The Partially Examined Life

I like that by going through these readings again, outside of academia, you the panel gain new insight to these works. Sometimes it seems the more enlightened become more stodgy and rigid and vice versa. Keep up the good work. Your show is enlightening at the very least. Awe-inspiring at its best this show is hurtling to the top of my list.

You guys made a mistake while talking about occam’s razor. Its not the simplest explanation, its the explanation with the least assumptions. Therefore there is no metaphysical mystery to why this is true.

My point was more against Leibniz than you, and I wasn’t talking specifically about Monadology.
You were talking about how Leibniz thought Occam’s Razor pointed to the perfection of creation because the simplest answer was usually correct. He made it seem as if this were true by some metaphysical design.
I’m saying that because the razor actually talks about the least assumptions, its more of an epistemological method than an objective way to find the truth.
I do get what you mean about the two being somewhat interchangeable. The least assumptions probably means the least parts, and therefore is the simplest.

Great podcast guys.

It’s interesting that you pick up on the fictional potential of Leibniz and the whole philosophic drama that was unfolding during his time, as I found your podcast largely through an interest in Leibniz sparked from reading series of novels by SF author Neal Stephenson. His 3-volume work “The Baroque Cycle” includes Leibniz, Newton, and various other luminaries from the time. It covers “logic mills”, the “Philosophical language” (which you touch upon), and many other goodies.

BTW, “Monadology” is currently experiencing something of a rebirth through the fledgling “Process Physics” and Wolfram’s “New Kind of Science”.

For the interested amateur who after listening to this podcast realises he’s not supposed to like some of Ayn Rand’s work (not for the literature but the free market/socialism part) why don’t you guys do a podcast on her?
I am in Europe but know that Rand’s work is extremely popular with the public in the U.S. so imagine it would be of broad interest.

Re your queries about future talks: I WOULD like a discussion of Frege (maybe even next to David Hilbert?) and his “use/mention/meaning/reference.” Also Bertrand Russell (the logic/mathematic stuff, since that is more challenging – for me – than the political stuff), Kurt Godel (the incompleteness theorems), and the “Gettier Problem” and other problems of epistemology. And yes, philosophy of language/mind

(all this, even though PERSONALLY I prefer hearing about history of philosophy and history of ideas, esp. in the 17-19th century, which most analytic philosophers don’t like to discuss).

I found the podcasts a couple weeks ago and this is my new Favorite Thing To Listen To While Cleaning House. I’ve got this crazed love/hate thing going on with Heidegger, and have been trying to read *and* understand “Being and Time” since 2003. Last year I picked up “Existence and Being” and in both cases, I found the commentary more useful than the actual text in everything except what the hell picture in my head to use when reading “Dasein.”

(Growing up Observant Jewish means the idea of commentary roughly 3x the content of the original text is not alien to me, probably why my favorite translation of “The Art of War” is Leonard Giles’ – but I digress. Also with my first language actually being Yiddish, the multi-layered meanings in Dasein had me struggling more with the commentary’s interpretation than with the translation itself.)

THANK you for tearing up Heidegger. Once I finish speeding through my two books, off they go to the local library’s used book store for someone else’s decade of mental torment. I feel so much better now about never quite getting it!