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"I’ve never before heard my work discussed like that, and rarely as intelligently ... I listened to the whole podcast, and felt exalted afterward." -- Arthur Danto
The Partially Examined Life is a philosophy podcast by some guys who were at one point set on doing philosophy for a living but then thought better of it. Each episode, we pick a text and chat about it with some balance between insight and flippancy. You don't have to know any philosophy, or even to have read the text we're talking about to (mostly) follow and (hopefully) enjoy the discussion. Discuss episodes and provide feedback here or via our Facebook group. You can also e-mail comments to mark@marklint.com or wesalwan@gmail.com.
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#1 by What on July 2, 2011 - 12:43 am
Tom is heading for singularity….
#2 by Spinoza on November 18, 2011 - 1:51 am
Suggestions for topics:
*1) Leibniz vs. Locke*
2) H.L. Mencken
3) Parmenides
4) Anarchism
5) Pyrrho
6) More Spinoza
7) Avicenna
#3 by Tim on January 11, 2012 - 9:48 pm
As for suggestion number 4, it would be interesting to hear an episode on Robert Paul Wolff. If you’re going to broach the topic (though I’m not sure you’re remotely interested), he certainly has more to dig your teeth into philosophically than say, Kropotkin. And he does interesting, original things with Kantian ethics, which I know is something Mark mentioned in the Kantian ethics episode as being hard to find.
#4 by Chris Mullen on January 16, 2012 - 11:42 pm
I would hardly count Robert Paul Wolff as the best exponent or representative of Anarchism. If classic Anarchists do not have the kind of philosophical meat necessary to engage people’s attention (a debatable point itself), i would suggest looking into people like Todd May. May’s The Political Philosophy of Poststructuralist Anarchism has plenty to chew on although May’s interpretation of Anarchism might not be representative of Anarchism in general.
#5 by Joan Brown on January 23, 2012 - 5:50 am
for an intro to anarchist political theory:
crispin sartwell’s ‘against the state’
#6 by Tiffany on January 28, 2012 - 6:10 pm
Great show! I have been been going through your podcasts like water.
Suggestions!
1) Habermas
2) something in legal jurisprudence (Like Hart, Ronald Dworkin or Lon Fuller )
#7 by Joan Brown on November 20, 2011 - 11:37 pm
Hi guys,
Came upon the PEL a few weeks ago, and have begun listening my way from the beginning. Just finished w/the Danto episode, and am thoroughly enjoying the discussions. Though my knowledge of philosophy was pretty unsophisticated (an undergrad class in Aesthetics, coincidentally, utilizing Danto’s Brillo Box text!), an intense relationship with a philosophy professor sparked a love for the language, the topic, the history of thought, from plato and aristotle, to Lao, thoreau, lucretious, hume, kant, and zizek.
Well, maybe not so much zizek. Anyway, I am looking forward to the continuing the journey.
#8 by Joan Brown on November 20, 2011 - 11:42 pm
PS: I find the conversations intensely relaxing. That is my only problem with the podcast…I listen late at night, and am soothed to sleep by your voices, especially Wes’!
Actually, this is quite a lovely thing.
To sleep, with interesting thoughts…
Joan
#9 by Wes Alwan on November 20, 2011 - 11:51 pm
Thank you! (I think
)
#10 by Joan on November 21, 2011 - 9:55 am
You are welcome. Quite definitively.
#11 by Shane on November 27, 2011 - 9:24 pm
The Danto and Churland episodes were great!
How about stuff like:
Virtue Epistemology
Philosophy of Time and/or Time perception
Chalmers on Consciousness
and
Gadamer
I love the podcast!
Shane
#12 by Philip on December 1, 2011 - 2:31 pm
Great job so far. Perhaps Absurdity could be an interesting topic for a session. Thomas Nagel’s ‘The Absurd’ and Sartre just pop into mind. In any case, keep it up.
#13 by jenlight on December 2, 2011 - 10:25 pm
Slavoj Zizek.
Mostly because I think it would be hilarious.
Listening to the phenomenology ep right now and I’m going to listen to every single episode after. Thank you for reminding me why I got into philosophy.
I did it for the jokes!
#14 by Tim on January 11, 2012 - 9:01 pm
Oh god…. [massive eye roll]
Actually, after listening to an episode recently (I think it was the one on Kantian ethics) where you made a joke about Lacan, I’d kind of love to hear an entire episode where you just railed on the guy. The ones where you make fun of the reading are always the best! (Hegel’s philosophy of history, for instance)
I remember seeing recently that some artist had put together a book titled “Collected Jokes of Slavoj Zizek” but unfortunately I think it was just a one off (copyright issues, I’d imagine). Ignoring the fact that he’s full of shit, the guy can actually be fairly amusing.
#15 by Joan Brown on December 4, 2011 - 4:51 pm
just finished episode 28, on goodman’s ‘art as epistemology’.
thoroughly enjoyable. i am catching on.
i don’t understand all the ‘ism’s, but get a general contextual sense any time you use any, and that is a good thing!
i feel my schema evolving as i listen.
hey, have you read ‘the swerve’? , the store of the discovery of lucretius’ ‘on the nature of things’? great book, not so rigorous, but full of beautiful, liquid prose, and enough references to keep an intellectual happy. ( well, i was kept happy, though i am not sure that i am an intellectual…;)
#16 by Mark Linsenmayer on December 4, 2011 - 6:15 pm
Thanks, Joan. No, I’ve not read that; thanks for the reference.
#17 by Joan Brown on December 4, 2011 - 4:52 pm
sorry…the story of.
#18 by Barry on December 15, 2011 - 4:44 am
I think Saul Kripke’s Wittgenstein: On Rules and Private Language would be a good subject for an episode. It’s relatively short. It sets up what Kripke calls a “skeptical paradox” and solves it. The discussion of the paradox is interesting and whether or not it has been solved is debatable.
#19 by David Butler on December 22, 2011 - 10:06 pm
Hi guys
Thanks for all the great podcasts. As a research/PhD student studying contemporary art and theory your Danto episode was a revelation. Having spent the last few years in a state of permanent frustration on account of the much eulogised, often quoted yet rarely explained Deleuzian texts (Difference & Repetition, Thousand Plateaus *insert any other title of his pain in the ass prose*) with little reward, the clear and concise writing of Danto has been a lifesaver.
While I still need to check out your ‘art as epistemology’ episode I was wondering if you’d be tackling any other art related areas soon? Or if you had any further art philosophy/theory recommendations akin to Danto?
Also I have recently stumbled upon Herbert Marcuse’s ‘Art And Liberation’ and would be interested to hear any comments you guys may have about this text or the author if you are familiar with it/him as, despite hearing he was a total fruitcake towards the end there, this text seems to occupy an interesting area between numerous subjects you have discussed in other podcast episodes such as; freedom, the ‘end of art’ etc.
Regards, David.
#20 by Sean on December 23, 2011 - 10:38 am
Hey, I’m so glad I found your podcast! Most of the source material is a little too thick for me. So nice to be exposed to the powerful ideas without having to cut my teeth. I can’t tell you how appreciative I am of the work you three are doing!
#21 by Seth Paskin on December 23, 2011 - 4:31 pm
Thanks Sean – don’t be intimidated by the readings: some of the stuff is hard and it helps to have a lot of background, but some of it is very readable. I feel the same way about poetry and was scared out of reading it by academics. I’m just now getting into it and recognize that, while I would appreciate some things more if I knew the history of poetry and who people hung or studied with, etc. I’d get more out of it, but my experience as-is is totally legitimate.
Use this forum and our FB groups to ask questions or puzzle through ideas as needed and welcome!
–seth
#22 by Laura on December 23, 2011 - 8:42 pm
“A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world.”
-Albert Camus
#23 by Joanne on December 25, 2011 - 4:39 am
Thank you for this podcast! Always something to learn or ponder…
#24 by Seth Paskin on December 26, 2011 - 9:57 am
Thanks Joanne for listening!
#25 by Kyle on December 25, 2011 - 11:51 pm
simple requests
Richard Rorty from ‘mirror of nature’
Karl Popper from ‘conjecture and refutation’ (Dylan to guest)
#26 by Seth Paskin on December 26, 2011 - 10:04 am
I put them on the list, thanks!
#27 by Stephanie on December 29, 2011 - 6:11 pm
Can I request Wittgenstein”s Philosophical Investigations? Its a fairly large text I know but perhaps an episode on philosophy as therapy or his private language argument… Any topic really. I thought the Tractatus episode was hilarious and I’m just curious to hear some opinions on his later text as well.
#28 by Mark Linsenmayer on December 29, 2011 - 6:19 pm
It’s planned for one of the next four episodes!
#29 by Chris Baker on December 30, 2011 - 2:09 pm
Wow.
I just happened upon your pod. What a gem! You guys definitely belong in the top 10.
Are you planning on doing a pod on linguistic relativity any time soon? I would really appreciate your take on this… Noam Chomsky vis a vis Dan Everett would really make me happy.
#30 by Joanne on December 31, 2011 - 6:15 am
Hi! Any chance you would consider discussing Peter Singer? I’m thinking about applying to a Bioethics masters program, and would love your opinions about that too. Thanks, Happy New Year!
#31 by Mark Linsenmayer on December 31, 2011 - 7:57 am
We discussed him some near the end of our utilitarianism episode.
#32 by Joanne on December 31, 2011 - 11:02 am
I really enjoyed the Utilitarian episode! I don’t fully agree with Singer but you can find a lot to discuss with him! Especially if you think about the “Left” verses “Right” in our country and the economy. “One World” and ” Famine, Affluence and Morality” seem relevant. Or I just have too much time to think…. Happy New Years!
#33 by Seth Paskin on January 8, 2012 - 8:22 pm
Happy New Year to you as well!
#34 by Kate on January 8, 2012 - 11:36 am
I love your podcasts, they make me look forward to driving! Have you thought of doing one on the Presocratic philosphers?
#35 by Seth Paskin on January 8, 2012 - 8:26 pm
We’ve considered it, but I think we’re not 100% sure how we would approach it and are worried about getting into an etymological quagmire.
Let me recommend Peter Adamson’s History of Philosophy podcast for a good roundup of the PreSocratics if you are looking for a survey of their thought and development leading to ‘the golden age’.
–seth
#36 by Kate on January 10, 2012 - 3:06 pm
Wow that podcast is amazing for the history stuff, thank you so much! (I also feel like a little bit of a nerd for thinking “oh my god, Seth Paskin replied to me”)
#37 by Wes on January 14, 2012 - 12:07 pm
Love the podcast, guys. It’s refreshing to hear a podcast on philosophy that’s fun and intelligent, yet not riddled with overly academic indulgences. As a student of Global Studies and Philosophy at my college, I’ll indeed be using your podcasts as tools for current and future studies.
Suggestions for podcasts…
Cosmopolitanism
Stoicism
#38 by Mark Linsenmayer on January 14, 2012 - 12:53 pm
What reading for Cosmo?
#39 by Wes on January 14, 2012 - 1:24 pm
Kant’s “Perpetual Peace,” Derrida’s “On Cosmopolitanism,” Jugen Habermas’s “Political Constitution for the Pluralist World Society,” the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, etc. From what I’ve read of cosmopolitanism, Kant’s “Perpetual Peace” seems to be the seminal text.
#40 by David Clark on January 15, 2012 - 1:16 am
If you’re considering doing an episode on cosmopolitanism, I’d love to hear more about Isaiah Berlin and his value pluralism. Philosophy Bites did a terrific podcast on the topic –
http://philosophybites.com/2007/11/henry-hardy-on.html
#41 by Tim on January 14, 2012 - 3:54 pm
a few suggestions (I’m sure some of these have been made before)…
Henri Bergson
Alfred North Whitehead
Martin Buber
J.L. Austin
Jurgen Habermas
Richard Rorty
I’m a filmmaker, and if you ever wanted to do some additional aesthetics episodes, I’d be super interested to hear your take on some philosophy of film. Noel Carroll’s Theorizing the Moving Image, Stanley Cavell’s The World Viewed, or Gilles Deleuze’s Cinema 1 and Cinema 2 would all make great topics.
#42 by Mark Linsenmayer on January 14, 2012 - 5:20 pm
Great suggestions! Every one of these is on our list!
#43 by Daniel Horne on January 14, 2012 - 8:23 pm
Ditto Stanley Cavell!
#44 by Chris Mullen on January 17, 2012 - 12:52 am
I would highly recommend Buber’s I and Thou which was a difficult and rewarding book even if one does not hold to the underlying theology involved (which i do not and a secular reading is not that difficult to arrive at).
#45 by Ryan Usher on January 14, 2012 - 9:23 pm
I’d be interested in hearing more on aesthetics as well although with more of a bent towards music (such as UT professor Kathleen Higgins’ book, “The Music of Our Lives”) or nature (UW professor Ronald Moore recently wrote a book called, “Natural Beauty: A Theory of Aesthetics Beyond the Arts), although getting a hold of the books I specifically mentioned would involve buying them, maybe there’s something else to draw upon that’s in the public domain?
I would also love to see a podcast on moral particularism (a popular proponent being another UT professor: Jonathan Dancy – his book is called, “Ethics Without Principles”), or the bizarre and intriguing (for me at least) viewpoint of vengeance as a moral right/duty – two books on that subject being: “The Virtues of Vengeance” by Peter A. French and “Getting Even: Forgiveness and its Limits” by Jeffrie G. Murphy; Murphy also did another book with Jean Hampton called, “Forgiveness and Mercy” that tackles similar issues, adding Hampton to counter his arguments.
I also second (third?) the suggestion to do a ep. on stoicism.
#46 by Chris Mullen on January 17, 2012 - 12:50 am
You folk have an upcoming discussion on Race and Philosophy as Mark mentioned recently. I would suggest looking into Blackness Visible: Essays on Philosophy and Race by Charles W. Mills (You can sample read it here) . He also has an interesting take on contract theory in his The Racial Contract (a review of the book can be read here.
I also found an interesting examination about the concept of “personhood” in the work of Kant that Mills claims is predicated on “race” that could be a minor supplement to any potential conversation.
#47 by Laura on January 17, 2012 - 3:37 pm
Not to veer too far from the core of our lives here but I guess many of you are aware of the SOPA/PIPA legislation…and that many websites are closing down tomorrow in protest…
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/01/how-pipa-and-sopa-violate-white-house-principles-supporting-free-speech
Just thought I’d mention it as the digital universe is architecture we all live within, and free speech is the foundation–which we can never allow to crumble…
#48 by Hunter on January 17, 2012 - 7:22 pm
I’m going to join in the calls for a stoicism episode, specifically for Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. Gregory Hays’ translation in particular is excellent, stripped down and modern but very moving at the same time.
#49 by Thomas on January 20, 2012 - 10:08 pm
Topic suggestion: Marquis de Sade and libertinism
#50 by Seth Paskin on January 21, 2012 - 10:07 am
Thanks Thomas. What would you say is the central philosophical question posed?
#51 by Thomas on January 21, 2012 - 10:50 am
Vice (amoral) life and the pursuit of pleasure as the good life. Alternatively, nature, not God, as the source of human morality.
#52 by Matt on January 22, 2012 - 11:48 pm
I think a Quine episode would be great. Esp. Two Dogmas or On What There Is.
David and Stephanie Lewis “Holes.” I think this would be particularly entertaining to listen to you guys have some fun with this paper. It was written to be entertaining (or at least, as much fun as ontology can be)
#53 by Wes Alwan on January 24, 2012 - 2:28 pm
Hi Matt — Quine is on our list; and I’ll check out “Holes” — thanks very much.
#54 by Bruce Adam on January 25, 2012 - 8:54 pm
Hi
I just listened to the Goodman on art episode. At one point ,one of the three sages remarked that, on reading Brave New World, he’d felt like asking Huxley to lay out his philosophy and skip the storytelling. This struck a chord as I’d classified literature myself as follows. The gold standard used language to communicate truths which transcend reason…and Joyce’s Ulysses was my prime example. The silver was a tale which communicated a truth by allegory or metaphor…and here Camus was the exemplary author. The bronze merely uses a tale as an illustration of ideas and an excuse to present lectures and essays in the form of dialogues and introspections. Here Aldous Huxley was the perfect case. Which I think is the point one of you was making in the podcast.
Now…….there’s been a podcast on Camus. Ulysses gets a mention in most episodes so……..please make my day and do a podcast on Huxley. Brave New Word and BNW Revisited compared with Island, say. Or Doors of Perception, Heaven and Hell and The Perennial Philosophy . There’s more than enough content to keep you busy for a couple of podcasts at least.
#55 by Seth Paskin on January 26, 2012 - 12:12 pm
Thanks Bruce and I like you Platonic distinction of literary use of language. I think we’d all be open to Huxley at some point, though I’ve always thought of him (them?) as broad social intellectuals going beyond philosophy. I can tell you that Dylan is driving us towards a Cormack McCarthy episode soon that should be fun.
#56 by Hunter on February 13, 2012 - 2:34 pm
Hi
On Huxley, he wrote a work called “Ends and Means: An Enquiry into the Nature of Ideals and into the Methods employed for their Realization” that is probably his most complete explanation of his own philosophy. Its sort of a guidebook for achieving what he calls the society of the prophets and goes into his social (non violence, decentralization) and metaphysical views (the mystics have the right idea). I don’t know if it is in print anymore, I found it as a PDF.
A Cormac McCarthy episode would be neat, though I’m not sure where that would go. It makes me think of Dostoevsky and how while his characters have well articulated philosophical positions he is not actually attempting to argue for the validity of most of them. In any case the Judge from Blood Meridian is probably the best “philosophical” villain I’ve ever encountered.
#57 by Bruce Adam on January 27, 2012 - 3:04 pm
Thanks Seth, this sounds promising. The reference in your response, to ( them ) must refer to the fact that three Huxleys are contenders for discussion on PEL. I was thinking only of Aldous , but a separate discussion on the humanism of Julian would also be welcome. I’m only familiar with his anthology, The Humanist Frame.
But don’t let me distract you from Aldous . He’s mainly known for his fiction, and only one or two books at that, but there’s so much more.
#58 by John in Hong Kong on January 30, 2012 - 2:54 am
I thought that given the disdain held for Dennett by one of the guys here (it’s Wes, right?) you might appreciate the review I found of Dennett on rate my professors dot com (apparently this review is no longer extant). The student wrote:
I know he’s supposed to be a genius, but he really doesn’t care even remotely about his students. Extraordinarily arrogant, but not in a cool way like a super villain or the bad guy in Titanic. I guess you have to be good looking to pull that one off.
#59 by Seth Paskin on January 30, 2012 - 11:48 am
Nice!
#60 by Adam on January 31, 2012 - 11:10 am
I just discovered the show. I love it!
If I could suggest a topic for an episode, I would love to hear an episode on media theory. I’m thinking specifically Marshall McLuhan or Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent.
#61 by nicolai koroslev on January 31, 2012 - 11:18 pm
I find it tough to get the full gist of Alian Badiou’s writings…is there any chance you guys plan on doing any of his works?
#62 by Ryan on February 1, 2012 - 12:07 am
I would also enjoy a talk on Badiou, as well as Laruelle, but they should probably at least be preceded by the likes of Bergson, Deleuze, Derrida, as well as many others before addressing this strain of philosophy, so I realize all of this is probably somewhere well down the line. It would still be nice to see it recognized before then.
#63 by Mica on February 8, 2012 - 6:16 pm
I’ve just noticed your recent podcast on ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’. I’ve not listened to it yet but I’m looking forward to. I just wanted to recommend the sequel to the book ‘LIla: An enquiry into morals’ (Again I’ve not listened to the podcast yet so I don’t know if you talk about it a little there or are already aware of it) but it is much better than the first of the books and is packed with much more juicy philosophy for discussion than the first and so I think it would be better for your purposes.
#64 by Mark Linsenmayer on February 9, 2012 - 1:24 pm
Thanks, Mica, take a look at the recent blog posts here for some Lila discussion. Welcome!
#65 by Jeff on February 13, 2012 - 9:48 pm
Would you guys consider doing a show on Korzybski and General Semantics? His is a fascinating story, in some ways analogous to Wittgenstein in the way he attacks problems in modern thought and language habits from the perspective of an engineer. I realize that GS has never had any kind of official status within the academy (and I seem to recall someone calling it “the idiot stepchild of logical positivism” or something along those lines), but it has been quite influential in certain fields like psychotherapy and media studies (via Hayakawa and Neil Postman).
#66 by Mark Linsenmayer on February 14, 2012 - 10:03 am
We’ve got a Wittgenstein on language episode coming up w/in the next couple of months; I’ll make sure to look up Korzybski in the course of my prep… I’m not at all familiar with him.
#67 by dmf on February 14, 2012 - 10:35 am
John Shotter has some interesting work on Wittgenstein and communication theory:
http://pubpages.unh.edu/~jds/
#68 by Jeff on February 14, 2012 - 11:22 am
Mark:
Cool.
Here’s a short overview of GS that I wrote as a model entry for my students as part of a media ecology wiki we’ve been working on for several years:
http://iwcmediaecology.pbworks.com/w/page/8480805/General%20Semantics
Here’s a blog dedicated to GS with good stuff:
http://korzybskifiles.blogspot.com/
Korzybski’s first book “Manhood of Humanity” is available via project Gutenberg here:
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25457
His important paper “Time-Binding: A General Theory” is here:
http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/korzybski_timebind01.htm
Korzybski’s summa, “Science and Sanity” is on Scribd:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/8635819/Alfred-Korzybski-Science-and-Sanity-An-Introduction-to-Nonaristotelian-Systems-and-General-Semantics
#69 by Jeff on February 14, 2012 - 11:55 am
One final thought: I am really curious to hear what you guys make of this stuff, coming from an analytical tradition. I have almost no training in philosophy myself, so I don’t really have the proper context.
I might hazard to guess that Korzybski could be seen as someone mostly synthesizing, popularizing, and applying insights and breakthroughs made originally by Russell, Whitehead, Wittgenstein and others.
He is interesting here, I think, because he is not an academic philosopher and does not identify as one. He begins as, and remains throughout his career, an engineer, a problem-solver. Thus all the efforts put into setting up a foundation, training disciples, therapists, etc. He does not accept the idea that this kind of intellectual work should leave the world unchanged. And his efforts to use GS insights and therapies to treat PTS in WWII soldiers is the perfect illustration. Maybe he’s not a philosopher at all, but more a “philosophical-therapeutic theorist.”
#70 by Loren on February 17, 2012 - 4:42 pm
Hi guys,
As a first-time listener to your show on Pirsig, I was generally very engaged with your discussion, but was immediately turned off when you began exploring the qualities of human preconception and abstracted experience around minute 40. In that section, your podcast essentially attempted to distinguish what in the human mind is “nature” [shared, non culturally influenced human experience], from what is “nurture” [experience abstracted by cultural distinctions, such as language], and how both influence the quality of experience.
Quite a bit of what you were discussing has already been explored in some depth by scientific inquiry, particularly by the fields of neuroscience, linguistics, and statistically-based economics. While I appreciate the past and present contributions to scientific thought by natural philosophers, I cannot see how there is much to be gained by discussing without scientific reference hypotheses that have already been deeply [though not completely conclusively] explored.
Specifically, I was shocked when it was said that “no analysis of fact is going to give you a goal”. That is a purely factual claim, completely disprovable dependent upon what the factual input is, and whether the factual input goes to our shared physiological human development or not. It almost seems to assert that human impulse and instinct would not exist but for cultural qualitative input; this is demonstrably untrue.
#71 by Mark Linsenmayer on February 17, 2012 - 7:05 pm
Welcome, Loren. Thanks for the comment.
Yes, philosophers have the nasty habit of talking about perception and acculturation and all of that without getting into neuroscience or much other science. This is partly because science tends to ignore phenomenology, i.e. actual first-person experience; partly because philosophy qua theoretical science is all about trying to get clear on the schematics of processes like perception and self-knowledge and other things, understanding that this schema then has to be enacted in some neurological way that is more boring to talk about if you just want to understand as opposed to treat with a drug; and partly out of laziness. While I’d welcome any insight that listeners (or participants) have in the way of specific, relevant scientific findings, just saying in general “you’re not bringing in specific science, so you’re not addressing the issue” is more or less to dismiss philosophy altogether. All I can say is that I find the stories that come out of philosophy here useful, and not typically reducible to scientific questions, notably because you have to get the conceptual business of science straight before you can design experiments or figure out what constitutes a finding for what. If you’re interested, do listen to our epistemology series of episodes here: http://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/podcast-topics/#epistemology. I think that’s largely what our focus was, as opposed to the nature/culture distinction, which we do discuss in our social contract episodes (http://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/podcast-topics/#politics). In general, our focus in any given episode is on a text, so if Pirsig didn’t see it as relevant to bring in a bunch of specific science (and his primary training was in science, so there was certainly a reason for this), then we didn’t either.
Re. the specific claim about facts vs. goals, you can hear more about that on our Smith/Hume episode (http://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/2011/10/29/episode-45-moral-sense-theory-hume-and-smith/) and some of our other ethics episodes. The point is not that we don’t have impulses and instincts. It’s rather that if we DIDN’T have these (or some other kinds of sentiments about what we want to or ought to do), then no analysis of facts is going to give us those goals. Someone like Kant thinks that we get obligations just from reason alone, from looking at the a priori relations of ideas. Ayn Rand likewise sounds like this: reason itself tells you to be selfish. But the recognition that something is damaging to you, or someone is killing someone else… none of that has any ethical or motivational implication if you don’t already have some prior ethical or instinctual or emotional impetus that tells you that such a thing could be stopped.
#72 by Ryan on February 17, 2012 - 9:37 pm
That alleged hard distinction always made between scientists getting things done and philosophers hanging out in the back of the room sniffing glue together is pretty tired. It’s also blatantly ignorant of the history of interplay between research programs and the speculative theories they themselves generate that drives creative experiment. When you say these fields have been, “explored in some depth by scientific inquiry,” what you meant to say was that, “groups of people, each armed with partial and greatly differing understandings of the sum total of human knowledge concerning science and philosophy, in so far as they can be inadequately reduced to two distinct fields, have so far explored the world in only very minor depth, and this is also assuming without justification that there is some calculable finite end to be reached by them.”
Concerning economics, please never use that word in the same sentence as science again. The past century of academic neoliberal wankery has resulted in nothing better than a ouija board for bankers to direct the course of nations on. Modern neurological research is equally contemptible.
Specifically, you say PEL’s claim about intentionality might be tested based on whether factual input “goes to” shared physiological human development. What would it mean for factual (abstract, immaterial) input to affect biological organisms? It’s also a laughably sterile definition of a goal, let’s keep in mind the atrocities that are committed so regularly we’ve forcibly pent ourselves up together among stuffy, safe little crowds of people. Often goals consist in exactly that which we think might adversely work against other people.
I agree with you about the tendency for philosophers to make fallacious nature/nurture divides. However, science is equally culpable, and I’ll suggest that your immediate compulsion was simply a result of having it ingrained in to your head that philosophy is necessarily stepping beyond its bounds when it attempts to address the sciences. Try and think a little bit more critically.
#73 by David on February 18, 2012 - 9:17 pm
First things first. Great show guys!
May I perhaps suggest a show on the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze?
Greetings from Sweden!