Posts Tagged epistemology
Episode 17: Hume’s Empiricism: What Can We Know?
Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Podcast Episodes on March 29, 2010
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:05:25 — 114.9MB)
Reading David Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.
David Hume thinks that all we can know are our own impressions, i.e. what our moment-to-moment experiences tell us. Funny thing, though: he thinks that no experience shows us one event causing another event. We only experience one thing happening, then another, and these sequences tend to display a lot of uniformity. So, if we have any legitimate idea of causality at all, it must just be that: regular patterns of conjoined events.
We discuss what Hume thinks this view implies for the free will question, belief in miracles, whether external objects are actually there, Seth’s experience of Towlie, and more.
Read with us: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9662.
End song: “Twitch” by by The MayTricks, from the 1994 album Happy Songs Will Bring You Down.
Episode 2: Descartes’s Meditations: What Can We Know?
Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Podcast Episodes on May 13, 2009
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:39:04 — 90.7MB)
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 agreeing that they disagree. Seth had a long day and is very tired. Plus: Some listener feedback; whom is this here podcast aimed at? Why, you, of course!
To increase your enjoyment, download and read the text.
Here, also, is the Descartes chunk of Philosophy and the Matrix that Seth refers to.
End song: “Axiomatic” by New People from The Easy Thing (2009).
"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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