Call a ‘comprehensive doctrine of the good’ a set of beliefs affirmed by citizens concerning a wide range of values, including moral, metaphysical, and religious commitments, as well as beliefs about personal virtues and political beliefs about the way society ought to be arranged; they form a conception of the good concerning “what is of value in life, the ideals of personal character, as well as ideals of friendship and of familial and associational relationships, and much else that is to inform our conduct, and in the limit to our life as a whole....

In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein writes: 6.54: My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them—as steps—climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.) He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the world aright. At least two interesting things are going on here....

Subscribe to Elucidations:         In this episode, Matt sits down with Gaurav Vankataraman (Trisk Bio) to talk about how human memory is physically realized. Click here to download episode 146 of Elucidations. Where do your memories live? In the brain, right? They’re, like, imprinted there somehow? We often think of memories as analogous with recordings, like when you do an audio recording and the air vibrations get translated into an electrical signal which reorients the magnetic particles on some tape....

In “The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function,” Jacques Lacan introduces a philosophical conception of the subject into psychoanalysis. He primarily responds to Freud’s conception of the developed subject as an “ego” which serves as a broad referent for the subject’s constellation of raw, biological drives. He thinks the ego as such does not account for the transformation that occurs within the subject when developing an ego, and he deduces the mirror stage as a solution that he thinks even Freud ought to accept....

Subscribe to Elucidations:         This episode, Matt Teichman and Joseph Diller sit down with Andrew Sepielli (University of Toronto) to talk about metaethical quietism. His new book on the topic, Pragmatist Quietism, is out now from Oxford University Press. Click here to listen to episode 145. Metaethical quietism is the view that ethical statements—or anyway, a large portion of the ethical statements we’re usually interested in—can’t be justified or disproved by statements from outside of ethics....

In An Autobiographical Study, Sigmund Freud defines the process of free-association broadly as speaking one’s mind without direction or censorship.1 As Jonathan Lear aptly points out, Freud calls free-association the fundamental rule of psychoanalysis2 not only because it is essential to therapy but also because it is a sublime exercise of the capacity for human freedom.3 Despite this apparent freedom in free-association, Freud also notes: “we must, however, bear in mind that free association is not really free....

Subscribe to Elucidations:         This episode, Matt talks to Christopher Beem (Penn State University) about how we can cultivate those skills that conduce to having a functioning democracy. His book on the topic, The Seven Democratic Virtues, is out now from Penn State University Press. Click here to download Episode 144 of Elucidations....

Kuhn distinguishes two meanings for ‘paradigm’: in a narrow sense, (1) the examples a discipline uses to articulate its assumptions that set the template for solving puzzles that arise in the discipline during a period of normal science, and in a broad sense, (2) the key theories, instruments, values, and metaphysical assumptions that are made prior to puzzle-solving which constitute the disciplinary matrix of normal science. Count two paradigms ‘incommensurable’ when the new paradigm is a radical alteration of the matrix of measurements, observations, and language adopted by the scientific community not for good reasons but by a non-rational kind of religious conversion to a new world that is different than, and discontinuous with, the one represented by the former paradigm....

Subscribe to Elucidations:         This episode, Matt Teichman talks to Mark Linsenmayer about alternative models of education. Mark is creator and host of the Partially Examined Life, Nakedly Examined Music, Pretty Much Pop, and Philosophy vs. Improv podcasts. He is also the author of the recent book, Philosophy For Teens. You can download Episode 143 by clicking here....

Subscribe to Elucidations:         We didn’t have a blog yet when this episode came out, but the episode link is here. Thanks to Jasmine Li for the transcription! Matt Teichman: Hello and welcome to Elucidations, a philosophy podcast recorded at the University of Chicago. I’m Matt Teichman. Mark Hopwood: And I’m Mark Hopwood....