The Dawdler's Philosophy

If we're lucky, we're able to add a little sumptin'-sumptin' to the end of the line. Maybe it's a good twist or we bring more than a few threads together. But every once in a while someone comes along and braids so far ahead they leave us all behind. Perhaps one day we'll arrive at Nietzsche's fray...again, if we're lucky. Until then we just have to try and keep moving forward, try to understand. This episode is just one of those attempts. 00:14:42 - Nihilism (Active & Passive)/Morality (Master & Slave)/Articulating Darwin/The Herd/Virtue/More Herd 01:06:55 – Truth, Faith, and Philosophers/The Skeptics/Every Judgement is from a Perspective/Belief 01:40:23 – Will to Power/Life/Flux/Holism: Relation & Effect (There are No Things-in-Themselves) 02:01:23 – The Man, The Mountain, The Madness

So, this guy Enrico trolled humanity once and it’s left us reeling ever since. This week the Dawdlers discuss the implications of this troll and explore a few threads on why we don’t get no satisfaction from our attempts to catch signals emitted by extraterrestrial intelligences. A hope and a calculation, but no USS Enterprise. Grab your ankles if you want, but get comfortable at least. It may be a while before you’re “visited”. 00:07:45 – Fermi’s Paradox/Kardeshev Scale/Civilization Types 00:25:00 – More Fermi/Drake Equation/Lost Amazonian Tribe Analogy 00:46:30 – The Great Filter/Phil Niche Theory/Goldilocks Thinking/Money 01:46:45 – White House Lawn Scenarios

This time the Dawdler’s examine Daniel Dennett’s book “Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking” (2013). Regardless of all that, these two tools think they think. Topics explored are philosophical zombies, Occam’s Razor, black boxes, and sorta operators. Do you smell that? It’s the sweet potpourri of Dennettian thinkadinks. -Dawds 00:08:24 – Thinking Tools 00:39:32 – Folk Psychology, etc. 00:51:21 – Heterophenomenology and Zombies 01:15:01 – The Tuned Deck and Two Black Boxes 01:39:09 – Ryan does not Understand Dennett

Typically, people may describe a “wide-ranging” podcast conversation as covering topics from A to Z to あ. Maybe that’s the case for those podcasts. Us dawdlers? Eh… Ryan thinks this episode is on the psychology of “over”-population and Malthusian growth dynamics. Harland thinks Ryan just doesn’t like being one-of-many and is heavily invested in the narrative of Lockean individualism or something. Whatever the case may be, they cover a wide range of topics from—Hey, look! Sections! 00:04:45 – Thomas Malthus stuff 00:13:34 – Paul Ehrlich/Tragedy of the Commons 00:20:38 – Ryan’s Lament/The Psychology of “Over”-population 00:35:28 – Harland’s Reverse/Back to Ecology 00:58:26 – Human Exceptionalism/Growth Curbs (eh-heh-heh…) 01:02:39 – Back to Psychology 01:34:02 – What is a Population?/Shit Related to Offspring/Harland Being Radical

The free world is kind of a mess right now. Seems we've lost something in a trade or hit a wall. We're so team oriented sending and receiving messages is like exchanging alien signals. Naturally, if we are to decode these strange outbursts, it's time to get innovative. We have a suggestion! As one can probably surmise from the title, this episode is about arguing. We explore some of Harland's thoughts and ideas on the middle ground between dogmatic appeals to truth and defeatist egalitarianism. You may not be entitled to your own facts, but you do have the capacity for building an argument through premises and conclusions! Listen up, extremists! -The Dawdlers 00:04:00 – Argumentation Theory as the middle way between Dogmatism and Epistemic Egalitarianism / Preferring Agreement to Disagreement00:11:15 – Descriptive v. Normative Argumentation Analysis / Argument “In the wild” v. Argument Institutionalized / Charles Wilard00:21:45 – Some Basic Concepts of Argumentation Theory: Pro/Con, Pragmatic Speech Acts/Propositions, Enthymemes, Resolve/Settle00:38:15 – Domesticated Primates, Munchausen’s Angels, & Impossible Gods – Idealization in Engineering Helps Chimps Transcend Animal Limitations00:50:30 – What is Argument? / Some Definitions Compared / Normative Semantics01:14:10 – The Argument Argument / The Procedure: Claims, Premises, Conclusions, Definitions, Logic, Reasoning / Ham & Eggs v. Ham & Cheese01:26:05 – Reasonable People Can’t Disagree / I/O Concordance Given Successful Communication / Tending Toward Resolution01:43:45 – The Burden of Proof / Are any Topics Off-Limits?

Once again, Earth gets the bullet too! This episode the Dawdlers yammer on about Mass Extinction. Ryan is trying not to screw up and Harland is working on his impromptu pun skills. Hopefully something is learned but likely it's just not nothing. Oh, and we've now a little ditty. Enjoy the Good Death, The Dawdlers

Hey you! Yeah you, dummy. You know what time binding is? No? Good! We (Ryan) don’t either. This episode the Dawdlers get in over their heads with Alfred Korzybski’s General Semantics. Well, Ryan is in over his head. Harland just can’t get his out of his bum. Badum ching! Rim shot! Pun intended. Anyway, it’s the thought that counts and the thoughts count mostly when spoken properly. And that’s what this episode is all about. Don’t forget to thank us. -Da Dawds

Hot topic alert! This episode the Dawdlers pull focus on planet Earth. They talk about Earth processes, especially climate. I guess one could say this is the climate change episode. Yaaay! Earth gets the bullet too! BUT they spend much of their time on the science and much less on the politics. So if you came in wanting to hear the familiar repetition in the echo chamber, y’ain’t gonna find it! Well, maybe you will, but with much less emotional emphasis, fear mongering, and triggered sobbing. Buckle your chin straps, folks. It’s about to get technical.

Last time the Dawdlers had an original idea it was pretty goofy. This time it is less goofy. So “less goofy” in fact, anyone who listens might get downright pissed off. How dare us! For shaaaame… Anyhoo, this topic is a take on skepticism. Some may say it’s radical. Harland would probably be fine with that. But in any case, it is—we think—important. Trying to change the world here folks…One. Chimp. At a time. Cheers, The Dawdlers

New rule: no new ideas after two hours! This time we talked about the idea of emergence and naturally, its counterpart, reductionism. Of course, supervenience was all thinking it’s host to this party like Rick Moranis in Ghostbusters, “Hiya doin’! Why don’t you have some of the brie. It’s at room temperature. You think it’s too warm in here for the brie?” But never mind, we soon bailed on that party. Nearly as many names get dropped as threads in this full-on geek-out sesh on radical metaphysics.  Make no mistake, we wrestle with the big ideas-- and this tag-team don't tap-out.  Nevertheless, the ideas usually get us on points.     Our number one fan  brought a friend. Things are really starting to get going.

Uh oh. We're talkin' 'bout the truth. There are various positions on the truth these days. Truth, post-truth; we take a different direction. We think it is a better direction. But, at this point, it's hard to remember what that direction was exactly. You'll just have to listen zero members of the audience. Also, we're at Harland's deeeeeep in Minnesota. It's basically Canada. And Canada is basically the North Pole. And the North Pole is where Santa lives. And that is NOT NORMAL. :-)

Triangles. Diamonds. Triamond Joy! In this episode the Dawdlers go deep into lesser known territory: original ideas. Truth Seekers, Game Players, Overseers, and Engineers are united in a unique interpretive mechanism for evaluating contributions to inquiry. Our number one fan is present but we tried to reduce the constant cheering using tek-nah-luh-gee. Unfortunately, this means Harland sounds like he has a cold or is talking through one of those cardboard tubes in a roll of paper towels. Ryan sounds great, as usual. Fans. Amirite? Or is it “arwerite”? Whatever…

Prior Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance. Harland and Ryan tackle Stephen J Gould and Richard Lewontin’s paper “The Spandrels of San Marco” and discuss adaptationism’s benefits and flaws in evolutionary biology. This is a topic we thought we could shoot off. Well…hard to tell…it’s hard to tell if we just fucked off or if we got anywhere. Maybe we get somewhere in some places. Hopefully this is more than just listening to two people talk and making no sense (especially Ryan). Our best to all those involved who had little say in the matter other than saying anything at all. It’s a lesson in how not to record a conversation intended for an audience larger than zero. Also, about two-thirds of the way through we are visited by our biggest fan who shouts over us the whole time. P.S. This is not an apology…we think…no, we’re sorry.

This time the Dawdlers are attempting to make sense of being in a room where they have to understand Chinese. John Searle sure can’t help! To remedy this, Harland and Ryan take a deep dive in a shallow pool, with a close consideration of John Searle’s Chinese Room Argument in the Philosophy of Mind from his 1980 paper “Minds, Brains, and Programs”. Can computers “understand”? What is the function of intuition in philosophy? What good are “intuition pumps”? What can the Turing Test establish? And more…

Dawdlers, Harland and Ryan, discuss The Dawdle. Admittedly a less popular concept in 2018 America than The Hustle, but this dichotomy is considered and arguments presented that perhaps too many underestimate the virtues of Dawdling. P.S. This is episode zero. Why? We don’t know! Guess it’s a thing we Dawdlers are not up to date on like those Hustlers out there. P.P.S. In this episode you will hear great pauses of unedited connection failures and foolish people talking about their failings. Naturally, a podcast is where this should be channeled.