The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

On selected "moral epistles" (from around 65 CE) by Lucius Annaeus Seneca: 4. On the Terrors of Death, 12. On Old Age, 49. On the Shortness of Life, 59. On Pleasure and Joy, 62. On Good Company, 92. On the Happy Life, 96. On Facing Hardship, and 116. On Self Control. We're joined by Massimo Pigliucci of the How to Be a Stoic blog, who for a long time was on the Rationally Speaking podcast. Back in ep. 124 we considered the Stoic Epictetus, but due to audience demand, we wanted a second and a third opinion: Seneca, unlike Epictetus, explicitly advocated a public life, and seemed to have less problem with deep friendships and other sorts of attachments, so long as these things are kept in perspective. Unfortunately, Seneca is very light on actual justifications for this perspective, and apparently sees knowing the ultimate truths of existence as a fairly simple matter, the trick being to really internalize these truths and let them guide your actions, especially when tragedy strikes. Life is a battle, says Seneca, and it's really better for us that it is, as a life without challenge would be a life without meaning. Massimo, along with Tad Brennan's The Stoic Life: Emotions, Duties, and Fate (2007), provided a reality check for all of this, helping us to interpret the text charitably and see how ancient Stoic writings are integrated into modern practice. The key is that the only thing ultimately important is your own virtue, which is all you have control over. Other things can and should be "preferred," but aren't granted the status of moral goods. When you work hard toward a goal, it's not the goal that's good, but the working itself. Massimo and Dylan read from this new translation: Letters on Ethics: To Lucilius (The Complete Works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca), while Mark and Wes read this electronic version: Delphi Complete Works of Seneca the Younger, though during the recording we were reading some of these from Selected Letters (Oxford World's Classics), which you can read on the web. This continues on part 2, or you can get the unbroken, ad-free Citizen Edition now by signing up with a $5 recurring donation.

Concluding our discussion of On the Soul, book 3. Now that we're done with perception, we get into imagination and then to "nous" proper: the contemplative intellect that understands by grasping the "forms" of things. This is our gateway to talking about knowledge, because while sensation in the sense of grasping green can't be wrong, once we make a claim like "this book is green," we're bringing in general concepts that can be misapplied, both bookness (maybe this thing really isn't a book) and greenness (maybe it just looks green in this light but isn't really green). It turns out that nous is the "form of forms." It's literally nothing (just pure potential) until it thinks of something, at which point it takes on the form of the thing thought of. And when it's thinking of highfalutin metaphysical concepts, it's not even MY mind or YOUR mind: it's just the universal mind itself thinking, identical to the contents of its thought. Yes, this is weird. This is a lot to absorb. We recommend that you go back and start with ep. 130, and then become a PEL Citizen to get the Citizen Edition of this episode and watch the aftershow. Please support PEL! End song: "Wonderful You" (live 2001) by an early incarnation of Madison Lint called the Lint Emporium.

Our second discussion of De Anima or On the Soul (350 BCE), this time on book 3. What is the intellect? In ep. 130, we talked about Aristotle's idea of the soul as the form of the body and about two of its functions or parts: the nutritive and the sensitive. Here we talk more about how sensation is supposed to work according to Aristotle, and how the sense organs interact with each other. Aristotle doesn't think, like Kant, that the mind synthesizes data from the senses to create objects. Rather, that synthesis already happens just at the level of sense, that we perceive whole objects and not points in space. We talk about how this then relates to the faculty of imagination, and finally, the intellect (nous, in Greek). Continued on part 2, or get your ad-free, unbroken Citizen edition. Please support PEL!

Continuing on De Anima, books 1 and 2. We talk about the nutritive part of the soul, which is the only kind plants have, and the perceptive part, which animals have too, which for Aristotle means they have (or many of them have) imagination too. We grapple more with types of causation and what Aristotle means by forms. How does the soul "cause" the living body? Listen to part one first, or get the ad-free Citizen edition. You can follow along in the text if you'd like via this online translation by D.W. Hamlyn. Or check out this line-by-line commentary by Eugene T. Gendlin. There are many ways to support PEL. End song: "Intermission Song" from the 1993 Mark Lint album Spanish Armada: Songs of Love and Related Neuroses. Aristotle picture by Genevieve Arnold.

On De Anima or On the Soul (350 BCE), books 1 and 2. We lead off with listener mail; Aristotle starts 18 minutes in. What can this ancient text tell us about biological life? Much of the interest and difficulty here is the very different conceptual schemes at play: What counts as a scientific explanation? Aristotle gives a highly general account about what, for all living things, makes them alive. He describes life as "the first actuality of a natural body which has organs," meaning that bodies (our bodies, plant bodies, animal bodies) truly express their nature only when they're growing and reproducing and all that stuff that bodies do. The body itself is potential, and life is its actuality. So what the heck kind of explanation is that, and how does it tie into all that metaphysical stuff you may have heard about Aristotle concerning forms and different types of causation and substances? Seth returns to complete the formal foursome as we slowly penetrate this difficult text. With this one more than others, you'd be well advised to follow along in the text. This online translation by D.W. Hamlyn should do the trick. The line-by-line commentary that Seth refers to is by Eugene T. Gendlin. Continued on part 2, or get the ad-free, unbroken Citizen edition. Please support PEL! Aristotle picture by Genevieve Arnold.

PEL gets nostalgic, playing songs and bringing back guests from yesteryear. Both beloved former guests and some new behind-the-scenes friends of PEL chatted with Mark about what they're up to, and each of them took on a song to try to make sense of. Some of the many projects we discuss include: * The 2016 PEL Calendar, with sweet philosophy art by Sterling Bartlett and funny text mostly written by Wes. * The limited-edition Mark Lint CD that contains all the songs you'll hear on this special. You can also get this as mp3s from our site (meaning all proceeds go to PEL, and you signal that you appreciate the inclusion of music in the podcast and want there to be more) or from marlint.bandcamp.com as a pay-what-you-want product (which also includes full credits and lyrics, if you're interested. PEL Citizens already have access to the full album. I've also created a playlist on Spotify that includes this whole album plus all my New People songs. * Watch Wes's presentation on the film "Ex Machina" at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis 12/1/15 on YouTube. * Check out Josh Pelton's (guest from Ep. #38) "Thunk" YouTube show. * Read about Mark's in-development music podcast, "Nakedly Examined Music": What the format is and how you can get involved. * Update yourself with the current goings-on at Modern Day Philosophers and Very Bad Wizards. * Hear the latest from Jonathan Segel, maybe sign up for his subscription service. Witness the art of Diana Szabo, who did the album's cover art or look at the work of Amir Zaki, guest on our ep. 107 on Burke and the sublime. * Read the words of Daniel Coffeen from our ep. 76 on Deleuze or what Seth Benzell from ep. 123 has to say about workforce automation. * Revisit some of the episodes that birthed these songs, like our ep. 47 on Sartre, our ep. 82 on Popper, or our ep. 101 on Maimonides. * Or listen to one of our audioplays: "

Continuing on faith and reason with Nathan Gilmour and Rob Dyer. In this half we focus on the critique of evidentialism in Basil Mitchell's “Faith and Criticism” (1994), Peter van Inwagen's "Clifford's Principle" (1994, from his "Quam Dilecta"), and Alvin Plantinga's “Is Belief in God Properly Basic?” (1981). We consider briefly how mysticism plays into the idea of private experience counting as evidence with William Alston's "Experience in Religious Belief" (1991), and then we consider whether you can will yourself to believe (or not) by considering "pragmatic faith" in Richard Swinburne's "The Voluntariness of Faith" (1981) and editor Paul Helm's strange rebuttal in "Faith and Merit" (1999). See part one for the full list of readings, or get the ad-free Citizen edition. For a synopsis of each reading and links to read and/or buy them, see the topic announcement. Don't forget your PEL wall calendar, "Songs from PEL" CD, and other merch at our store. Please support PEL! Please visit thegreatcoursesplus.com/PEL for a one month free trial of The Great Courses Plus Video Learning Service.

Nathan Gilmour (Christian Humanist podcast) and Rob Dyer (God Complex Radio) join Mark and Wes for to discuss the reasonableness of religious belief reading: * Antony Flew, "The Presumption of Atheism" (1976) * Norwood Russell Hanson, “The Agnostic’s Dilemma” (1971) * Steven Cahn, "The Irrelevance of Proof to Religion" (1969) * Alvin Plantinga, “Is Belief in God Properly Basic?” (1981) * Merold Westphal, "Sin and Reason" (1990) * Basil Mitchell “Faith and Criticism” (1994) * Peter van Inwagen, "Clifford's Principle" (1994) * William Alston "Experience in Religious Belief" (1991) * Richard Swinburne, "The Voluntariness of Faith" (1981) and “The World and Its Order” (1996) * Paul Helm, "Faith and Merit" (1999) These were all published as the final chapter of the Oxford reader edited by Helm, Faith and Reason. What is reasonableness, and is it compatible with religious faith, if we take "faith" to mean accepting a claim without evidence? Clearly, there are smart, thoughtful people on both sides of the issue, but why should that be, if one could glean correct opinions about religious matters from our shared experience of the world? Or if the evidence is insufficient either way, aren't there still some standards of reasonableness we can appeal to for what the wisest course of action to take is when we don't have sufficient evidence? In this half, we focus on Flew, who compares the situation to a court of law, where we presume innocence; likewise, we should presume atheism. Cahn tells us why believers don't care about proofs for the existence of God. Hanson thinks we would all accept as proof of God if He appeared before us publicly, which means we treat His existence as an empirical proposition and should't remain agnostic any more than we suspend judgment about never-observed physical phenomena like egg-laying bats. Westphall argues that original sin means that there is no "natural light of reason" that would allow us to objectively determine without revelation anything out religious matters. For a breakdown of each of the twelve(!) readings that we covered, read the topic announcement. Listen to part two or get the ad-free, unbroken Citizen edition. The CD of Mark Lint's "Songs from the Partially Examined Life," the Nietzsche mug, and more can be found at our store. Please support PEL!

Continuing on "The Meaning of Meaning" (1975). We finish giving Putnam's positive theory for "meaning" something, which involves not only referring to something (whose properties, per Kripke, you may well not know) but being familiar with a stereotype of the thing, which is like a description, but isn't the thing that picks out the referent. For example, my stereotype of "elm" may (if I don't know a lot about trees) be the SAME stereotype as "beech," yet that's enough for me to be counted by other English speakers as understanding these two words. What makes "elm" refer to the kind of tree it does is not my picture of it (I don't really have one!) but what the experts say about it: Putnam calls this a semantic division of labor. Also, the stereotype required by a culture may change over time and may even be false, like pure gold really isn't yellow, but "yellow metal" is part of the stereotype. We also talk about how reference has an indexical component, which means that like "here" and "I" its meaning varies systematically by context, and Mark tries unsuccessfully to connect Putnam's views here to pragmatism. Learn more about the topic and get the readings. Listen to part one first or get the unbroken, ad-free Citizen Edition. Support PEL! End song: "In the Boatyard" by Mark Lint & the Madison Lint Ensemble. Instruments recorded 2004, vocals (and Daniel Gustafsson's organ) added just now. Putnam image by Corey Mohler.

On "The Meaning of Meaning" (1975). So if per Kripke (we're following the thread from #126), meaning is NOT a matter of having a description in your head, then what is it? Hilary Putnam reformulates Kripke's insight in terms of Twin Earths: If Earth-water is H2O, and on Twin Earth, they have something that looks just like water but is a different compound, then we wouldn't call that water, right? Putnam says part of what makes up the meaning of a word is an implicit pointing to the stuff around us, so it's relative to the speaker: The Twin Earthers saying "water" are referring to the stuff around them, not H2O. So even though we and the Twin Earthers both have the same mental contents, our reference points at different stuff. Putnam then goes on to give a postive theory of meaning (that Kripke lacks), and to give hints about his sympathy with pragmatism, but you'll have to listen to part two for that, or maybe just go ahead and become a PEL Citizen to get the ad-free, unbroken Citizen Edition. Please support PEL! Mark, Wes, and Dylan are rejoined by Matt Teichman for this gripping discussion, which in addition to covering that main essay also touched on Putnam's articles "It Ain't Necessarily So" (1962) and "Is Semantics Possible" (1970). Learn more about the topic and get the readings.

Continuing on Experience and Nature (1925), through ch. 4. We focus here on how philosophy supposedly gets warped by fear and desire in human nature, how we pretend that abstractions we've created are metaphysically real and basic. So how do the objects of our experience, then, relate to those of science? And can we talk about "ends" (teleology) when doing science? Learn more about the topic and get the book. Listen to part one first, or get the ad-free Citizen edition. End song: "Uncontrollable Fear" by The MayTricks from So Chewy! (1993), written/sung by Steve Petrinko. Get the album free.

On Experience and Nature (1925), through ch. 4. What's the relationship between our experience and the world that science investigates? Dewey thinks that these are one and the same, and philosophies that call some part of it (like atoms or Platonic forms) the real part while the experienced world is a distortion are unjustified. We need to remove the unjustified split between perception and reality to give humanistic phenomena (like ethics) their due and to keep our philosophical sentiments fully aware of their origins in human strivings, lest we fall prey to prejudice and wishful thinking, like, say Augustine, who was so afraid of the suffering attendant to impermanence that he denied the true reality of any impermanence or evil. Mark, Wes, and Dylan talk about whether this sort of Nietzschean examination of philosophical motives holds water, whether an experienced quality like "scariness" can really be "out in the world" (instead of just in our minds), the relationship between the objects of experience and the objects of science, what role "ends" should play in science, where aesthetic feeling comes into the picture (everywhere!), and more. Learn more about the topic and get the book. Continued on part 2, or get the ad-free Citizen edition. Dewey image by Sterling Bartlett.

On Naming and Necessity (1980). What's the relationship between language and the world? Does a term like "tiger" as we use it refer to that animal because we have a certain mental image or definition of that animal in our heads? Saul Kripke says no: If "tigers have stripes" was part of the definition of a tiger, then it would be a logical contradiction to talk about an abnormal, stripe-less tiger, when clearly it isn't. In this part of the discussion, we try on Kripke's ideas and see what this makes us think about natural kind terms (like "tiger"), about physical objects, about substances identified by science, about heat vs. the feeling of heat, and about pain: Would pain, if caused by a different brain state than whatever causes it in us, still be pain? Listen to part one first or get the Citizen Edition. Read more about the topic and get the book. Oh, and here's that essay about Kripke by Richard Rorty that we discuss briefly near the end. End song: "Reason Enough" by Mark Lint, a brand-new recording of a song written in 2003. Read about it.

On Naming and Necessity (1980). What's the relationship between language and the world? Specifically, what makes a name or a class term (like "tiger") pick out the person or things that it does? Saul Kripke wanted to correct the dominant view of his time (which involved speakers having some description in mind, and it's that description that hooks the word to the thing), and used modal language to do it: He talked about other possible worlds (other ways our world could have turned out, not literal other dimensions or something). His account had implications for metaphysics and science, in that he claimed that if we find a scientific truth like "heat is the motion of molecules," then this would be true in all possible worlds. We might think that we could have discovered that heat was something else, but really, if we imagine a world in which that happened, what those scientists would have been looking at was actually not heat at all. Confused yet? Mark, Wes, Dylan, and returning guest Matt Teichman get deep into the thickets on this one, our first foray in a while into analytic philosophy. Read more about it and get the book. Continued on part 2, or get the Citizen edition.

Discussion clips covering topic we haven't had time to cover on the podcast proper. Brief yourself on these topics via the enclosed 10–15 minute bursts, or become a PEL Citizen to listen to these bonus discussions in their full length. Mark is joined by Nathan Hanks to tell you how to get involved in a discussion yourself. First, learn about Isaac Asimov's story, "The Last Question" (1956) (his own favorite among his stories!) about the semi-existential dilemma whereby we recognize that the universe will end eventually due to entropy and worry about that. You can actually listen to Asimov read the story. Get the full discussion recording. Featuring Nathan with Daniel Cole, Cezary, Mary, and Laura: the current core of the Philosophical Fiction group. Next, Mark led a group (featuring Michael Burgess, Marilynn L., Nick Halme, and Heath Adams) to continue PEL's exploration of Karl Jaspers (from ep. 109), via the 1947 book Truth and Symbol. We discuss what a religious symbol is to Jaspers: it doesn't refer to something in the world, and dwelling on it correctly is supposed to help achieve Jaspers's recommended existential attitude. Read more about it. Get the full discussion. Third, we hear from the long-running Philosophy and Theater group (Daniel Cole, Philip Cherny, and Carlos Franke), discussing the great playwright Bertold Brecht's essay "Theatre for Pleasure or Theatre for Instruction" (ca. 1936) about "epic theater," which is supposed to get rid of the false distinction between an amusing theater experience and an instructive one. Read more about it. Next, another group led by Mark, this one following up on our Jesus episode by tackling Thomas Sheehan's Historical Jesus Stanford lectures. Read more about it. Get the full discussion. Then David Prentiss, Tim Clark, and Peter Oppenheim discuss Charles Sanders Peirce's essay "The Fixation of Belief" (an explicit follow-up on our episode 20 on pragmatism; if you're not a Citizen, you can hear a preview here). Peirce is a father of pragmatism, and is interested here in scientific inquiry as opposed to other ways of dispelling doubt.