Subscribe to Elucidations: This month, we discuss gratitude with Barbara Herman, Griffin Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Law at the University of California, Los Angeles. Click here to listen to our conversation. Is our subject this week, well, gratuitous? Given the dearth of philosophical attention to it in the last century or two, gratitude might not seem worth studying....
For those of you who are interested in following up on Malte Willer’s recommended solution to the miners paradox, he recommends the following paper: ‘Dynamic Thoughts on Ifs and Oughts,’ Malte Willer Happy reading! Matt Teichman...
Subscribe to Elucidations: This month, we discuss non-monotonic logic with Malte Willer, assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago. Click here to listen to our conversation. If you have been so lucky as to take an introductory logic class, then you will learn a conception of logic that is, well, downright logical. That conception of logic is monotonic....
Subscribe to Elucidations: This month, we discuss gender and medieval mysticism with Christina Van Dyke, professor of philosophy, director of gender studies, and executive director of the Society of Christian Philosophers at Calvin College. Click here to listen to our conversation. How might the notion of God to have meaning to us? God today can increasingly seem to us a mere historical phenomenon–a subject of past peoples’ energy, but presently only a subject of professors’ study....
Subscribe to Elucidations: This month, we discuss Ayn Rand’s moral philosophy with Greg Salmieri, who teaches at Rutgers University and Stevens Institute of Technology and is co-secretary of the American Philosophical Association’s Ayn Rand Society. Click here to listen to our conversation. But wait: Ayn Rand is most famous for her novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged....
Those of you who would like to follow up on the topic of this month’s episode can look at: ‘Moral and Semantic Innocence,’ Christopher Hom and Robert May In that paper, the semantic theory we discussed is presented in a bit more detail. Matt Teichman...
Subscribe to Elucidations: This month, we discuss pejorative expressions with Robert May, distinguished professor of philosophy and linguistics at University of California, Davis. Click here to listen to our conversation. So pejorative expressions are politically incorrect. We should not, say, call Jews kikes. How should we understand why we should not? May says we should not for the simple reason his mother taught him as a child: “There are no such things as kikes....
For those of you who are interested in following up on the topic of this month’s episode, Kent Schmor recommends the following overview article: “Carnap’s Logical Structure of the World,” Christopher Pincock For more background on the Vienna Circle, the philosophical group with whom Carnap was affiliated early in his career, see: “The Vienna Circle,” Thomas Uebel Kent writes: “Strictly speaking, the Circle didn’t go public until 1928, the same year the Aufbau was published....
Subscribe to Elucidations: This month, we discuss Rudolf Carnap’s Aufbau with Kent Schmor, visiting philosophy instructor at the University of Pittsburgh. Click here to listen to our conversation. Why, Carnap would ask, did independent philosophers keep attempting to rehash huge domains? Scientists, Carnap noticed, each work on a focused problem, broadening knowledge collaboratively. In 1917, Carnap began a thesis relating to both science and philosophy....
Would you like to follow up on our previous episode? Susan James recommends looking at the following sections from Spinoza’s classic work: Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, Chapter 2 Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, Chapter 3 Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, Chapter 4 If you really want to do a deep dive, she also recommends the following secondary material: Collective Imaginings: Spinoza, Past and Present, eds. Moira Gatens and Genevieve Lloyd Spinoza on Philosophy, Religion, and Politics: The Theologico-Political Treatise, Susan James...