Subscribe to Elucidations:       In this episode, we talk some metaethics with David Enoch, Professor of Philosophy and Jacob I. Berman Professor of Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Click here to listen to our conversation with him. Are moral judgments, for example “stealing is wrong,” ever true? Are they even the kinds of things that can be true or false, or are moral judgments just fancy ways of expressing our feelings about stuff, so that “stealing is wrong” is just a fancy way of saying “Boo stealing!...

Those of you who are interested in following up on this month’s episode with van Benthem should check out his recent book on the topic, Logical Dynamics of Information and Interaction (2011). It’s a thrilling read! There is also his earlier book on the topic, Exploring Logical Dynamics (1996). Matt Teichman...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       In this episode, we talk to Johan van Benthem, University Professor of pure and applied logic at the University of Amsterdam and Henry Waldgrave Stuart Professor of philosophy at Stanford University. Click here to listen to our conversation with him. Logic is traditionally assumed to have deductive reasoning as its subject matter....

Subscribe to Elucidations:       This month we’re joined by Nicholas Asher, research director at the CNRS and the IRIT in Toulouse, and former longtime Professor of Philosophy and Linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin. Click here to listen to our conversation with him. Remember Spanish class? You had to learn all those rules about where to put the verb, where to put the subject, which nouns have which genders, which prepositions to use when, etc....

Subscribe to Elucidations:       This month we talk to Christopher Frey, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. Click here to listen to our conversation. Aristotle thought that after you chop off a person’s hand, it ceases to be a hand in the original sense of the term. Sure, we _ call _ it a hand....

If you’re curious to learn more about what Catarina Dutilh Novaes called conjunctive pluralism (as opposed to disjunctive pluralism), take a look at some of her blog posts from NewAPPS: Methodological Pluralism in Philosophy Intuition-based Philosophical Methodology and Belief Empirically-informed Philosophy of Logic Feynman on Precise Definitions and Philosophical Methodology On the Origins of Analytic Philosophy Instrumentalist and Intrinsic Value Defenses of History of Philosophy History of Philosophy as Antidote to Philosophical Intuitions...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       In this episode, Matt continues his European adventure by sitting down with Catarina Dutilh Novaes, Assistant Professor and Rosalind Franklin Fellow at the University of Groningen. Click here to listen to their conversation. Philosophers want to answer big, sexy questions like how one should live or what knowledge is. How should one go about answering questions like that?...

If you’re interested in learning about how the ancient Stoic philosopher Chrysippus tried to deal with the sorites paradox, give episode 61 of the amazing History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps podcast a listen. Matt Teichman...

For an excellent introduction to the issues we discussed in Episode 36, you can read: Robert van Rooij, ‘Vagueness and Linguistics‘ If you’re curious to see the details of van Rooij’s solution to the sorites paradox, including the distinction between strict truth and tolerant truth, take a look at the following: Robert van Rooij, ‘Tolerant, Classical, Strict‘ Matt Teichman...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       This month we’re joined by Robert van Rooij, Assistant Professor of Philosophy of Language at the Institute for Logic, Language, and Computation, at the University of Amsterdam. Click here to listen to our conversation with him. As it happens, nearly everything we say is imprecise. For example, when I indicate where I want you to stand while posing for a photo, I don’t give exact coordinates; I just point with my finger....