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Subscribe to Elucidations:       This month, Josh Kaufman and I talk to Claire Kirwin (Clemson University) about whether things are objectively good or bad, or whether it’s all in the eye of the beholder. Click here to download Episode 134 of Elucidations. Professor Kirwin is a fan of peanut butter cup ice cream, and Josh and I are fans of mint chocolate chip. Is there an objective fact of the matter about whether either is good, or whether one is better than the other? Or are we all just expressing our preferences, i.e. doing nothing more than providing information about ourselves? Can goodness be ‘in’ ice cream, or is it just ‘in’ the person eating it? If we think peanut butter cup ice cream can be objectively good, is that somehow disrespectful to people who prefer something else? Does everyone have a moral right to have their ice cream preferences respected by others? The example may be somewhat frivolous, but it ties into lots of similar questions that many of us think of as more weighty, like whether classical music can be objectively great/terrible, or whether a given behavior can be morally objectively great/terrible. ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       Episode post here. Transcription by Maria Araújo. Matt Teichman: Hello and welcome to Elucidations. I’m Matt Teichman, and with me today is Rebecca Valentine, co-founder of Queerious Labs in San Francisco. Rebecca Valentine, welcome. Rebecca Valentine: Hey, how’s it going? Matt Teichman: So I billed you as the co-founder of Queerious Labs, and I thought maybe we could start off by talking about what Queerious Labs actually is. It’s where we’re recording now—so I see all kinds of queerious things on the walls—but where exactly are we, and what goes on here? ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       Transcription by Maria Araújo. Brilliant work; thank you! Episode post here. Toby Buckle: Well, are you interviewing me, or am I interviewing you? Let’s just start. Matt—you’ve been doing this way longer than me, right now. This is, what, your fifth, sixth year podcasting? ...

Measuring things seems quite straightforward. Most of us already learned in primary school to measure how far apart two points are on a piece of paper: draw a line between them, and compare its length with the length of your ruler. After checking how many marks on the ruler your line covers, you can express the outcome of your measurement numerically. You may now see that the points are 10 centimeters or 4 inches apart, but the knowledge of such units is hardly necessary for your purposes. You could equally settle on an outcome like ‘10 ruler marks with equal intervals between them’, delegating it to others to calibrate their own rulers with yours, in case they are interested in more comparisons. ‘What’, I expect you to think now, ‘is epistemologically interesting about such an uncomplicated activity? Epistemology is usually conceived of as dealing with the nature and justification of knowledge, not with the comparison between marks on a ruler, and distances on a sheet of paper!’ ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       Full transcript here. This month, Agnes Callard and I talk to Aristotle about his philosophy, including his work on physics, biology, and ethics. Featuring an introduction by our awesome intern, Noadia Steinmetz-Silber! Click here to download Episode 133 of Elucidations. Not everyone is familiar with Aristotle’s work today, but the case could be made that science, political theory, logic, ethics, and philosophy exist in their current form largely due to the precedent he set. That said, in this episode, Aristotle opens by telling us a little about how the foundational assumptions made by a number of today’s scientists and philosophers differ from his. One distinctive feature of his work—both as compared to today’s intellectuals and as compared to his peers in 4th century B.C. Athens—was how his philosophy was meant to accommodate the possibility of different types of phenomena requiring totally different types of theoretical explanation. ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       Full transcript here. This month, we sit down with Rebecca Valentine (co-founder of Queerious Labs) to talk about anarchism, feminism, tech culture, and creative hacking. Click here to download Episode 132 of Elucidations. Hack this, hack that. What is a hacker, anyway? In pop culture, it’s common to use the term ‘hacker’ as a synonym for ‘cybercriminal’—that is, a person who engages in illegal activity over a computer network, usually involving gaining access to something they shouldn’t. But if you’ve ever spent any time in the tech community, you’ll know that there, the term is used in a very different way. It’s complicated to define precisely, but generally, ‘hacking’ involves taking apart a ready-made product in an exploratory way, whether to understand how it works, or to put it back together in a different, more customized way. ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       Episode post here. Many thanks to Johanna Wiedenkeller for this excellent transcription. Matt Teichman: Hello, and welcome to Elucidations. I’m Matt Teichman, and with me today is Katherine Ritchie, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York, CUNY.1 She’s here to discuss social groups. Katherine Ritchie, welcome. ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       Transcription by Maria Araújo. Thank you, Maria! Episode post here. Matt Teichman: Hello, and welcome to Elucidations, a philosophy podcast recorded at the University of Chicago. With me today is Chike Jeffers, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Dalhousie University, and he is here to discuss the social and political philosophy of W.E.B Du Bois. Chike Jeffers, welcome. ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       This episode transcribed by Maria Araújo. Thanks, Maria! Episode post here. Matt Teichman: Hello. Welcome to Elucidations. I’m Matt Teichman, and with me today is Greg Salmieri, a fellow at the Anthem Foundation, who teaches Philosophy at Rutgers University, and who co-edited a companion to Ayn Rand in the Blackwell Companions to Philosophy series and Foundations of a Free Society — which is out from University of Pittsburgh Press. ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       Full transcript here. This month, Greg Salmieri (University of Texas at Austin) returns for his third (!!) appearance on Elucidations, this time to talk about doing right by yourself. Click here to download Episode 131 of Elucidations. What was the last thing you did? The last thing I did was pull a shot of espresso. I wouldn’t say I made coffee as an end in itself, even though I love the taste of the roast I just used. If I had to tell you the main reason I made a coffee, it was in order to speed along my transformation from groggy podcast host to awake podcast host. But why do that? Hmm. I guess I wanted to wake up so that I could start writing this blog post, pay a couple bills, and put together a cool new IKEA lamp? But why pay a couple bills or put together a new IKEA lamp? So that I can continue to live in my apartment, be able to see things in it, and so on, maybe? Plato and Aristotle were interested in these ‘but what are you doing XYZ in order to accomplish?’ type questions, and they had the idea that if you keep re-asking the question every time you come up with answer, eventually you’ll get to something that is the ultimate reason you’re doing everything for. Once you get there, there won’t be any further justification for anything you do. ...