philosophically sound

Discussing The Bodhisattva’s Brain: Buddhism Naturalized (2011) with Owen Flanagan.

What philosophical insights can we modern folks with our science and naturalism (i.e. inclination against super-natural explanations) glean from Buddhisim? Flanagan says plenty: Buddhism is founded on common human experience (not faith), and we can profitably put Buddhist ethics in dialogue with familiar types of virtue ethics. However, we need to be skeptical of any claims to scientific support the superior happiness of Buddhists.

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Flanagan on Buddhism Naturalized - Partially Examined Life

Discussing Spinoza’s Ethics (1677), books 1 and 2.

This is a 32-minute preview of our vintage 1 hr, 38-minute episode which you can buy at partiallyexaminedlife.com/store or get for free with PEL Citizenship (see partiallyexaminedlife.com/membership). You can also purchase the full episode in the iTunes Store: Search for “Partially Spinoza” and look under “Albums.”

We mostly discuss his weird, immanent, non-personal conception of God: God is everything, therefore the world is God as apprehended through some particular attributes, namely insofar as one of his aspects is infinite space (extension, i.e. matter) and insofar as one of his aspects is mind (our minds being chunks or “modes” of the big God mind).

Also, if you’re not going to sell out and go for a university position in philosophy, should you instead grind lenses in your attic without adequate ventilation? (Hint: no) Plus, the Amsterdam of yesterday, whose heady aroma drove people to write like Euclid, property dualism rears its ugly head, and Mel Gibson as Rousseau!

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PREVIEW Spinoza on God - Partially Examined Life

Discussing Plato’s “Apology.”

This reading is all about how Socrates is on trial for acting like an ass and proceeds to act like an ass and so is convicted. Big surprise. On this our inaugural discussion, Mark, Seth, and Wes talk about how philosophers are arrogant bastards who neglect their children, how people of all political stripes don’t usually examine their fundamental beliefs (but probably should), why it might be better to know you know nothing than to only think that you know nothing, and how Plato was a super genius all of whose texts you should worship uncritically. Plus: podcaster philosophical origin stories, like when Wes was bitten by a radioactive Anaxagoras.

The Unexamined Life pt 1 - Partially Examined Life

More discussion of Plato’s “Apology.”  Listen to pt 1 if you haven't already.

The Unexamined Life pt 2 - Partially Examined Life

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)?

Chuang Tzu on Wisdom - Partially Examined Life

Discussing Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time (1927), mostly the intro and ch. 1 and 2 of Part 1.

This is a 33-minute preview of our vintage 1 hr, 52-minute episode which you can buy at partiallyexaminedlife.com/store or get for free with PEL Citizenship (see partiallyexaminedlife.com/membership). You can also purchase the full episode in the iTunes Store: Search for "Partially Heidegger" and look under "Albums."

When philosophers try to figure out what really exists (God? matter? numbers?), Heidegger thinks they’ve forgotten a question that really should come first: what is it to exist? He thinks that instead of asking “What is Being?” we ask, as in a scientific context, “what is this thing?” This approach then poisons our ability to understand ourselves or the world that we as human beings actually inhabit, as opposed to the abstraction that science makes out of this.

This is Seth’s big episode: this was his primary concentration in his later grad school years. Plus: Nazis, trying to figure out things by free associating about their origins in ancient Greek, and whoopee cushion record breaking news!

PREVIEW Heidegger on Being - Partially Examined Life

Discussing 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.

Hegel on History - Partially Examined Life

Eva Brann discusses her book The Logos of Heraclitus (2011).

What is the world like, and how can we understand it? Heraclitus thinks that the answer to both questions is found in “the logos,” which is a Greek word with multiple meanings: it can be an explanation, a word or linguistic meaning, science, rationality (the Latin word is “ratio”), the principle of exchange between things… So the world is logos, in that it behaves in a lawlike manner so that mathematics and science can describe it. His physics imagined a basic material (he calls it fire, but clearly doesn’t mean the same thing as ordinary, visible fire) that transforms in lawlike ways (in definite ratios) into all the different parts of the world, and that it’s these cycles of transformation, driven by the logos itself, that make the world the moving system it is.

The world’s intelligibility–its singular logos–doesn’t mean it’s peaceful, though. The world is held together by tension; the logos is force. Confusingly to modern readers, Heraclitus believes that paradoxes really exist, that what in this discussion we call “stable ambivalences” hold, e.g. that relationships are made up of both love and strife, not in alternation but both, essentially, at the same time. Should this “logos” be thought of as God? Does it have a personality, a will? Is it immanent in the world or a transcendent force shaping the world? Heraclitus says that the logos “is unwilling and willing to be called by the name of Zeus.” It’s a stable ambivalence! Is your MIND BLOWN YET?

Heraclitus on Understanding the World (with Eva Brann) - Partially Examined Life

On Carl Jung’s “Approaching the Unconscious” from Man and His Symbols, written in 1961.

What’s the structure of the mind? Jung followed Freud in positing an unconscious distinct from the conscious ego, but Jung’s picture has the unconscious much more stuffed full of all sorts of stuff from who knows where, including instincts (the archetypes) that tend to give rise to behavior and dream imagery that we’d have to call religious. We neglect this part of ourselves at our psychological peril, and Jung also attributes the ills of the age (like nihilism and WWII) to being out of touch with our larger, unconscious selves.

Sound like goofy pop psychology? Well, Jung’s book was written specifically for the populace, and many have run with his emphasis on spiritual self-knowledge and his openness to talk of the paranormal to conclusions less well founded than Jung would have liked. Mark, Seth, and Wes keep trying to make the text speak to other philosophical works but eventually get sidetracked and occasionally personal on this very special episode.

Jung on the Psyche and Dreams - Partially Examined Life

On “An Introduction to Metaphysics” (1903)

How does metaphysics differ from science? While Kant had dismissed metaphysics as groundless speculation about things beyond human knowledge, Bergson sees it as a matter of grasping things “from the inside.” He calls this “intuition”: the kind of understanding we have of our own inner lives. If you try to describe this with concepts or images, you falsify it, you freeze it into position. That’s necessarily what science does, and is very useful, but doesn’t get at what’s metaphysically fundamental for Bergson, which is the unbroken flow of duration.

The regular foursome are joined by Matt Teichman to try to figure out how this proto-phenomenology is supposed to actually amount to metaphysics, like how you can sympathetically have an intuition about anything besides your own experience.

Bergson on Metaphysics - Partially Exmained Life

On Arthur Schopenhauer’s essays, “On Authorship and Style,” “On Thinking for Oneself,” and “On Genius” (all published 1851).

Is the best way to do philosophy (or any art) to self-consciously build on the work of others to advance the genre? Schopenhauer says no! Geniuses are solitary, original, authentic, naive thinkers. They write because they have something to say, not because they’re being paid. They don’t read too much for fear of being overwhelmed by their influences, and certainly don’t try to remember what they read too well like a scholar would. They think before writing, and get at perennial truths from their own, uniquely grown perspective. So don’t burden them with responsibilities like jobs and families, okay?

Mark, Wes, and Dylan try to figure out whether these harsh commandments hold water or whether S. is just giving excuses for his own unpopularity.

Schopenhauer on Reading, Writing and Thinking - Partially Examined Life

<a href="http://dreaminginthevoid.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Dreaming in the Void blog</a> | <a href="http://soundcloud.com/dreaminginthevoid" target="_blank">Other sounds</a>

"(...) people's dreams contain apprehensions, you know. But it is very difficult to say whether they point to a war, because that idea is uppermost in people's mind. Formerly, you know, it has been much simpler. People didn't think of a war. And therefore it was rather clear what the dreams meant. Nowadays no more so, we are so full of apprehensions, fears, that one doesn't know exactly to what it points. One thing is sure, a great change of our psychological attitude is imminent, that is certain. Because we need more psychology, we need more understanding of human nature because the only real danger that exists is man himself, he is the great danger, and we are pitifully unaware of it. We know nothing of man, far too little. His psyche should be studied because we are the origin of all coming evil."
Carl Jung
Source: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNKvbT_3b0s" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNKvbT_3b0s</a>

Carl Jung on the origin of evil

Whitehead thinks that old-timey metaphysics wrongly insists that what’s fundamental in the world to be studied by science is things (substance) moving around in space and time. We don’t actually experience any such thing as “substance,” so on this view we end up with an uncrossable gap between the world of our experience and that of science. Whitehead wants us to start instead with what we experience, which is events, and figure out how to abstract from those to come up with time, space, objects, and motion.

By getting rid of a pre-existent space-time grid, he also thinks his way of describing nature will accord better with relativity theory, since he allows for multiple space-time frameworks. His explanation involves a lot of tortured 4-dimensional geometry and heaps of weirdly defined terms, but the regular four podcasters are mighty events (not mere people), and we will soldier on to Cleopatra’s Needle and beyond!

This will all be clearer to you if you listen to Mark’s introduction, then you can read more about the topic and get the book.

End song: “Run Away,” by Mark Lint, written in 1987 and recorded in 2005 and 2015. Read about it.

Whitehead on Nature

On Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Truth and Method (1960, ch. 4), “Aesthetics and Hermeneutics” (1964), “The Universality of the Hermeneutical Problem” (1966), and “Hermeneutics as Practical Philosophy” (1972).

Hemeneutics is all about interpretation, primarily of texts, but of other things too, and Gadamer thinks that even if we learn all about the history and customs and probable authorial mindset of a text, there’s still not a single, correct interpretation. We can’t just put aside our prejudices to get to such an objective truth, and in fact without the baggage we bring to a text, we have no purchase from which to begin an interpretation.

Mark, Seth, Wes, and Dylan try to get through all this rich material, discussing science vs. philosophy (again!), modern art, what it is to be practical, and lots more. 

End song: “The Default Relation,” a new song by Mark Lint.

Gadamer's Hermeneutics of Interpretation

On Arthur Schopenhauer’s The World As Will and Representation (1818), book 2.

Sure, we know from our senses and science what the world looks like to creatures like us, but if you buy Kant’s view that this “world as appearance” is a construct of our minds, what’s the reality behind the appearance?

Schopenhauer thinks that we can know this: The world is what he calls “Will,” because just like know what it’s like to be you from the inside (you don’t just see your body move but know what it is to will that body to move), the rest of the world has a comparable inside, and it’s that inside that explains all the striving that we see around us, whether it’s plants growing toward the sun, animals acting on instinct, or physical objects following laws of motion and gravity.

So in a sense, everything is alive, and moreover, it’s all the SAME living thing: a massive, singular Will that exists outside space, time, and the causal chain: It’s a whole different thing than anything we perceive through the senses, yet all those perceived things are somehow manifestations of this Will. It’s like the Force, except blind and futile.

That amounts to some highly chewy metaphysics for the regular four to slobber over. 

Support the podcast by becoming a PEL Citizen or making a donation. Citizens can sign up to remotely attend the Aftershow on 5/3 at 5pm Eastern.

End song: “Sinking” from Mark Lint & the Simulacra, recorded in 2000, mixed just now. Descend into the Will itself!

Schopenhauer on World as Will and Representation

If death is like birth than it can't be the end. 

Epic Carl Jung

Carl Jung about death

Alan Wilson Watts (6 January 1915 – 16 November 1973) was a British philosopher, writer, and speaker, best known as an interpreter and populariser of Eastern philosophy for a Western audience. Born in Chislehurst, England, he moved to the United States in 1938 and began Zen training in New York. Pursuing a career, he attended Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, where he received a master's degree in theology. Watts became an Episcopal priest in 1945, then left the ministry in 1950 and moved to California, where he joined the faculty of the American Academy of Asian Studies.

Towards the end of his life, he divided his time between a houseboat in Sausalito and a cabin on Mount Tamalpais. Many of his books are now available in digital format and many of his recorded talks and lectures are available on the Internet. According to the critic Erik Davis, his "writings and recorded talks still shimmer with a profound and galvanizing lucidity.

Alan Watts - Don't take LIFE too seriously...

Michael talks about feeling the breath; the limits of Jung's ideas of images; how to go beyond internal dialogue and how Jung falls apart for 2 years and how he deals with it. Recorded on September 25, 2012.

Awake in the World Podcast with Michael Stone

Carl Jung & Meditation Practice, Part 4 of 4

<a href="http://dreaminginthevoid.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">DREAMING IN THE VOID BLOG</a> | <a href="http://soundcloud.com/dreaminginthevoid" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Other sounds</a>

The Persona, for Jung, was the social face the individual presented to the world - 'a kind of mask, designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others, and on the other to conceal the true nature of the individual'.

Source:
http://youtu.be/Z6MHRHKd4Ps

Carl Jung on the Persona

Ian Sample speaks to the theoretical physicist Sean Carroll about his mission to demystify quantum mechanics. It won’t be easy, though, as Carroll’s favoured interpretation of this fundamental theory – the ‘many worlds’ interpretation – results in a possibly infinite number of parallel universes. Help support our independent journalism at <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sciencepod">theguardian.com/sciencepod</a>

'Nature is quantum from the start': Sean Carroll, many worlds, and a new theory of spacetime – Science Weekly podcast

Don't let them play you for a fool unless you're one.

philosophically sound

olaf the nord