Podcast Episodes
Episode 23: Rousseau: Human Nature vs. Culture
Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Podcast Episodes on July 29th, 2010
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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 the modern, miserable wretch. Association with other people corrupts us, especially association with Wes. Is there some form of government that will make things tolerable? Maybe that one where Oprah is our queen.
Read along with us! http://www.constitution.org/jjr/ineq.htm and http://www.constitution.org/jjr/socon.htm.
End song: “Love Is the Problem” by New People from The Easy Thing (2009).
Episode 21: What Is the Mind? (Turing, et al)
Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Podcast Episodes on June 28th, 2010
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Reading articles by Alan Turing, Gilbert Ryle, Thomas Nagel, John Searle, and Dan Dennett.
What is this mind stuff, and how can it “be” the brain? Can computers think? No? What if they’re really sexified? Then can they think? Can the mind be a computer? Can it be a room with a guy in it that doesn’t speak Chinese? Can science completely understand it? …The mind, that is, not the room, or Chinese. What is it like to be a bat? What about a weevil? Do you even know what a weevil is, really? Then how do you know it’s not a mind? Hmmmm? Is guest podcaster Marco Wise a robot? Even his wife cannot be sure!
We introduce the mind/body problem and the wackiness that it engenders by breezing through several articles, which you may read along with us:
1. Alan Turing’s 1950 paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence.”
2. A chapter of Gilbert Ryle’s 1949 book The Concept of Mind called “Descartes’ Myth.”
3. Thomas Nagel’s 1974 essay “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”
4. John Searle’s Chinese Room argument, discussed in a 1980 piece, “Minds, Brains and Programs.”
5. Daniel C. Dennett’s “Quining Qualia.”
Some additional resources that we talk about: David Chalmers’s “Consciousness and its Place in Nature, “ Frank Jackson’s Epiphenomenal Qualia, Paul Churchland’s Matter and Consciousness, Jerry Fodor’s “The Mind-Body Problem,” Zoltan Torey’s The Crucible of Consciousness, and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s long entry on the Chinese Room argument.
End Song: “No Mind” from 1998’s Mark Lint and the Fake Johnson Trio; the whole album is now free online.
Episode 20: Pragmatism – Peirce and James
Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Podcast Episodes on June 9th, 2010
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:07:51 — 234.2MB)
Reading Pragmatism by William James and “The Fixation of Belief” and “How to Make Our Ideas Clear” by Charles Sanders Peirce.
Is truth a primitive relation between our representations and things objectively in the world, or is it an analyzable process by which propositions “prove their worth” by being useful in some way, like by fitting well with other portions of our experience or being delicious?
Peirce, the inventor of pragmatism, focuses on the philosophy of science and thinks of inquiry as a way for us to just settle on any belief we can stomach. James, who popularized pragmatism, has a wider view that applies not only to science but to religious beliefs. If it makes you feel nice to believe in Hogwarts, should you do so?
The episode features guest podcaster Dylan Casey (previously from our quantum physics episode).
The readings are at http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/5116, http://www.peirce.org/writings/p107.html, and http://www.peirce.org/writings/p119.html. Another helpful link we talk about is the chapter from James’s book The Meaning of Truth where he responds to objections: http://www.brocku.ca/MeadProject/James/James_1911/James_1911_08.html
End Song: “Friend” from 1998’s Mark Lint and the Fake Johnson Trio; the whole album is now free online.
Episode 19: Kant: What Can We Know?
Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Podcast Episodes on May 14th, 2010
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:05:31 — 115.0MB)
Reading Immanuel Kant’s Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, which is sort of a post-publication Cliff’s Notes to his Critique of Pure Reason.
Do we have any business doing metaphysics, which is by definition about things that we could not possibly experience?
Kant says that yes, we can, to a limited extent, but that everyone before him did it wrong, because they didn’t understand how our minds interact with the world to create experience. He insists that once you read his book, you’ll never be satisfied with such “twaddle” again!
LEARN about the faculties of Sensibility, Understanding, and Reason! THINK about whether geometric truths are justified by our intuition of space (maybe) and arithmetic is grounded in our intuition of time (probably not). DOUBT whether we actually impose causality on our experience as Kant says! MARVEL at our guest participant, Azzurra Crispino, as she augments the number of speakers on this episode to a PERFECTLY SQUARE number! GAWK as your world is turned up-flicking-side down by Kant’s “Copernican Revolution” (a term we neither use nor explain in this episode)!
Read along with us at http://philosophy.eserver.org/kant-prolegomena.txt. Seth also made some nice charts of the four-square we discuss: 
End song: “Subjectivity” from the 1994 album “Happy Songs Will Bring You Down” by The MayTricks.
Episode 18: Plato: What Is Knowledge?
Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Podcast Episodes on April 20th, 2010
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:17:56 — 126.3MB)
Discussing the Theaetetus and the Meno, two dialogs about knowledge.
We’re returning to Plato for a somewhat more thorough treatment than we gave him in Episode 1. This should be considered part two (Hume being #1) of three discussions intended to convey the main conflict in the history of epistemology between the empiricists (like Hume) and the rationalists (like Plato).
We slog through most of the Theaetetus, where Plato considers and rejects a series of mostly very lame conceptions of knowledge and replaces them at the end with… NOTHING. Seth is crushed. In the Meno, knowledge is “remembrance” (maybe), like anything worth knowing can’t be learned but only elicited out of the depths of your unconscious.
Plus, some discussion of recent blog activity here, like our Danto accolades and Wes’s comments on Jerry Fodor and Sam Harris.
Read along: http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/plato_theaetetus.htm and http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/plato_meno01.htm.
If you don’t like the funky background on those pages, just look these up via Project Gutenberg. I notice that those versions have an extensive commentary before the selection, which serves as a useful refresher AFTER you’ve read it as to what happened, as the twists and turns can be difficult to keep in mind.
Oh, and Seth did this diagram to express his love of the Meno.
End song: “Obvious Boy” by Mark Lint and the Fake from the album So Whaddaya Think? (2000).
Episode 15: Hegel on History
Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Podcast Episodes on February 24th, 2010
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Reading G.W.F Hegel’s Introduction to the Philosophy of History. Though he didn’t actually write a book with this name, notes on his lectures on this topic were published after his death, and the first chunk of that serves as a good entrance point to Hegel’s very strange system.
How should a philosopher approach the study of history? Is history just a bunch of random happenings, or is it a purposive force manipulating us to fulfill its hidden ends? If you have asked yourself this question in this way, then you, like Hegel, are mighty strange.
Here we talk about the unfolding of the world-historical spirit, world-historical individuals (hint: not you), dialectic, his alternative to the social contract, the formation of the self based on what others label you, the geist of America, why a constitutional monarchy is obviously the best form of government, and heaps more.
Read with us: Pages 14-128 of http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/hegel/history.pdf or, for a somewhat less intimidating experience (and to read the same translation I have), just pick up a paperback of just the part we’re concerned with: http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0872200566/ref=dp_olp_used?ie=UTF8&condition=used.
End Song: “Cold,” by Madison Lint (2004), described in my music blog.
Episode 14: Machiavelli on Politics
Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Podcast Episodes on February 7th, 2010
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:33:23 — 85.6MB)
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 there for the occupation to work out? Is it OK to display the heads of your enemies on spikes, or should you opt for a respectful diorama?
Besides the famous Prince, Mr. M. wrote, at about the same time, the Discourses on Livy which focus on republics instead of princedoms, so the combined picture is less out of sync with our time than you might think, meaning we talk about G.W. Bush for a bit (sorry).
Plus: An inspirational speech to play at middle school assemblies across the land!
Skim the texts at http://www.constitution.org/mac/prince00.htm and maybe at http://www.constitution.org/mac/disclivy_.htm.
The Isaiah Berlin article we talk about a bit is “The Originality of Machiavelli,” which you read most of if you search for the essay title in this book preview: http://books.google.com/books?id=Zjv9fBU-YRoC&dq=berlin+the+proper+study+of+mankind&source=gbs_navlinks_s
End song: “Se Piangi, Se Ridi” (Mogol/Marchetti/Satti), recorded by Mark Lint in 2000.
Episode 12: Chuang Tzu’s Taoism: What Is Wisdom?
Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Podcast Episodes on December 6th, 2009
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:50:14 — 101.0MB)
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 favorite paragons of virtue (hint: magical powers)?
Featuring special guest panelist Erik Douglas, another U. Texas philosophy grad school dropout now living in England, who knows more about Eastern philosophy than we do.
Read along at http://www.terebess.hu/english/chuangtzu.html.
The end song requires explanation: I had a “New Age” period where I investigated Eastern philosophy, tried to be cheerful all the time, and was generally insufferable. This song, “Pass Time Incorporeal,” is an artifact of that time, with lyrics from early fall 1989; the recording is from 1993. It finally slipped out on a 1996 album of similar goofiness rejected from my “real” albums called “Black Jelly Beans & Smokes.”
Episode 10: Kantian Ethics: What Should We Do?
Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Podcast Episodes on October 19th, 2009
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:05:03 — 114.6MB)
Discussing Fundamental Principles (aka Groundwork) of the Metaphysic of Morals.
We try very hard to make sense of Kant’s major ethical principle, the Categorical Imperative, wherein you should only do what you’d will that EVERYONE do, so, for instance, you should not will to eat pie, because then everyone would eat it and there would be none left for you, so too bad.
Also, Kant on free will, “things in themselves,” our duties to animals, and prostitution! Plus: Should you go to grad school?
The Kant reading can be found at http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/5682. The Allen Wood article “Kant on Duties Regarding Nonrational Nature” is here: http://www.stanford.edu/~allenw/papers/Nonrational.doc.
End song: “Stop” by Madison Lint (2003).
Episode 9: Utilitarian Ethics: What Should We Do?
Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Podcast Episodes on September 18th, 2009
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:59:04 — 109.1MB)
Discussing Jeremy Bentham’s An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation chapters 1-5, John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarianism, and modern utilitarian Peter Singer’s “Famine, Affluence, and Morality.”)
Going full tilt on the Greatest Happiness principle, with talk of gladiators, consensual cannibalism, and illegal downloads. How many Pleetons were in your last orgasm? Should animals count in the utilitarian calculus? What is Bentham’s skull up to nowadays? This extra long episode (patched together from two recording sessions, as Seth’s audio track got toasted for most of the first one) is disgustingly thorough and only occasionally internally redundant.
Read along at http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/bentham01.htm, http://www.utilitarianism.com/mill1.htm, and http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/1972—-.htm (Also, for some more information on Singer’s view of animal liberation, see http://www.utilitarian.org/texts/alm.html.)
End song: “So Whaddaya Think?” by Mark Lint and the Fake (2000).
Episode 7: Wittgenstein’s Tractatus: What Is There and Can We Talk About It?
Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Podcast Episodes on August 19th, 2009
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:27:08 — 79.8MB)
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 Wes and Mark argue about it per usual while Seth corrects our German pronunciation. The first 3/4 of this episode was recorded off-site from our regular equipment, making the audio quality relatively sucky. Enjoy!
One online place to find the reading is http://www.uweb.ucsb.edu/~luke_manning/tractatus/tractatus-jsnav.html.
For a clearer explanation of fact-based ontology, see this short introduction by Bertrand Russell to his lectures on logical atomism: http://www.hist-analytic.org/RussellLAfacts.pdf.
End song: “Facts for a Moment (What You Are to Me),” recorded in 1992 and released on the Mark Linsenmayer album Spanish Armada, Songs of Love and Related Neuroses.
Episode 6: Leibniz’s Monadology: What Is There?
Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Podcast Episodes on July 31st, 2009
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:39:03 — 90.7MB)
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 in all of this?
Plus, does reading philosophy make you a better conversationalist, or just get you ostracized?
Get the reading at http://www.philosophy.leeds.ac.uk/GMR/hmp/texts/modern/leibniz/monadology/monadology.html
End song: The soothing “Healthy Song” by The MayTricks, from the 1994 album Happy Songs Will Bring You Down.
Episode 0: Introduction to the Podcast
Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Podcast Episodes on July 25th, 2009
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 10:06 — 9.3MB)
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 this thing? Do you need to listen to the episodes in order? Do you need to already know a lot about philosophy to get anything out of this podcast? Should you listen to it while pleasuring yourself? Most of these questions will be answered here!
End song: “New People” by New People.
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Episode 16: Danto on Art
Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Podcast Episodes on March 4th, 2010
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:13:28 — 122.3MB)
What effect should the avant garde have on our understanding of what art is? We read three essays by modern, first-rate American philosopher Arthur Danto, all published in The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art (1986): the title essay, “The Appreciation and Interpretation of Works of Art,” and “The End of Art.”
I understand you may not have heard of Danto, and you may think modern art is goofy, but you’ll definitely enjoy this discussion and the reading anyway. Danto gives a picture of philosophy and art at war throughout history: philosophy says that art can’t get at truth and is otherwise useless, yet philosophers like Plato seem afraid of the power of art to corrupt. What’s the deal?
Also, Danto claims that art is over; the end of art has happened. So suck it, artists. (Actually, artists can keep on doing what they’re doing; they’re fine, yet art is still over.) Plus, can you stare at a urinal and thereby make it art? What if it’s in a museum? Danto loves them crazy ass post-modern artists, and thinks that their work shows that art was not what we thought it was.
Plus, Seth talks about the plane crashing into the IRS building near his house, and we respond some listener postings.
This work is unfortunately not available free on the Internet, but is worth your purchase. Try Amazon or your preferred bookseller. We also refer heavily to Calvin Tomkins’s “The Bride and the Bachelors.” For a summary of “The End of Art,” you can read this excerpt from one of Danto’s later books: http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s5911.html. You could also check out the Amazon preview of Danto’s book “The Transfiguration of the Commonplace,” which we refer to a bit.
End song: “This Night Before the End,” by Mark Lint and the Simulacra, recorded mostly in 2000 but finished just now.
academia, aesthetics, Amy Bishop, Andy Warhol, art, art-world, Arthur Danto, avant-garde, Avatar, DVD commentary tracks, G.W.F. Hegel, Immanuel Kant, iPAD, Jessica Berry, John Cage, Joseph Andrew Stack, Karl Marx, Lord of the Rings, Marcel Duchamp, Perseopolis, philosophy, philosophy of history, Picasso, Plato, ready-mades, relativism, religion-bashing, smell-o-vision, The Bride & the Bachelors, University of Texas, virtual reality, Vogon poetry
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