More Background Listening...

If you’d like to hear more about some of the philosophical ideas that Al-Kindi was responding to in the work we discussed during our last episode, you really can’t find a better resource than Peter Adamson’s own History of Philosophy podcast. To learn about Aristotle’s arguments for the eternity of the universe, check out this interview with Richard Sorabji. For a great introduction to Plotinus’ influential idea that the ultimate explanatory principle behind the universe has to be completely unified, check out this episode....

Further reading on Al-Kindi

For those of you who would like to follow up on our discussion of Al-Kindi’s philosophy, a great place to start is Peter Adamson’s Stanford Encylopedia entry on Al-Kindi. If you’re looking to go into a bit more depth, Adamson’s monograph is a riveting read! And finally, if you’d like to look at some of Al-Kindi’s own writings, take a look at this new collection of translations. Matt Teichman...

Episode 43: Peter Adamson discusses the philosophy of Al-Kindi

Subscribe to Elucidations:       This month, we sit down with Peter Adamson, Professor of Philosophy at Ludwig Maximilians Universität in Munich and King’s College, London. Click here to listen to our conversation with him. Al-Kindi may not be required reading for undergraduate philosophy majors these days, but the role he played in the history of philosophy was pivotal....

Bonus episode: Agustín Rayo interviews Matt

Before we began recording our previous episode, our guest turned the tables and interviewed me! Click here to listen to our conversation about a number of topics, including filmmaking, avant-garde cinema, interdisciplinary work, podcasting, and the illusion of philosophical depth. Matt Teichman...

Further reading on logical space

If you’re curious to learn more about what we discussed in our previous episode, keep your eye out for Agustín Rayo’s forthcoming book, The Construction of Logical Space. In addition, there are many papers available for download on his website. They cover a wide variety of topics in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, metaphysics, and the philosophy of language, and they’re a pleasure to read! Matt Teichman...

Episode 42: Agustín Rayo discusses the construction of logical space

Subscribe to Elucidations:       This month we’re joined by Agustín Rayo, Associate Professor of philosophy at MIT. Click here to listen to our conversation with him. Many things are theoretically possible. In fact, just about anything you can imagine is possible in the broadest sense of the term. I might win the lottery, or win a tennis match, or travel to Mars....

Episode 41: David Enoch discusses metaethics and robust realism

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!...

Further reading on logical dynamics

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...

Episode 40: Johan van Benthem discusses logical dynamics

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....

Episode 39: Nicholas Asher discusses the philosophy of language

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....