The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

On Paul Ricoeur's "The Critique of Religion" and "The Language of Faith" (1973). Last episode taught us about hermeneutics, but how can this best be applied to the text for which hermeneutics was originally developed, i.e. the Bible? For Ricoeur, it's a two-way street: We need to change our understanding of the text (i.e. read it historically, recognizing for example that it was common to mythologize heroes in texts at the time), but also "put at risk" our own evaluative presuppositions, which under the tutelage of science have blinded us to symbolism and so left us unable to even sensibly ask the question "what is it to be saved?" The regular four are joined by Lawrence Ware to figure out what this "hermeneutics of suspicion" is all about. Read more about the topic and get the essays. Support the podcast by becoming a PEL Citizen or making a donation. End song: A live performance (recorded via camcorder) by Mark Lint and the Fake from Dec. '98 in Austin, TX of the Elvis tune "Suspicious Minds." Make sure to join us for the Aftershow on March 22 at 4pm central. Go sign up to participate! Sponsor: Visit thegreatcourses.com/PEL, for massive discounts on great lectures. The Ricoeur picture is by Sterling Bartlett.

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. Read more about the topic and get the texts. End song: "The Default Relation," a new song by Mark Lint. Read about it. Support the podcast by becoming a PEL Citizen or making a donation. Listen to the Aftershow with Stephen West and Seth Paskin. Visit squarespace.com to checkout the new Squarespace 7 and enter checkout code "PEL" to get 10% off. Please also visit our new sponsor at thegreatcourses.com/PEL to learn about a lot of awesome philosophy (and other) lectures you'll definitely want to check out (at a massive discount!). The Gadamer picture is by Sterling Bartlett.

Mark Linsenmayer and Seth Paskin read and interpret Martin Heidegger's essay "On the Essence of Truth" (1943), first half. This is a 17-minute preview of a two-hour, 38-minute bonus recording, which you can purchase at partiallyexaminedlife.com/store or get for free with PEL Citizenship (see partiallyexaminedlife.com/membership). You can also purchase it at iTunes Store: Search for "Partially Heidegger Truth." A Close Reading is us going line-by-line through a text trying to figure out what's being said, which less much less agonizing than it sounds. We've covered another later Heidegger essay, but had a hard time really making sense of his vocabulary, and so the Close Reading strategy is ideal for helping us (and you!) decode this difficult thinker. Heidegger thinks that the traditional correspondence theory of truth somehow begs the question of what truth actually is. For Heidegger, the truth of sentences is derivative of the truth of beings, e.g. the difference between true gold and false gold is more fundamental than the sentence "this gold is true gold" being true or false. So what makes us call true gold true? Listen and see if you think Heidegger can give an alternative account that's more informative than correspondence theory and which doesn't itself somehow rely on the notion of truth. You may well want to throw up your hands and say that truth is simply fundamental and undefinable... but then I bet you'd say the same about being, wouldn't you? Heidegger wouldn't. To read along, you can get ahold of a copy of Heidegger's Basic Writings or read the John Sallis transation online.

Stephen West of the Philosophize This! podcast returns to host the Aftershow for PEL episode #110 on Alfred North Whitehead. In this preview you'll hear Stephen, Dylan Casey (who has a lot to say about process philosophy and science), and David Buchanan (guest from our Pirsig episode and PEL blogger). Later in the conversation they were also joined by Amough Sahu. This is a 20-minute preview of a 80-minute discussion. Get the full audio by becoming a PEL Citizen and going here. Becoming a PEL Citizen will also enable you to come to future Aftershows, hear ad-free current episodes, get older episodes no longer on our public feed, and more.

Mark Linsenmayer and Wes Alwan read and interpret Kant's Critique of Judgment, sections 23-25. This is a 13-minute preview of a 72-minute bonus recording, which you can purchase at partiallyexaminedlife.com/store or get for free here with PEL Citizenship (see partiallyexaminedlife.com/membership). You can also purchase it at iTunes Store: Search for "Partially Examined Kant Sublime." A Close Reading is us going line-by-line through the text to help you ferret out what's actually being said. The point is to not only get you to understand this text, but to learn how to decode Kant, and how in general to take on difficult texts if that's maybe something you haven't felt confident about before. We've previously explained Kant's account of how we recognize beauty and the view of one of Kant's influences, Edmund Burke, on the difference between recognizing beauty and experiencing something as sublime. So what is Kant's view on the sublime? He thinks that, as with beauty, the apparatus by which we cognize anything comes into play here, but the process only goes half way, i.e. we don't actually apply a concept to an object. Only with the sublime, Kant thinks that instead of the Concepts of the Understanding that get almost-applied, it's the Ideas of Reason, which are more abstract. Whereas Burke saw the sublime both in overwhelming sensory experiences but also in scary connotations in stories, Kant thinks that strictly speaking, nothing we actually experience is sublime. Sublimity has to do with the infinite, the formless, so our sensory experiences can at best suggest these ideas to us; what we're really reacting to is not the object, but to some ideas in ourselves. We're here reading the translation by Paul Guyer, which you can purchase here.

On The Concept of Nature (1920). 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. When you're done with this, listen to the Aftershow for more discussion hosted by Stephen West. End song: "Run Away," by Mark Lint, written in 1987 and recorded in 2005 and 2015. Read about it. Support the podcast by becoming a PEL Citizen or making a donation. Citizens can sign up to join the Aftershow conversation on Feb. 15 at 1pm Eastern time. Please visit our our sponsors: Go to Harrys.com and enter the code “PEL” when you check out. And visit squarespace.com to checkout the new Squarespace 7 and enter checkout code "PEL" to get 10% off. And don't forget dreamingwithjeff.com. The Whitehead picture is by Sterling Bartlett.

Mark Linsenmayer outlines Alfred North Whitehead's book The Concept of Nature (1920) on the relation between experience and science, and how to think about space, time, and objects. After listening to this, get the full discussion. Read more about the topic and get the text. PEL Citizens can download the transcript from the Free Stuff for Citizens page.

Stephen West of the Philosophize This! podcast hosts a new PEL offering: An Aftershow to a PEL episode, in this case #109 on Karl Jaspers. Hear questions and comments from super-smart PEL listeners, Stephen, and Mark Linsenmayer. What does Jaspers mean by "transcendence?" Do you buy the claim that science doesn't give you a world-view? What is a world-view anyway? What are the "limits of reason?" This is a 20 minute preview of a 72 minute discussion. Get the full audio by becoming a PEL Citizen. This will also enable you to take part in the next Aftershow (on Whitehead) on February 15 at 1pm Eastern time. If you want to learn even more about Jaspers, you can also join Mark's new Not School group to read Truth and Symbol (1947) in February.

On Karl Jaspers's "On My Philosophy" (1941), featuring comedian/actor/director/author Paul Provenza. What's the relationship between science and philosophy? What about religion? Jaspers thinks that science gives you facts, but for an overarching world-view, you need philosophy. Living such a world-view requires Existenz, or a leap towards transcendence, which is of course religion's stock and trade, though Jaspers is not a fan of dogmatism (or of giving definitions for his basic terms). Seth got to go hang at the Provenza mansion and hooked up with Mark, Wes, and Dylan for an especially lively session covering the different flavors of existentialism, freedom, Jaspers vs. Heidegger, philosophical comedy, how existentialism just ripped off Buddhism, and Seth's visit to not-a-strip-club. Be sure to listen to Mark's introduction, then read more about the topic and get the text. When you're done, listen to the Aftershow for more discussion hosted by Stephen West. End song: "Another Way to Fall," New People, from The Easy Thing (2009), written by Matt Ackerman. Please support the podcast by becoming a PEL Citizen or making a donation. Also visit our our sponsor at squarespace.com and to checkout the new Squarespace 7 and enter checkout code "PEL" to get 10% off. The Jaspers picture is by Sterling Bartlett.

Mark Linsenmayer introduces Jaspers's essay, "On My Philosophy" (1941) on Existenz and the difference between philosophy, science, and religion. After you listen to this, get the full PEL discussion. Read more about the topic and get the text. PEL Citizens can download the transcript from the Free Stuff for Citizens page.

On Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (2014) with author Nick Bostrom, a philosophy professor at Oxford. Just grant the hypothetical that machine intelligence advances will eventually produce a machine capable of further improving itself, and becoming much smarter than we are. Put aside the question of whether such a being could in principle be conscious or self-conscious or have a soul or whatever. None of those are necessary for it to be capable, say, of developing and manufacturing a trillion nanobots which it could then use to remake the earth. Bostrom thinks that we can make some predictions about the motivations of such a being, whatever goals it's programmed to achieve, e.g. its goals will entail that it won't want those goals changed by us. This sets up challenges for us in advance to figure out ways to frame and implement motivational programming an A.I. before it's smart enough to resist future changes. Can we in effect tell the A.I. to figure out and do whatever we would ask it to do if we were better informed and wiser? Can we offload philosophical thought to such a superior intelligence in this way? Bostrom thinks that philosophers are in a great position for well-informed speculation on topics like this. Mark, Dylan, and Nick are also joined by former philosophy podcaster Luke Muehlhauser. Read more about the topic and get the book. End song: "Volcano," by Mark Linsenmayer, recorded in 1992 and released on the album Spanish Armada: Songs of Love and Related Neuroses. Please support the podcast by becoming a PEL Citizen or making a donation. The Bostrom picture is by Genevieve Arnold.

On A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1756), parts I, II, and his later intro essay, "On Taste." Are people's tastes basically the same? Burke says yes: they're rooted in our common reactions to pain and pleasure, those two are not opposites, but simply quite different properties, each associated with a different set of responses. When we are aesthetically pleased by something big, indistinct, and maybe scary, Burke calls that a judgment that it's sublime. Mark, Seth, and Dylan are joined by guest Amir Zaki to wander the through the field of ideas of this slim, rich, and breezy text. Not at all sublime! Read more about the topic and get the text. End song: "Stoobis in the Sky," by Mark Lint and friends, recording started in 2012 and completed for this episode. Read about it. There are still copies of the 2015 PEL philosopher wall calendar left! Or you can support the podcast by becoming a PEL Citizen or making a donation. The Burke picture is by Sterling Bartlett.

Mark Lint and the PEL Orchestra present the longest, slowest, biggest, fattest, most surreal Christmas carol ever. First Mark explains for a minute what this is (you can read it here), then off we go on a long, strange trip, with different verses of the holiday classic arranged in styles from baroque to folk to metal to disco. Featuring Jonathan Segel (from Camper Van Beethoven; jonathansegel.com), comedian Adam Sank (adamsank.com), Al Baker (www.albaker.co.uk), Timo Carlier (soundcloud.com/carlier), Maxx Bartko (soundcloud.com/dotdot), Daniel Gustafsson, Jason Durso and Shannon Farrell, Kenn Busch and Jenny Green, Kylae Jordan, Rei Tangko, Greg Thornburg, WILSON, and comedian Alex Fossella (@afossella). Coordinated and sung by Mark Lint (marklint.com). Get the music-only version (i.e. without Mark's spoken intro) in audio form here; this is the link you will want to send around to torture and/or enlighten the masses. Here's the YouTube version, with animations by Jason Durso using PEL art by Genevieve Arnold and Corey Mohler. Make sure to buy one of our new 2015 wall calendars with Genevieve's art on it!

On Outlines of Pyrrhonism , Book 1, from around 200 CE. Are our beliefs warranted? Skeptics following in the footsteps of Pyrrho (who lived just after Aristotle, around 300 BCE, but didn't leave us any writings, so Sextus, centuries later, has to fill us in) think that for any argument someone puts forward (at least about the nature of reality), you can come up with a plausible counter-argument, and that after you've done this enough, you achieve a relaxed state where you you're satisfied in not being able to decide. Is this really true? And is there a sharp distinction between beliefs you need to accept in order to live (this is food; that is poison) and theoretical ones? Can a philosopher really get beyond philosophizing in this way? Can one be a scientist and still be a skeptic of this sort? Jessica Berry joins Mark, Wes, and Dylan to defend this position. Read more about the topic and get the text. End song: "Point of Confusion" recorded for this episode by Mark Lint. Read about it. The Pyrrho picture is by Corey Mohler.

On Immanuel Kant's Critique of Judgment (1790), Pt. 1, Book 1. Kant thinks that finding something beautiful is different than merely liking it. It's a certain kind of liking, not dependent on your idiosyncratic tastes (like your preference for one color or flavor or tone over another) or on your moral opinions. He wants these judgments to be subjective in the sense that they're not about the object, but about the fact that people receive pleasure from it, yet he also wants them to be universal, so that if I (correctly) find something beautiful, then I expect others to feel the same way, and moreover, if they have taste, they should. Of course this is all put into very difficult Kantian language with virtually no actual examples, so the regular foursome had a good time attempting to translate it to something you can get your head around. Read more about the topic and get the book. End song: "Cool Down" from Mark Lint & the Fake Johnson Trio (1998), newly resung and remixed. Download the album for free. Please support the podcast by becoming a PEL Citizen or making a donation. Please also visit our sponsor, mobile service provider Ting. Go to pel.ting.com and get $25 off your order.