NEM Ep 8: Tim Quirk Is the Philosopher-King of Beers
Tim describes himself as not a singer, but a writer with a band, and he shouted at the front of Too Much Joy in the late’ 80s–’90s and has since recorded as Wonderlick while working as a big dog in the digital music industry with Google, Rhapsody, and now Freeform. We discuss “King of Beers” from Cereal Killers (1991), “Donner Lake” from Wonderlick (2002), “Just Like a Man” from Mutiny (1992), ...
1hr 15m Mar 11, 2016
1hr 15m
Hegel on Thought and World aka Logic (Part Two)
HegelMore on G.F.W. Hegel's The Science of Logic (1812–1816), §1–§129 plus The Encyclopaedia Logic (1817) §1–§25. We continue trying to make sense of Hegel's method and purpose: How does he think that we can deduce something like Kant's categories (e.g. quantity, quality)? We can't start with the manifold of experience, which presupposes a subject-object distinction, which would be me having p...
1hr 10m Mar 07, 2016
1hr 10m
Hegel on Thought and World aka Logic (Part One)
On G.F.W. Hegel's The Science of Logic (1812–1816), §1–§129 (i.e., the two prefaces and the introduction), plus The Encyclopaedia Logic (1817) §1–§25, which is supposed to dumb it down more so we can understand what's going on. "Logic" for Hegel isn't about symbolic logic; it's about how thought interacts with the world. In short, our thoughts about fundamental metaphysical categories bear the...
55m Feb 29, 2016
55m
Freud on the Human Condition (with New Intro)
Discussing Civilization and its Discontents (1930). How can we live happily in society when happiness is a matter of fulfillment of pent-up desires? Originally released Sept. 2010. Newly introduced with reflections by Wes and Dylan. End song: "The Easy Thing" by New People from The Easy Thing (2009). Sponsored by Harry's. Try their razor service free, including a shaving kit, by visiting harr...
2hr 23m Feb 22, 2016
2hr 23m
NEM Ep 5: Jeff Heiskell: Positive Verite
Jeff was the voice of JudyBats until ’94, and is now Heiskell. He sings with character, or characters, always articulate, overly introspective, with intimacy issues. We discuss his current status as happy, self-funded, free-styled, hands-off yet obsessive compulsive solo artist and his high-pressure, compromise-filled time on a major label that led him to quit music altogether for a while. Song...
1hr 11m Feb 22, 2016
1hr 11m
Ep. 130/131 Aftershow (Preview) on Aristotle feat. Rebecca Goldner
Wes Alwan and Danny Lobell were joined by St. John's Annapolis tutor Rebecca Goldner, Michael Burgess, Nick Halme, Erik Weissengruber, Chase Fiorenza, and Scott Anderson to review our episodes 130 and 131. PEL Citizens can hear the full discussion, or anyone can watch it on YouTube
15m Feb 21, 2016
15m
PEL Special: Nakedly Examined Music #1 with David Lowery
Welcome to Nakedly Examined Music, our first spin-off of PEL. Hear more at nakedlyexaminedmusic.com or find it via iTunes. Mark interviews songwriters about why and how they do what they do. Think of it as applied philosophy. Four episodes are now posted; this cross-post of our pilot features David Lowery of Camper van Beethoven and Cracker talking through three of his songs. He's as well-spok...
1hr 16m Feb 18, 2016
1hr 16m
Erich Fromm on Love as an Art (Part Two)
Continuing on Fromm's The Art of Loving (1956). In this second half of our discussion, we talk about love as requiring knowledge: as "knowing the secret" of humanity or at least being interested. This is related to sadism. Is there a difference between motherly and fatherly love? Fromm thinks so. He also talks about different degrees of maturity in one's belief in God, the best being like Spin...
1hr 8m Feb 15, 2016
1hr 8m
NEM Ep 4: Gareth Mitchell: Granular Creativity
Gareth Mitchell is a post-rock academic, an innovative guitarist who now uses recorded splices of treated guitar (among other things) made into loops to meticulously construct electronic music, as on his upcoming album, 72. We dive deep into his tracks “Circle” and “Decay” from this album and get a taste of his dreaming singer/songwriter material with “Sovereign” from Spectre (2012). We also de...
1hr 17m Feb 15, 2016
1hr 17m
Erich Fromm on Love as an Art (Part One)
A Valentine's Day special topic! What is love, really? This psychoanalyst of the Frankfurt school thinks that real love is not something one ""falls"" into, but is an art, an activity, and doing it well requires a disciplined openness and psychological health. Love is the answer to the deep human need to rid ourselves of isolation, but a mere sexual union won't provide real intimacy. To connect...
53m Feb 08, 2016
53m
NEM Ep 3: Kevin Godley: Pure Play in the Devil's Shoes
Kevin Godley is a multi-media master, having directed many of the coolest music videos you’ve ever seen. But before that, he was half of Godley & Creme and 1/4 of 10cc, singing, drumming, and mostly coming up with ideas, ideas, and more ideas. Today he runs Whole World Band, a platform for collaborative video creation, and recently released his iBook autobiography Spacecake, but he still perfor...
1hr 25m Feb 05, 2016
1hr 25m
Living Stoically with Seneca and Massimo (Part Two)
Continuing with Massimo Pigliucci on selected "moral epistles" by Seneca: 4. On the Terrors of Death, 12. On Old Age, 49. On the Shortness of Life, 59. On Pleasure and Joy, 62. On Good Company, 92. On the Happy Life, 96. On Facing Hardship, and 116. On Self Control. With the preliminaries out of the way, we really get into the essays to see what Seneca has to say about love and other emotions,...
1hr 9m Feb 01, 2016
1hr 9m
Living Stoically with Seneca and Massimo (Part One)
On selected "moral epistles" (from around 65 CE) by Lucius Annaeus Seneca: 4. On the Terrors of Death, 12. On Old Age, 49. On the Shortness of Life, 59. On Pleasure and Joy, 62. On Good Company, 92. On the Happy Life, 96. On Facing Hardship, and 116. On Self Control. We're joined by Massimo Pigliucci of the How to Be a Stoic blog, who for a long time was on the Rationally Speaking podcast. Bac...
1hr 3m Jan 25, 2016
1hr 3m
Aristotle’s “De Anima”: What Is the Mind? (Part Two)
Concluding our discussion of On the Soul, book 3. Now that we're done with perception, we get into imagination and then to ""nous"" proper: the contemplative intellect that understands by grasping the ""forms"" of things. This is our gateway to talking about knowledge, because while sensation in the sense of grasping green can't be wrong, once we make a claim like ""this book is green,"" we're...
1hr 2m Jan 18, 2016
1hr 2m
Aristotle’s “De Anima”: What Is the Mind? (Part One)
Our second discussion of De Anima or On the Soul (350 BCE), this time on book 3. What is the intellect? In ep. 130, we talked about Aristotle's idea of the soul as the form of the body and about two of its functions or parts: the nutritive and the sensitive. Here we talk more about how sensation is supposed to work according to Aristotle, and how the sense organs interact with each other. Aris...
51m Jan 11, 2016
51m
Episode 130: Aristotle’s “De Anima”: What Is Life? (Part Two)
Continuing on De Anima, books 1 and 2. We talk about the nutritive part of the soul, which is the only kind plants have, and the perceptive part, which animals have too, which for Aristotle means they have (or many of them have) imagination too. We grapple more with types of causation and what Aristotle means by forms. How does the soul "cause" the living body? Listen to part one first, or get...
54m Jan 04, 2016
54m
Aristotle’s “De Anima”: What Is Life? (Part One)
On De Anima or On the Soul (350 BCE), books 1 and 2. We lead off with listener mail; Aristotle starts 18 minutes in. What can this ancient text tell us about biological life? Much of the interest and difficulty here is the very different conceptual schemes at play: What counts as a scientific explanation? Aristotle gives a highly general account about what, for all living things, makes them al...
1hr 11m Dec 28, 2015
1hr 11m
Holiday Special 2015: Mark Lint’s “Songs from the Partially Examined Life” with Many Guest Greetings
PEL gets nostalgic, playing songs and bringing back guests from yesteryear. Both beloved former guests and some new behind-the-scenes friends of PEL chatted with Mark about what they're up to, and each of them took on a song to try to make sense of. Some of the many projects we discuss include: The 2016 PEL Calendar, with sweet philosophy art by Sterling Bartlett and funny text mostly written...
2hr 6m Dec 24, 2015
2hr 6m
Is Faith Rational? (Part Two)
Continuing on faith and reason with Nathan Gilmour and Rob Dyer. In this half we focus on the critique of evidentialism in Basil Mitchell's “Faith and Criticism” (1994), Peter van Inwagen's "Clifford's Principle" (1994, from his "Quam Dilecta"), and Alvin Plantinga's “Is Belief in God Properly Basic?” (1981). We consider briefly how mysticism plays into the idea of private experience counting ...
1hr 10m Dec 21, 2015
1hr 10m
Is Faith Rational? (Part One)
Nathan Gilmour (Christian Humanist podcast) and Rob Dyer (God Complex Radio) join Mark and Wes for to discuss the reasonableness of religious belief reading: Antony Flew, "The Presumption of Atheism" (1976)Norwood Russell Hanson, “The Agnostic’s Dilemma” (1971)Steven Cahn, "The Irrelevance of Proof to Religion" (1969)Alvin Plantinga, “Is Belief in God Properly Basic?” (1981)Merold Westphal, "S...
1hr 11m Dec 14, 2015
1hr 11m
Hilary Putnam on Linguistic Meaning (Part Two)
Continuing on ""The Meaning of Meaning"" (1975). We finish giving Putnam's positive theory for ""meaning"" something, which involves not only referring to something (whose properties, per Kripke, you may well not know) but being familiar with a stereotype of the thing, which is like a description, but isn't the thing that picks out the referent. For example, my stereotype of ""elm"" may (if I ...
1hr 15m Dec 07, 2015
1hr 15m
Hilary Putnam on Linguistic Meaning (Part One)
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 call that water, rig...
56m Nov 30, 2015
56m
John Dewey on Experience and the World (Part Two)
Continuing on Experience and Nature (1925), through ch. 4. We focus here on how philosophy supposedly gets warped by fear and desire in human nature, how we pretend that abstractions we've created are metaphysically real and basic. So how do the objects of our experience, then, relate to those of science? And can we talk about ""ends"" (teleology) when doing science? Learn more about the topic...
1hr 21m Nov 23, 2015
1hr 21m
John Dewey on Experience and the World (Part One)
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 between perception and re...
1hr 4m Nov 16, 2015
1hr 4m
Saul Kripke on Possibilities, Language & Science (Part Two)
On Naming and Necessity (1980). What's the relationship between language and the world? Does a term like ""tiger"" as we use it refer to that animal because we have a certain mental image or definition of that animal in our heads? Saul Kripke says no: If ""tigers have stripes"" was part of the definition of a tiger, then it would be a logical contradiction to talk about an abnormal, stripe-les...
1hr 16m Nov 09, 2015
1hr 16m
Saul Kripke on Possibilities, Language & Science (Part One)
On Naming and Necessity (1980). What's the relationship between language and the world? Specifically, what makes a name or a class term (like ""tiger"") pick out the person or things that it does? Saul Kripke wanted to correct the dominant view of his time (which involved speakers having some description in mind, and it's that description that hooks the word to the thing), and used modal langu...
1hr 8m Nov 02, 2015
1hr 8m
Not School Digest: Asimov, Camus, Jaspers, Brecht, Peirce, Historical Jesus
Discussion clips covering topic we haven't had time to cover on the podcast proper. Brief yourself on these topics via the enclosed 10–15 minute bursts, or become a PEL Citizen to listen to these bonus discussions in their full length. Mark is joined by Nathan Hanks to tell you how to get involved in a discussion yourself. First, learn about Isaac Asimov's story, ""The Last Question"" (1956) (...
1hr 27m Oct 26, 2015
1hr 27m
Not School Digest: Asimov, Camus, Jaspers, Brecht, Peirce, Historical Jesus
On Isaac Asimov's "The Last Question," Albert Camus's "The Fall," Karl Jaspers's "Truth and Symbol," C.S. Peirce's "The Fixation of Belief," Bertold Brecht's "Theatre for Pleasure or Theatre for Instruction," and Thomas Sheehan's Stanford lectures on the Historical Jesus. These are snippets covering topics we haven't had time to cover on the podcast proper. Brief yourself via these 10–15 minute...
1hr 27m Oct 25, 2015
1hr 27m
Hannah Arendt on the Political & Private (Part Two)
Continuing on The Human Condition (1958), focusing on the rise of ""the social,"" how that erodes the private sphere (unless you post it on Facebook, it's not real!), yet leads to feelings of loneliness and meaninglessness. The audience at this live Pittsburgh event (with a notable lack of input from people watching from around the world on the live feed!) then joins us in the latter of this r...
1hr 12m Oct 19, 2015
1hr 12m
Q&A with the Partially Examinedl Life
What is it like to do philosophy in public? As prelude to our ep. 125 appearance at the Pittsburgh Continental Philosophy Network Conference on theory and public space, Mark, Seth, Wes, and Dylan sat down for questions by moderator Erica Freeman, conference host Justin Pearl, conference presenters Jeremy Northup and Jonathan Wurtz, Not School luminary Marilyn Lawrence, our editor and sound guy ...
52m Oct 05, 2015
52m
The Stoic Life with Epictetus (Part Two)
More on the Manual of Epictetus, aka The Enchiridion, from around 135 CE. In this part we discuss more about Epictetus's directives, including making your will ""conformable to nature,"" different levels of Stoic expertise, the connection between controlling your emotions and seeing truth, what exactly about our mentality we're supposed to be able to control, personal integrity, how to deal wi...
1hr 15m Sep 28, 2015
1hr 15m
The Stoic Life with Epictetus (Part One)
On the Manual of Epictetus, aka The Enchiridion, from around 135 CE. What's a wise strategy for life? What is freedom? Stoicism says that the secret is mastering yourself. If you let yourself be perturbed by things that happen to you, then you're a slave to those external things. Your good lies only in the things you can (with practice) control, i.e., your own attitudes, judgments, and opinion...
58m Sep 21, 2015
58m
Economics with Hayek and Sen (Part Two)
Continuing our discussion of Amartya Sen's On Ethics and Economics (1987) with some comparisons to F.A. Hayek and his essay ""The Use of Knowledge in Society"" (1945), with guest Seth Benzell. We attempt to penetrate Sen's problems with the assumptions of welfare economics: Are people really rational maximizers of self-interest? Don't we have to pay attention to philosophical problems in ethic...
1hr 20m Sep 14, 2015
1hr 20m
Episode 123: Economics with Hayek and Sen (Part One)
On F.A. Hayek's ""The Use of Knowledge in Society"" (1945) and Amartya Sen's On Ethics and Economics (1987). Is economics a pseudoscience? Certainly, trying to model a phenomenon mathematically and so predict, for example, the consequences of proposed legislation is better than acting blindly, but given the complexity of the system, are the simplifications required to create a model just too i...
52m Sep 07, 2015
52m
Augustine Aftershow feat. James Wetzel
Haven't had enough Augustine? Danny Lobell and Wes Alwan welcome Augustine scholar James Wetzel and PEL Citizens Terra Leigh Bell, Amogh Sahu, and Scott Anderson to discuss our Augustine episodes, covering humility, love, desire, grief, sex, misogyny, degrees of reality, and how love of God fits with relating to other people. Minimally edited, recorded the same day it's being posted, we present...
1hr 37m Sep 07, 2015
1hr 37m
Augustine on Mind and Metaphysics (Part Two)
Our final installment on The Confessions (400 CE), books 10–13. We continue talking about memory and how it relates to Plato's "recollection," grapple with his take on will (do we pursue something we take to be the good per Plato or do we intentionally pursue evil?), what it means to live as hooked up with God, and the kinds of answers Augustine gives to tricky questions like the origin of the...
1hr 6m Aug 31, 2015
1hr 6m
Augustine on Mind and Metaphysics (Part One)
Yet more on The Confessions, now on books 10–13. What is memory and how does it relate to time and being? Augustine thinks that memory is a storehouse, but it contains not just the sensations we put in it, but also (a la Plato's theory of recollection) all legitimate knowledge. It's our route to God, to real Being. Mark, Wes, and Dylan also discuss time, language, knowledge, the existence of e...
1hr 18m Aug 24, 2015
1hr 18m
Precognition of Economics (F.A. Hayek and Amartya Sen)
Guest Seth Benzell outlines Hayek's "The Use of Knowledge in Society" (1945) and Sen's "On Ethics and Economics" (1987).#economics #hayek #sen #welfare
12m Aug 19, 2015
12m
Augustine on Being Good (Part Two)
More on The Confessions, books 1–9. He tells us to love the world, but only insofar as you're really loving the creator, so don't get too carried away. What are the logical and not-so-logical-but-certainly-predictable implications of this kind of view? Misogyny? Persecution of heretics? We try to relate his comments on the will back to our discussion with Eva Brann and also, what's the deal wit...
1hr 15m Aug 17, 2015
1hr 15m
Augustine on Being Good (Part One)
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. However, we shouldn't expect our capacity to know to be operating well unless we're already oriented correctly, which for Augustine means toward God. Yes, God created al...
57m Aug 10, 2015
57m
Nietzsche Aftershow Preview feat. Greg Sadler
Further hashing over of topics raised in our three-part episode on Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy, your hosts Seth Paskin and Danny Lobell welcome Internet philosophy instructor extraordinaire Dr. Gregory B. Sadler, as well as David Buchanan, Erik Weissengruber, Tom Kirdas, Ken Presting, and Bill Coe. We had a wide-ranging discussion, covering theater, the arts, the sharing economy, slavery, Dion...
17m Aug 07, 2015
17m
A History of "Will" with Eva Brann (Part Two)
Continuing our dicussion of Un-Willing (2014) with the author. In this segment, we explore and critique Eva's picture of the less-willfull life and try to figure out how her historically driven account relates to modern debates about free will. Listen to part one first. Please become a PEL Citizen, consider a donation and/or use our Amazon banner to do your shopping, which will kick us back s...
52m Aug 03, 2015
52m
A History of “Will” with Guest Eva Brann (Part One)
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. What is the will? Is it an obvious thing that we all can see in ourselves when introspecting? If so, then why is there so much disagreement in the ...
55m Jul 27, 2015
55m
Songwriting Aftershow (Preview) feat. ex-Camper Chris Molla
A highlight from our musician-packed breakdown of our songwriting episode. Featuring a third (ex-) member of Camper Van Beethoven, plus Chase Fiorenza, Mike Wilson, Maxx Bartko, Danny Lobell, Mark Linsenmayer, and (not heard on this preview) Adrian Cho and Fischerspooner's Warren Fischer. We discuss authenticity, the state of the music biz, humor in music, and more.#music #krummenacher #segel #...
18m Jul 24, 2015
18m
Nietzsche on Tragedy and the Psychology of Art (Part Three)
The third and final portion of our discussion of Friedrich Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy (1872). In this part we discuss the evils according to Nietzsche of ""Socratism,"" which in the modern age is equivalent to scientific optimism: Everything useful, beautiful, and good must be reasonable, fodder for scientific investigation. Why would Greek tragedy show us that this Enlightenment ideal is...
51m Jul 20, 2015
51m
Nietzsche on Tragedy and the Psychology of Art (Part Two)
The second installment of three for our discussion of Friedrich Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy (1872). In this part we discuss how tragedy, folk music, and other arts might embody the Dionysian (an unconscious, chaotic force) vs. the Apollonian (a focus on beautiful surface-level forms) and why tragedy is supposed to be so awesome. Listen to part one first. Become a PEL Citizen and you won't...
53m Jul 13, 2015
53m
Nietzsche on Tragedy and the Psychology of Art (Part One)
On Friedrich Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy (1872), which was his first book. What's the connection between art and society? Nietzsche thought that you could tell how vital or decadent a civilization was by its art, and said that ancient Greek tragedy (like Antigone) was so great because it was a perfect synthesis of something highly formal/orderly/beautiful with the intuitive/unconscious/ch...
56m Jul 06, 2015
56m
Aftershow (Preview) on Antigone with Danny Lobell
Comedian Danny Lobell of the Modern Day Philosophers podcast and our own Wes Alwan were joined for a discussion of Antigone by PEL citizens Daniel Cole, David Buchanan, Erik Weissengruber, Frank Marcopolos, and Terra Leigh Bell. We talked a little about how to distinguish acting on principle from acting out of personal pride (and whether these can be distinguished); whether Creon is just drunk ...
18m Jul 05, 2015
18m
The Musical Life with Guests from Camper van Beethoven
Why write songs? What is it to have "integrity" as a musician? To be "authentic?" Is there anything wrong with playing pure pop songs, or aping styles created by those now dead? Our guests Victor Krummenacher and Jonathan Segel (of the famed indie band Camper van Beethoven) have a beef with the Internet society where music and other trappings of identity are now available without effort and oft...
1hr 39m Jun 29, 2015
1hr 39m
Discussing Sophocles’s “Antigone” (Part Two)
Continuing our discussion of the ancient Greek tragedy, from 441 BCE. Listen to Part One first. Sign up for the Aftershow with Danny Lobell and Wes Alwan, which will take place on 6/28 at 3pm Eastern. If you enjoy this podcast, please become a PEL Citizen or make a donation. End song: "Woe Is Me," performed live by Madison Lint on Madison's WORT, 6/28/02.#antigone #tragedy #sophocles #ethics ...
59m Jun 22, 2015
59m