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