The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

Continuing on the Consolation (524 CE). We discuss chiefly books 3 and 4, which present the classical one-dimensional model of the good: We all tend toward the good (or what we think to be good, and if we're wrong about what that is, then we can be judged as failing in our aim toward the good), which is happiness, which (because God created everything and the creator must always be better than the created) is in fact God. By being virtuous, we "become gods" through participation in God, who is wholly simple. So, likewise all these things that we apparently aim for like fame, wealth, pleasure… all these, insofar as they are not illusions of happiness, really must amount to the same, singular thing: happiness, i.e., God. And if bad things seem to happen to good people, well, that's an illusion, because evil can't actually really exist in this designed-by-God-and-therefore-perfect world. Book 5 is about free will, and we don't really cover it; see ep. 119 of the History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps podcast. Listen to part 1 first, or get the unbroken, ad-free Citizen Edition. Please support PEL! End song: Carrie Akre's "Last the Evening" from the album of that name from 2007. Hear Carrie interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music Ep. 17. Sponsors: Visit Talkspace.com/examined; use code "EXAMINED" for 30% off your first month of online therapy. Go to blueapron.com/PEL for three free meals with free shipping.

On the Consolation, written as Boethius awaited execution in 524 CE. Do bad things really happen to good people? Boethius, surprisingly, says no, for Stoic (anything that can be taken away can't be of central importance; you can't lose your virtue in this way), Aristotelian (all things tend toward the good, and the best thing for a person is achieving his or her innate potential, which is to be virtuous), and Christian (God's unknowable plan means that even the stuff that seems bad really isn't) reasons. Boethius imagines Lady Philosophy herself coming to him in his cell and reminding him of the philosophical perspective that (following Plato) gives him access to a higher realm of being than the one inhabited by goods like reputation and bodily freedom. This results in arguments like bad luck is really good, because when things go bad, that's when two-faced Fortune reveals herself as the inconstant villain she is. Also (this should be familiar from Plato's Republic), even if someone wicked seems happy, by definition wickedness rules out true happiness, and virtue is its own reward. Goods like pleasure, fame, and riches promise a sort of completion, but they don't deliver; really, what we're looking for is integrity of self, which is what virtue offers. To hear more about the famous "How can we have free will when God knows all?" part of the book, check out John Marenbon's appearance on ep. 119 of the History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps podcast. On the episode before that one, host Peter Adamson also gives more information about what ideas came from what past authors and about the circumstances that gave rise to Boethius's imprisonment. Buy the "prose translation" that we used or read this online version. This is continued on part 2, or get the ad-free, unbroken Citizen Edition. Please support PEL!

Continuing on Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in 20th Century America (1998). We talk more about Rorty's description of the conflict between the "reformist left" and the "cultural left." Do political-comedy shows serve a a positive political purpose? Can an enlightened political viewpoint really be a mass movement at all? Is it better to pursue specific political campaigns (e.g., pass law X) or be part of a "movement?" Can Rorty's diagnosis cure Seth's malaise? Listen to part 1 first, though you should probably just get the ad-free, unbroken Citizen Edition. End song: "Wake Up, Sleepyhead," newly composed in reaction to the electon by Jill Sobule. Listen to her interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #11. Check out her My Song Is My Weapon page. For info about the intern position, see partiallyexaminedlife.com/intern. Check out the St. John's College Graduate Institute: partiallyexaminedlife.com/sjcgi. Also, visit Talkspace.com/examined; use code "EXAMINED" for 30% off your first month of online therapy.

On Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in 20th Century America (1998). What makes for efficacious progressive politics? Rorty has been cited much recently as predicting the rise of Trump. In this book, he gives us a history of the political left, and draws a dividing line between old-time reformist leftist intellectuals like Upton Sinclair who worked for real change and post-'60s cultural critics like Slavoj Žižek who seem to believe that we are past hope. Rorty thinks we leftists need to reconnect with national pride, which he considers not a matter of jingoism or reverence for the government in power, but of hope in the American project, which is always being achieved. Our goal is a classless, casteless society: a society that produces less unnecessary suffering than any others and is the best means to the creation of a greater diversity of full, imaginative, daring individuals. This episode serves to bridge our recent political discussion with the previous episode on Rorty's epistemology. According to Rorty's diagnosis, prior to the '60s, leftists worked with groups like labor unions to achieve concrete reforms. But with the Vietnam War, a new generation condemned the Old Left as collaborators and erected a high bar for moral purity that labeled anyone not explicitly Marxist as part of the problem. The effect, ironically for the Marxists, has been to shift attention away from economic issues toward social issues, and while it's been great that we've achieved such huge advances in cutting back on racism, sexism, and other types of discrimination, this focus on cultural issues has left a gaping void ripe for a right-wing demagogue to sweep in, claiming to represent the economic interests of the people. One characteristic of this cultural Left that Rorty objects to is its moral absolutism, and here's where the connection to Rorty's epistemology comes in. For Rorty, thinking of racism and the like in absolutist terms is both false and counter-productive. It's false because morality, like truth, is a matter of historically shifting consensus, and it's counter-productive because it focuses on shaming violators, on humiliating them, and not on actually convincing them, on building a coalition based on a shared vision of a future free from both inequality and sadism. This discussion features the full foursome, with Wes using Rorty to continue outlining his prescriptions for America and Seth taking Rorty's diagnosis of the Left personally. Dylan is inspired, while Mark thinks that Rorty's argument doesn't really hang together: You don't need all this relativism stuff to argue for hope in America (it may actually be counter-productive), and while many Leftists are politically disengaged, it's certainly not a fair characterization of the many demonstrators we've just seen (note that this was recorded earlier in January, before the demonstrations). Buy the book or read the first chapter online. Continue with part 2,

Continuing our liberal bubble-bursting exercise, the core foursome address more directly the question of how philosophy is supposed to shape one's political views and actions. Is there a non-partisan way of describing "the public good" that we can use as a touchstone to communicate with and maybe convince political opponents? What's a philosophically responsible way to use political rhetoric in the face of an apathetic and/or ignorant public? Is one better off hiding in a cave until the bad administration goes away? Listen to part 1 first or get the ad-free, unbroken Citizen Edition. Please support PEL! End song: "Better Days" from The Getaway Drivers' Bellatopia; check out Mark's interview with singer/songwriter Bob Manor on Nakedly Examined Music ep. 11. Visit Talkspace.com/examined; use code "EXAMINED" for 30% off your first month of online therapy. Go to blueapron.com/PEL for three free meals with free shipping.

How does studying philosophy help you to make sense of the political landscape? Wes, Mark, Dylan, and Seth play pundit and express their angst over this new era. We reflect on political rhetoric, elitism, and much more. There is no text for this episode, though we've got Aristotle, Burke, and Tocqueville firmly in mind, and Wes brings up this article from the Guardian, "Welcome to the Age of Anger," by Pankaj Mishra. This discussion is continued on part 2. You can alternately get the ad-free, unbroken Citizen Edition. Please support PEL! Yes, there are still a few more PEL Wall Calendars left. Sponsors: Get $50 off a mattress at casper.com/pel (promo code pel). Try out online therapy at talkspace.com/examined ($30 off with coupon code EXAMINED). Get three free meals (with free shipping) at blueapron.com/pel.

Continuing on Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Ch. 3–4. Is Rorty right that post-Kantian philosophers were engaging in "revisionist history" in saying that the ancients too were concerned with the relation between the senses and reason? We discuss how Rorty makes use of Sellars's "epistemological behaviorism" and Quine's "web of belief" to argue for conversation (truth as determined by social agreement) over confrontation (where the object forces the subject to have some veridical belief). We get Rorty's answer to one of the issues with Sellars that bugged us: if knowledge is "knowledge that," i.e., propositions, then were does that leave babies and animals? Are they mindless? Rorty's solution: There's a difference between knowing what something is like and knowing that something is the case; awareness (which babies and animals have) is not the same as knowledge. But this connection does mean that this pre-linguistic awareness has to be "language-like." Listen to part 1 first, or get the unbroken, ad-free Citizen edition. Please support PEL! End song: "The Ghosts Are Alright" from The Bye-Bye Blackbirds (Houses and Homes, 2008), as discussed on Nakedly Examined Music #32.

On Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), Part II: "Mirroring" (Ch. 3–4). Is a "theory of knowledge" possible? Rorty says that while of course psychology has interesting things to say, any specifically philosophical effort is doomed. Why? Because there is no fixed point outside of the "knowledge language game" that provides an ultimate grounding. Rorty draws on Sellars (ep. 154) to say that there is no sensory "given" or primary intuition of reason that can serve this function, and also on Quine (ep. 66) who argued that there are no "analytic truths," that even the truths of logic are merely central to our web of belief, not immovable foundations. Rorty is arguing for a coherence view of truth, where propositions can only be justified by how well they fit with the other propositions, not by their correspondence to the world outside of human discourse. He thinks that since Locke and Kant, we have come to think of this philosophical project of figuring out the roles of intuition (what we sense) vs. concepts (what our minds do to make sense of this sense data) as an inescapable problem, but no: As with the related issue of inner mind vs. outer world (as discussed in ep. 153), this has been a matter of our idiosyncratic history, and a proper reading of the ancient Greeks will not find this paradigm of epistemic theorizing at all. Mark, Wes, and Dylan reflect on whether Rorty's pragmatic objections hold any water and whether he's just a dirty, stinking relativist! Buy the book or try this online version. Continued on part 2, or better yet, get the Citizen version. Please support PEL!

Continuing on "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" (1956). We consider a couple of Sellars's "thought experiments." In one, a guy who works in a tie shop thinks he understands "green," but when electric lights are added, what used to be green now looks blue, yet looks green again when he takes it outside. This is supposed to explain how "looks green" is an evolution from "is green," as opposed to the appearance being the foundation for us eventually positing what things are in themselves. In another near the end of the essay, we consider a whole race of people, "the Ryleans," who lack inner concepts for psychological states. They end up inventing such terms to explain others' behavior: e.g., he says "blue" when he sees that green tie because he's having a blue appearance in the presence of that green thing in weird lighting. And only after they learn how to use these terms to describe other people do they then apply them to their own experiences: Sellars thinks that mental terms like "appearance" that you might think apply to some pre-linguistic "given" are really terms in a theory of human behavior. But of course it's more complicated than that, and Lawrence "Dusty" Dallman is still with us to help us sort things out. Listen to part 1 first or get the unbroken, ad-free Citizen Edition. End song: "Senses on Fire" by Mercury Rev. Check out the interview with singer Jonathan Donahue in Nakedly Examined Music ep. 14.

On "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" (1956). Is knowledge based on a "foundation," as Descartes, Locke, et al. thought? Sellars says no. Sixteenth-century empiricists thought that we have some indubitable perceptions: Even though I may not be absolutely sure that there's a red object in front of me, I can be sure that there seems to be such an object. The "red appearance" seems to be something I'm directly acquainted with, and maybe if I compare such experiences, I can come up with generalizations, and so eventually get to empirical science. But what is it exactly that I'm aware of in such a case? If this kind of experience is really basic, really supposed to provide the basis of the rest of knowledge, then knowing it can't involve also knowing those other things, on pain of circularity. So what I'm aware of can't be the truth of a sentence, which would require that I have a lot of prior knowledge of language and of the logical space in which "red" sits relative to other colors, other adjectives, space and time, etc. So it must be a wordless kind of thing, much like a (non-color-blind) animal would have, or a baby. Knowledge, whether scientific or otherwise, is made up of statements, claims, propositions, which I believe to be true, and which are in fact true. To give reasons for believing a proposition, to use logic, you need other propositions, so the basic, foundational pieces of knowledge would have to be propositions too, if a foundationalist picture of knowledge is going to work. So the basic foundations of knowledge have to be propositions, but we just said that they can't be propositions. That's the crux of Sellars's argument: Knowledge can't be foundationalist in this way at all. There are no basic, indubitable propositions that provide support for everything else. Instead, these propositions must come in packs: Just becoming linguistically competent means we've already accepted numerous claims, and though, yes, observation sentences provide support for generalizations, the generalizations (in a different way) provide us the ability to have individual, new experiences. And note that while the argument was cast against empiricism, it works even more quickly against rationalism, i.e., the claim that there are basic truths of reason that ground everything else. Any "truth of reason," again, is obviously a proposition, a sentence, and to be even understood involves buying into a whole conceptual scheme. Even something as innocent as "A=A" means that you understand what identity is, as it occurs in real-world objects, and yet we understand that even if "red ball" and "red ball" both refer to the same object, we know that "red" does not equal "ball," so we understand predication, and language use, and the social system in which language use occurs. Mark, Wes, and Dylan are joined by Lawrence "Dusty" Dallman, who claims that Sellars is the most important 20th-century American philosopher. So come discover with us this relatively under-read, fairly difficult gem of a thinker! This was initiated due to Rorty's reliance on Sellars in the part of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature that we'll be reading for ep. 155, but you may wish to listen to ep. 153 where we started Rorty before this. You may also wish to refresh on the epistemology that Sellars is reacting to, with our episodes 20 on Kant and 17 on Hume. Other newish takes on Kantianism that come up in the discussion are those by

Continuing on Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Part I. Rorty relates the immateriality of mind to the ontology of universals: The gap between individual dogs and the concept "dogness" is really the only ontological gap we have, and conceiving the mind as the faculty that apprehends universals (i.e. "nous" in Aristotle) was the first step into this mistaken (according to Rorty) picture of an inner realm that somehow needs to be pierced to reach the outer, physical world. Are pains and other mental entities actually entities at all, or are they activities? Plus, the return of the semantic/syntactic distinction! Listen to part one first, or get the Citizen edition. Please support PEL! Buy the book or try this online version. End song: "Wall of Nothingness" from Sky Cries Mary from This Timeless Turning (1994). Listen to Mark's interview with the band's frontman, Roderick Romero, in Nakedly Examined Music ep. 9.

On Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), Part I: "Our Glassy Essence" (mostly Ch. 1). "The mind" seems to be an unavoidable part of our basic conceptual vocabulary, but Rorty thinks not, and he wants to use the history of philosophy as a kind of therapy to show that many of our seemingly insoluble problems like the relation between mind and body are a result of philosophical mistakes by Descartes, Locke, and Kant. Our recent guest John Searle diagnosed the main mistake similarly: Instead of looking at knowledge as a matter of us being in direct contact with external things, Locke and his ilk erroneously thought that we can only ever know our own ideas. Rorty says this view of the mind as the thing closest to us, the only thing we can really know with certainty, came from Descartes, with only hints of it earlier in the tradition. Before that, people didn't think of the mind as an "inner realm" and mental elements like pains as particular things that don't seem to be of the same type as events in the physical world. So the solution is not to deny that the mental exists like a behaviorist, or to insist that mental terms actually refer to brain states or that mental events and brain states are two aspects of the same underlying substance: Rather than bridge the "ontological gap" between mental and physical in this way, Rorty would rather we back up and reject the conceptual system that gives rise to this apparent problem in the first place. Buy the book or try this online version. Mark, Wes, and Dylan are joined by Stephen Metcalf of Slate's Culture Gabfest podcast, a former pupil of Rorty's. We plan to return to the book in ep. 155 to talk about Rorty's take on epistemology. If you're new to the philosophy of mind, we recommend you pick up our ep. 21, which gives a broad overview of the topic. I'd also recommend our ep. 55–56 on Wittgenstein, whose "private language" argument (and overall approach to philosophical problems as language games) is a key influence here. Here's part two, or try the unbroken, ad-free Citizen edition. Buy the PEL 2017 Wall Calendar and other merch at our store. Rorty pic by Corey Mohler. Sponsors: Visit casper.com/pel and use promo code "pel" for $50 off a mattress. Go to talkspace.com/examined and use code "examined" for $30 off of online therapy. Also, try Storyworth to be closer to your remote family members by visiting storyworth.com/pel and get $20 off.

Democracy is in peril! So said Tocqueville in 1835 and 1840 when Democracy is America was published, and so would he likely say now. Democracy is always just one demagogue away from stripping us of our liberties, though certain structural and cultural features can make that more or less likely. Tocqueville liked our spirit of volunteerism, our civic activeness, our energy and inventiveness and competitiveness, and the pervasiveness of religion (at the time) in American culture. But he didn't like our groupthink, our tendencies toward materialism and caring only about our own small circle (what he called "individualism"), our lack of philosophical curiosity, and was in favor of a strong separation between church and state. He thought that people in a democracy value equality over freedom, and that in the absence of a strong spiritual countervailing force, we'd spend more energy pursuing material comfort and so would be more likely to allow a tyrant who promises this to us to take control. He also feared the rise of a new aristocracy out of the business world, with bosses becoming the new de facto lords. Then again, he also feared a race war and thought for sure that if the South tried to secede, the federal government would be too weak to prevent this, so there's that. This discussion was recorded live at Brown University 10/27/16 with Mark, Seth, Wes, and Dylan engaging the political moment and with an audience during the Q&A portion at the end. Buy the book or read it online. Our reading selections were, in order of importance to us: 1) Volume II Part II, chapters 1–15; Part IV, chapters 6–8. 2) Volume I Author's Introduction 3) Volume I Part II Chapters 7–8 4) Volume II Part I Chapters 1–3, 5 5) Volume I Part I chapters 5–7 6) Volume I Part II chapter 9, 10 Watch the discussion (thanks to Brown University and the Swearer Center) here or on YouTube. We're releasing this episode unbroken, but encourage you to support PEL through a PEL Citizenship or other means, which would get you this and all of our episodes ad-free. End song (for the audio version): "Shot of Democracy" by Cutting Crew from Grinning Souls (2005). Listen to Mark's interview with singer/songwriter Nick Eede on Nakedly Examined Music ep. 10. Tocqueville picture by Olle Halvars. Sponsor: Check out the St. John's College Graduate Institute: partiallyexaminedlife.com/sjcgi.

Continuing on Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), where Burke advocates for the existence of the nobility as a stabilizing element in society: These folks are driven by honor, groomed from youth to lead, and estates themselves provide continuity and give people something to protect. But could anyone really defend this system who wasn't himself benefitting from it at the expense of others? Burke thinks even the poor under this system benefit, that the fact that anarchy is so much worse means that they have implicitly signed on to the system. Even our "prejudices" are something to be valued, because they've kept us out of trouble so far. Reform, not revolution! Listen to part 1 first, or get the unbroken, ad-free Citizen version with your PEL Citizenship. End song: "Hard Times of Old England" from Peter Knight's Gigspanner (from Layers of Ages, 2015); listen to Mark's interview with Peter on Nakedly Examined Music ep. 27 at nakedlyexaminedmusic.com.

On Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). Writing after the revolution but before the terror, Burke was alarmed at intellectual fads in England that paid homage to the principles driving what happened in France: the right of people to choose their own government, to elect their leaders, and depose those that violate citizens' rights. So, given that these principles have won the day, why would we possibly care about what a reactionary monarchist had to say against them? Why is Burke revered as an intellectual grandfather to modern conservatism? Well, first, given what happened in France with the terror, Burke's worries were warranted. While he thought that revolution was justified in extreme circumstances (when "necessity" dictates), the ground for such a revolution (as with the so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688 in England) should be an appeal something more ancient, more well-grounded by tradition. The idea should not be to treat the revolution as an excuse to devise a new, ideal government from scratch based on abstract principles. Live, flesh-and-blood people and their real concerns are more important than these abstract ideals, and societies are not laboratories for experimentation. While we equate political freedom with rights and well-being, Burke thinks that democracy leads to mob rule and the suppression of rights, and that an emphasis on abstract rights can prevent the government from protecting what he considers our real rights as citizens for protection by the state. While he thinks that people's interests need to be represented, and that corruption needs to be remedied and beneficial reforms adopted, the most important thing is stability, and society's wisdom built up over the ages is our best guide to this. Burke thinks that law and culture are intertwined, and while it's possible to change laws on a dime, this will have negative consequences unless supporting social structures, created through tradition and maintained through religion and mores, provide necessary support. Liberty needs the support of wisdom and virtue, and Burke admires the honor-based motivation of a noble class that already has enough money, whereas he thinks that the merchant-types put in charge of the French assembly have been incentivized to use the government for their own financial gain. Mark, Seth, Wes, and Dylan cogitate on Burke's lush, highly repetitive prose and try to figure out what this text has to teach us about good government today. For example, Burke thinks too much idealism leaves us indifferent to real and present (e.g., Trumpian) danger, so DON'T EVEN THINK OF NOT VOTING. You may also want to review our ep. 3 on Thomas Hobbes, Burke's predecessor in this line of thinking. See also Aristotle's case for aristocracy as discussed in our ep. 60 on his Politics. Buy the book or read this online version. Continued on part 2, or get the unbroken, ad-free Citizen version with your PEL Citizenship.