The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

Discussing Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s utopian novel Herland (1915) and psychologist Carol Gilligan's In a Different Voice (1983). This is a 30-minute preview of our vintage 1 hr, 35-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 Examined Feminists" and look under "Albums." How does human nature, and specifically moral psychology, vary by sex? Charlotte Perkins Gilman claims that when philosophers have described human nature as violent and selfish, they have in mind solely male nature. Females, left to themselves in an isolated society, would be supremely peaceful, rational, and cooperative. Carol Gilligan says accounts of "normal" moral development have not taken into account observations of women: instead of judging women my male standards and finding them wanting, she hypothesized a trajectory specific to women that acknowledged their emphasis on concrete care as opposed to abstract moral principles. Featuring the return of Seth and guest podcaster Azzurra Crispino, whom you might recall from our Kant epistemology episode. We wanted this to be an introduction to feminist philosophy, and so talk a bit about exploitation and whether heterosexual sex is inherently oppressive, and other fun topics, but mostly it's just a discussion of two books. But they're good ones! Read more about the topic. Buy Herland or read it online. Buy In a Different Voice. End song: "Mother's Day" by Mark Linsenmayer (2007). Read about it.

We spoke with Patricia Churchland after reading her new book Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us About Morality. We also discussed David Hume's ethics as foundational to her work, reading his Treatise on Human Nature (1739), Book III, Part I and his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), Section V, Parts I and II. This is a 33-minute preview of our vintage 1 hr, 45-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 Churchland" and look under "Albums." What does the physiology of the brain have to do with ethics? What bearing do facts have on values? Churchland thinks that while Hume is (famously) correct in saying that you can't deduce "ought" from "is," the fact that we have moral sentiments is certainly relevant to figuring out what our ethical positions should be, and it's her main goal to figure out what the mechanisms behind those moral sentiments are: What brain parts and processes are involved? How and when did these evolve? How did cultural factors come into play, building on top of our biological capacity to care for others? Pat spoke with Mark and Dylan Casey here about topics ranging from the war on drugs to the rationale of punishment to Sam Harris's book The Moral Landscape. Read some more initial thoughts (and some substantial discussion in readers' comments) here. To read along with us, buy Pat's book.You can find the Hume selections here and here. End song: "Bring You Down" from the 1994 album Happy Songs Will Bring You Down by The MayTricks.

Discussing The Republic by Plato, primarily books 1 and 2. This is a 31-minute preview of our vintage 1 hr, 37-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 Examined Republic" and look under "Albums." What is justice? What is the ideal type of government? In the dialogue, Socrates argues that justice is real (not just a fiction the strong make up) and that it's not relative to who you are (in the sense that it would always be just to help your friends and hurt your enemies). Justice ends up being a matter of balancing your soul so the rational part is in control over the rest of you. The Republic is Plato's utopia, described by analogy with justice in the individual: In the ideal state, the rational people will be in charge, and these leaders should go through rigorous conditioning and live communally (spouse sharing!) in order for them to serve the state effectively. You'll hear Wes and Dylan Casey talk about their St. John's experiences (the "Johnny" discussion-only format provides a chief model for P.E.L.'s). Plus, Gay Girl from Damascus, which music degrades your character, and does suffering make people morally worse? Buy the book or read the cheesy, old translation online. End song: "Manager," from the 2011 New People album, Impossible Things (song written in 1997).

Discussing Friedrich Schleiermacher's "On Religion; Speeches to its Cultured Despisers" (1799, with notes added 1821), first and second speeches. This is a 33-minute preview of our vintage 1 hr, 43-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 Schleiermacher" and look under "Albums." Does religion necessarily conflict with science? Schleiermacher says no: the essence of religion is an emotional response to life; it doesn't give knowledge or even tell us what to do exactly. Moreover, this attitude is a necessary to fully enter into life, to be a whole and fulfilled person. Yes, he's of the "romantic" school, but his approach can still be seen today in liberal Protestant churches. Featuring guest podcaster and blog contributor Daniel Horne. Read the text online or buy the book.We compared this to Kant's Religion Within the Bounds of Bare Reason. End song: "Remembrance" by Fingers. Read about it.

Discussing Russell's Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1919), ch. 1-3 and 13-18. This is a 33-minute preview of our vintage 1 hr, 31-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 Examined Russell" and look under "Albums." How do mathematical concepts like number relate to the real world? Russell wants to derive math from logic, and identifies a number as a set of similar sets of objects, e.g. "3" just IS the set of all trios. Hilarity then ensues. This book is a shortened and much easier to read version of Russell and Whitehead's much more famous Principia Mathematica, and given that we can't exactly walk through the specific steps of lots of proofs on a purely audio podcast (nor would we want to put you through that), we spend some of the discussion comparing analytic (with its tendency to over-logicize) and continental (with its tendency towards obscurity) philosophy. Featuring guest podcaster and number guy Josh Pelton, filling in for Seth. Read with us online or buy the book. End song: "Words and Numbers," by Madison Lint (read more about this tune).

Discussing John Locke's Second Treatise on Government (1690). This is a 30-minute preview of our vintage 1 hr, 34-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 Locke" and look under "Albums." What makes political power legitimate? Like Hobbes, Locke thinks that things are less than ideal without a society to keep people from killing us, so we implicitly sign a social contract giving power to the state. But for Locke, nature's not as bad, so the state is given less power. But how much less? And what does Locke think about tea partying, kids, women, acorns, foreign travelers, and calling dibs? The part of Wes is played by guest podcaster Sabrina Weiss. Read along with us with online or buy the book. End song: "Lock Them Away," by Madison Lint (2003).

Part 2 of our discussion of G.F.W. Hegel's "Phenomenology of Spirit," covering sections 178-230 within section B, "Self-Consciousness." Part 1 is here. This is a 32-minute preview of our vintage 1 hr, 32-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 Hegel" and look under "Albums." First, Hegel's famous "master and slave" parable, whereby we only become fully self-conscious by meeting up with another person, who (at least in primordial times, or maybe this happens to everyone as they grow up, or maybe this is all just happening in one person's head... who the hell knows given the wacky way Hegel talks)? Then the story leads into stoicism, skepticism, and the "unhappy consciousness" (i.e. Christianity). We are again joined by Tom McDonald, though Wes is out sick. Wild speculation and disagreements of interpretation abound! Buy the peach translation by A.V. Milleror read this online translation by Terry Pinkard. End song: “I Die Desire,” by Mark Lint and the Fake from the album So Whaddaya Think? (2000).

Discussing G.F.W. Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), Part B (aka Ch. 4), "Self-Consciousness," plus recapping the three chapters before that (Part A. "Consciousness"). This is a 30-minute preview of our vintage 1 hr, 28-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 Hegel" and look under "Albums." This is discussion one of two: here we only get as far as "The Truth of Self-Certainty," i.e. sections 166-177. This is plenty, though, as this may be the most difficult text in the history of philosophy. We discuss Hegel's weird dialectical method and what it says about his metaphysics, in particular about ourselves: not static, pre-formed balls of self-interest, but something that needs to be actively formed through reflection, which in turn is only possible because of our interactions with other people. Featuring guest podcaster Tom McDonald. Buy the book, or you look at this alternate translation by Terry Pinkard online. I highly recommend having one of these open to read along, as the text is very hard to follow. End song: "Ann(e)" by Mark Lint, written in late 1991 shortly after my exposure to this book and completed in 2010 for the music blog.

Discussing Gottlob Frege's "Sense and Reference," "Concept and Object" (both from 1892) and "The Thought" (1918). This is a 33-minute preview of our vintage 1 hr, 48-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 Frege" and look under "Albums." What is it about sentences that make them true or false? Frege, the father of analytic philosophy who invented modern symbolic logic, attempted to codify language in a way that would make this obvious, which would ground mathematics and science. Applying his symbolic system to natural language forced him to invent strange entities like "thoughts" and "senses" that are neither physical nor psychological, and we pretty much spend this episode kvetching about the metaphysical implications of this and the fact that Frege didn't care about them. Featuring guest podcaster Matt Teichman, who also hosts Elucidations. Read along: "The Thought," "On Sense and Reference," "On Concept and Object," and we also read Frege's introduction (p. 12-25) to his book The Basic Laws of Arithmetic: Exposition of the System (1904), or just buy this book. End song: "The Great Forgotten Lover," from the 2011 New People album, Impossible Things.

Discussing Michel de Montaigne's Essays: "That to Philosophize is to Learn to Die," "Of Experience," "Of Cannibals," "Of the Education of Children," and "Of Solitude" (all from around 1580) with some discussion of "Apology for Raymond Sebond." This is a 32-minute preview of our vintage 1 hr, 41-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 Examined Montaigne" and look under "Albums." Renaissance man Montaigne tells us all how to live, how to die, how to raise our kids, that we don't know anything, and a million Latin quotations. Montaigne put the skeptical fire under Descartes and both draws upon and mocks a great deal of ancient Greek and Roman philosophy. Plus, he's actually fun to read. The role of Seth is played this time by our guest podcaster Dylan Casey. Read along here; the translation we all read is available for purchase. End song: "I Like Life" from Mark Lint and the Fake Johnson Trio (1998)

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! Read the text online or buy it. End song: "Find You Out," from the brand new New People album, Impossible Things.

Discussing Edmund Husserl's Cartesian Meditations (1931). This is a 32-minute preview of our vintage 1 hr, 50-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 music section of the iTunes Store: Search for "Partially Examined Husserl's" and look under "Albums." How can we analyze our experience? Husserl thinks that Descartes was right about the need to ground science from the standpoint of our own experience, but wrong about everything else. Husserl recommends we "bracket" the question of whether the external world exists and just focus on the contents of our consciousness (the "cogito"). He thinks that with good, theory-free observations (meaning very difficult, unnatural language), we can give an account of the essential structures of experience, which will include truth, certainty, and objectivity (intersubjective verifiability): all that science needs. We'll find that we don't need to ground the existence of objects in space and other minds, because our entire experience presupposes them; they're already indubitable. Plus "Personal Philosophies" for Seth and Wes! Buy the text End song: "Sleep," from the Mark Linsenmayer album Spanish Armada, Songs of Love and Related Neuroses (1993).

Discussing Arthur Schopenhauer's On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, published in 1847 (as an expansion of his doctoral thesis from 1813). This is a 33-minute preview of our vintage 2 hr, 14-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 Examined Schopenhauer" and look under "Albums." What kinds of explanations are legitimate? S. thought that causal and logical explanations are often confused, resulting in philosophical errors. In laying out the four types of explanation -- the four versions of the principle of sufficient reason -- he clearly elaborates his modernized Kantian epistemology. We also discuss his strange notion of "will" that was so influential on Nietzsche and Freud. Plus, we discuss "Action Philosophers!"and "Walking Dead." Read the book online here or purchase it.We also read this chunk of The World As Will and Representation. End song: "The Answer," from the forthcoming album Impossible Things by New People.

Discussing Soren Kierkegaard's "The Sickness Unto Death" (1849). This is a 32-minute preview of our vintage 1 hr, 56-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 Kierkegaard" and look under "Albums." What is the self? For K. we are a tension between opposites: necessity and possibility, the finite and the infinite, soul and body. He thinks we're all in despair, whether we know it or not, because we wrongly think we're something we're not, or we reject what we are, or we just don't pay attention to this dynamic at all: we just go along with the crowd. So we need to keep self-examining and (he thinks) ultimately embrace our subservience to God. Joined by guest podcaster/Kiekegaard's lawyer Daniel Horne, we consider K.'s 3-step self-help program and whether there's anything to be gotten here if you don't subscribe to K's Christianity. Read the text free online or buy the book.We also devote some discussion to Fear and Trembling. End song: "John T. Flibber," from Happy Songs Will Bring You Down by the MayTricks (1994). Get the whole album free.

Discussing Goodman's Ways of Worldmaking (1978). This is a 31-minute preview of our vintage 2 hr, 10-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 Goodman" and look under "Albums." What's the relationship between art and science? Does understanding works of art constitute "knowledge," and if so, how does this relate to other kinds of knowledge? Goodman describes art as a symbol system (including art like instrumental music that doesn't seem representative), which can symbolize successfully or not. While there is no one set of concepts by which to judge all art (different types of art and other descriptive endeavors establish incommensurable "worlds"), neither is art an anything goes endeavor where the individual spectator is the only determinant of quality. We're joined by painter Jay Bailey to bring up lots of amusing artwork examples (The Monkees! Thomas Kinkade! Self-mutilation as art!) and tell us how well Goodman's account accords with his understanding of artistic practice (his answer: not so well). Buy the text. End song: "Staple Gun" by Mark Lint and Stevie P (1999).