Posts Tagged Jerry Fodor
Julian Baggini’s Philosophy Monthly – the PEL review
Posted by Seth Paskin in Other (i.e. Lesser) Podcasts on July 30, 2010
So Mark stole my thunder with his post about AC Grayling, as I was preparing my thoughts about Julian Baggini’s regular podcast, Baggini’s Philosophy Monthly. Nonetheless, even though Mark hates and wants to upstage me, I will proceed with my ramblings.
Julian Baggini
I found and started listening to Baggini’s podcast towards the end of last year and was able to reel off a series of cached episodes to get a feel for what he was about. Unlike Philosophy Bites, which consists of coordinated studio interviews, Baggini’s PM typically has more of a ‘Charles Kuralt‘ vibe (look up that reference – old skool!), as he travels around to festivals, conferences, and other assorted gatherings of the philosophically inclined, doing field interviews of philosophers, artists, and others surrounded by the din of beer halls, barking dogs, frolicking children, and the like. Not always, but a lot.
The episodes are a very short: 1/2 hour, usually consisting of 2-3 segments, which Baggini sets up well with edited-in commentary. Read the rest of this entry »
Episode 21: What Is the Mind? (Turing, et al)
Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Podcast Episodes on June 28, 2010
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:20:26 — 128.6MB)
Discussing 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,
End Song: “No Mind” from 1998’s Mark Lint and the Fake Johnson Trio; the whole album is now free online.
"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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