Subscribe to Elucidations:       Episode post here. Thanks once again to Caroline Wall for her transcription efforts! Matt Teichman: Hello, and welcome to Elucidations. I’m Matt Teichman. Nora Bradford: I’m Nora Bradford. Matt Teichman: With us today is Nic Koziolek, Lecturer in Philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis, and he’s here to discuss self-consciousness. I also want to recommend that you check out our earlier episode that we did with Nic, Episode 96, on the role of belief in reasoning. It’s a real treat. Nic Koziolek, welcome back to Elucidations. ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       Full transcript here.In this episode, Nic Koziolek (Washington University in St. Louis) returns to talk to me and Nora Bradford about self-consciousness. Click here to download Episode 127 of Elucidations. Self-consciousness, as philosophers use the term, is a word for when you know something about one of your own mental states. Like when I really enjoy some pizza and note that I’m enjoying it. Someone else might ask me: ‘Hey Matt, do you like that pizza?’ And I’m typically the best person to ask about that, which is a sign that I typically know whether I like the pizza. Or when I have an itch, and I notice the itch before going to scratch it. If I noticed it, then I know that I have an itch. Self-consciousness, in the philosophical setting, is a name for me being able to tell what’s happening in my own mind, when it happens. ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       Episode post here. Another excellent transcription from Caroline Wall—thanks! Matt Teichman: Hello, and welcome to Elucidations, an unexpected philosophy podcast. I’m Matt Teichman. Agnes Callard: I’m Agnes Callard. Ben Callard: And I’m Ben Callard. Matt Teichman: And today is our listener Q&A episode, which means that we’ll be answering questions that you recorded and sent to us. I guess we’re about ready to get started. So let’s listen to the first one. ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       Episode post here. Caroline Wall does it again! Thanks to Caroline for her excellent transcriptionage. Matt Teichman: Hello, and welcome to Elucidations, an unexpected philosophy podcast. I’m Matt Teichman. Dominick Reo: I’m Dominick Reo. Matt Teichman: With us today is James Koppel, PhD student in computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and professional mentor to experienced software engineers at jameskoppelcoaching.com. You may also have heard of him in connection with the security analysis of the Voatz voting app, which was recently covered in the New York Times. And he is here to discuss counterfactual inference and automated explanation. James Koppel, welcome to Elucidations. ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       Episode post here. Thanks once again to Caroline Wall for this transcript! Matt Teichman: Hello, and welcome to Elucidations. I’m Matt Teichman. Henry Curtis: I’m Henry Curtis. Matt Teichman: With us once again is Graham Priest, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the City University of New York Graduate Center and Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Melbourne. And he is here to discuss Buddhist political philosophy. Graham Priest, welcome back to Elucidations. ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       Episode transcript here. Three philosophers. Eight head-scratchers. 50 minutes. In this episode, Agnes Callard, Ben Callard and I respond to the world’s most awesome listener-recorded questions. Click here to download Episode 126 of Elucidations. A lot of people have the impression that philosophy is, first and foremost, an enterprise in which college professor types read books that no one can understand, then issue a response in the form of more books that no one can understand. It’s not. Don’t get me wrong—I love books. I’m constantly trying to talk friends and acquaintances who don’t like reading books into giving them another shot, if only for the simple reason that reading is basically guaranteed to improve your life. It’s just that the existence of philosophy books doesn’t make philosophy the art of book writing any more than the existence of bodybuilding books makes bodybuilding the art of book writing. ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       Episode transcript here. In this episode, James Koppel (MIT, James Koppel Coaching) joins me and Dominick Reo to talk about how we can write software to help identify the causes of disasters. Click here to download Episode 125 of Elucidations. These days, there’s often a tendency to think of software primarily as a venue for frivolous pleasures. Maybe there’s a new app that’s really good at hooking me up with videos of alpacas on skateboards, or making my mom look like a hot dog when she’s video chatting with me, or helping me decide what flavor of cupcake I want delivered to my home—because gosh, I just am just way too stressed right now to be able to figure that out. Have you seen how few Retweets I’m getting? If we followed the lead of a lot of the popular rhetoric about the software industry, we might very well come away with the impression that tech exists solely to facilitate precious, self-involved time wasting. And if that’s right, then if it doesn’t work from time to time, who really cares? ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       Episode post here. Thanks once again to Caroline Wall for this transcript! Matt Teichman: Hello, and welcome to Elucidations. I’m Matt Teichman. Henry Curtis: And I’m Henry Curtis. Matt Teichman: With us today is Graham Priest, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the City University of New York Graduate Center and Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Melbourne. And he is here to discuss Buddhist metaphysics. Graham Priest, welcome. ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       Episode post here. David North does it again! Many thanks to him for typing this transcript up. Matt Teichman: Hello and welcome to Elucidations, a philosophy podcast recorded at the University of Chicago. I’m Matt Teichman. Jaime Edwards: And I’m Jaime Edwards. ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       Full transcript here. In this episode, Graham Priest returns to discuss Buddhist political philosophy with me and Henry Curtis. (Last month, we talked with him about Buddhist metaphysics.) Click here to download Episode 124 of Elucidations. Last month, we discussed the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism: that suffering happens, that this suffering is (partially) caused by emotional attachment, that you can deal with it by changing your headspace, and that you can change your headspace by understanding the world, understanding your mind and body, and treating other people well. In this episode, our guest adds something to that list, which he calls the ‘0-th noble truth’. This is the idea that suffering is bad. That idea appears as a foundational premise across many different Buddhist philosophical traditions, and he suspects that it can be used as the basis for political philosophy. ...