Podcast

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 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:       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. ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       Full transcript here. This month, Henry Curtis and I sit down with Graham Priest (CUNY Graduate Center) to get the straight dope on Buddhist metaphysics. Click here to download Episode 123 of Elucidations. Buddhism isn’t just a religion—it’s an entire family of philosophical traditions that took root all over the Asian continent for thousands of years. The historical Buddha articulated views in what we consider to be many different areas of philosophy, including metaphysics, ethics, and political philosophy. But for this episode, we’re focusing on the metaphysics. Metaphysics means different things to different people, but our guest thinks of it as a broad inquiry into the structure of reality at a fundamental level, space and time, what substance is, cause and effect, what makes any given thing the thing it is. And one of many things he finds interesting about Buddhism is that over the years, Buddhists have floated metaphysical views that don’t arise in the Western traditions. ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       Full transcript here. This month, we sit down with Frithjof Bergmann (University of Michigan) and David Helmbold to talk about work that we really, really want. Not just kind of, but like, really really. Click here to download Episode 122 of Elucidations. Most of us spend the majority of our waking hours at work. And yet, the weight we assign to our jobs doesn’t seem to reflect that fact. We give some thought to what career we’d like to have, but usually not to what the day-to-day experience of pursuing that career is actually going to be like, long term. You can see this in the way we look for jobs. Typically, if you need a job, you look at what’s available, filter the options for something you think won’t be that bad, and do your best to get one of the best ones you can. It never seems to work the other way around. You don’t put effort into thinking about what kind of job would suit you psychologically and what you’d be good at, and then let the opportunity to pursue that job come to you. ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       Full transcript here. This month, Julia Liu and I talk to Aaron Ben Ze’ev (University of Haifa) about romantic love: what it is, what makes it last for a long time when it lasts for a long time, what makes it end when it ends, and so on. Click here to download Episode 121 of Elucidations. ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       Episode transcript here. This month, I talk to Robin Dembroff (Yale University) about the gender binary: what it is, what people mean when they say they’re outside of it, and what political motivation there may be for resisting it. Click on this link to download Episode 120 of Elucidations. ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       Episode transcript here. This month, Henry Curtis and I sit down to talk to Stephanie Kapusta (Dalhousie University) about misgendering. Click here to download the episode. In the ordinary sense of the term, misgendering is when someone addresses someone else in a way that corresponds to the wrong gender. Like if Elizabeth Warren was on the street in front of me, dropped her wallet, and I picked it up and yelled: “Sir, you dropped your wallet,” then I would be misgendering her. Why? Presumably because sir is a form of address reserved for men, and she isn’t a man. Now, that probably doesn’t happen to Elizabeth Warren very often, if ever. But if it started happening to her constantly, such that lots of people completely stopped ever addressing her in the woman way, you could imagine it getting on her nerves. ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       Episode transcript here. This month, we’re joined by Tyler Cowen (Professor of Economics at George Mason University), to talk about utilitarianism, economic growth, and the future. Click here to download the episode. Utilitarianism is the name we give a family of normative ethical theories, most of which are variations on the idea that doing the right thing involves imparting the greatest amount of benefit to the greatest number of people. How do I tell whether policy XYZ is the right policy to adopt? Simple! Numerically measure the amount of happiness that policy is going to cause, add all of it up, numerically measure the amount of suffering that policy is going to cause, add all of that up, subtract the suffering from the happiness, and go with the policy that yields the greatest amount of happiness. We find this idea intuitive, because we like to be generous and help other people. If there are surpluses of happiness anywhere in the world, we often feel it would be great if those surpluses could be transferred, somehow, to the less fortunate. ...