun 22, 2009
1hr 37m
Episode 3: Hobbes’s Leviathan: The Social Contract
Discussing Hobbes’s Leviathan, Chapters 13-15. Have we implicitly signed a social contract whereby our native right to punch other people in the face is given to the President? Hobbes does things that eventually result in the U.S. Constitution and makes Wes nauseous. Plus: Star Trek and the Bible! Buy the book or read it online Read more...
1hr 38m Jun 07, 2009
1hr 38m
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 Read more...
1hr 39m May 14, 2009
1hr 39m
Part 2 of Episode 1: “The Unexamined Life Is Not Worth Living.”
More discussion of Plato’s “Apology.” Incidentally, the “celibacy society” that Seth refers to at one point in here has a T-shirt.
45m May 14, 2009
45m
The Unexamined Life pt 1 - Partially Examined Life
Discussing Plato’s “Apology.” This reading is all about how Socrates is on trial for acting like an ass and proceeds to act like an ass and so is convicted. Big surprise. On this our inaugural discussion, Mark, Seth, and Wes talk about how philosophers are arrogant bastards who neglect their children, how people of all political stripes don’t usually examine their fundamental beliefs (but prob...
42m May 13, 2009
42m