Podcast

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. ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       This month, we talk to Brian L. Frye (University of Kentucky College of Law) about how we deal with and react to plagiarism. Click here to listen to our conversation. Plagiarism is obviously terrible, and plagiarizers should be punished to the full extent of the law. Or should they? Our guest this month thinks there are a number of issues with that position. For one thing, plagiarism isn’t illegal–it’s a social rule that’s unofficially enforced–so it isn’t even clear that the law has much of an ’extent’ in this case. That is, plagiarists don’t go to jail; they’re just subject to other kinds of punishments, like expulsion from school or social ostracism. In the educational context, Brian L. Frye argues that punishing students for plagiarizing doesn’t contribute to the main purpose of education, which is to make as many students as possible learn as much as possible. If a student cheats on an assignment by copying an article written by someone else, the real problem is that they aren’t learning anything, because they aren’t doing the work they’re supposed to be doing. He thinks that what an instructor should do in that situation is tell the student they’re slacking off and that they need to do the work if they want to learn–rather than go ballistic and do what they can to ensure the student will never work in this town again. ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       Full transcript here. This month, we sit down with Tommy Curry (University of Edinburgh currently; Texas A&M at the time of the recording) to discuss a new area of academic research called black male studies. You can see his full bio at the end of this entry, and you can click here to listen to our conversation. ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       Full transcript here. This month, I sit down with Katherine Ritchie (CUNY Graduate Center, City College) to talk about what a social group is. Click here to listen to our conversation. What is there to being a group of people? Does being in a group basically just mean you’re on the list of people who are in the group, or is there more to it? Our guest this month argues that a group of people isn’t just a selection of people taken at random; rather, it’s a collection of people who stand in different relations to each other. So for example, on a baseball team there’s a pitcher and a catcher, and the pitcher stands in the “I throw the ball at” relation to the catcher. Or in a small company, the CEO stands in the “I am your boss” relation to their employees. What makes a group a group isn’t just who’s in it, but what role each person takes on relative to each other person. ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       This month, Emily Dupree and I talk to Sally Haslanger (MIT) about ideology. Click here to listen to our conversation. We throw the word ‘ideology’ around a lot, but what does it actually mean? Well, unfortunately, different people mean different things by it at different times. One thing we often mean by it is ‘a person’s political outlook or worldview.’ So suppose that’s what it means. What constitutes a person’s political outlook? Is it just a list of all the things they believe? ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       Ever wonder what quantum mechanics is? You are not alone. This month, we talk to Tom Pashby (University of Chicago) about what makes quantum mechanics so hard to interpret, despite the fact that it makes incredibly accurate empirical predictions. Click here to listen. ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       In this episode, Myisha Cherry (UC Riverside) and I talk about talking. What makes someone good at at, and what makes someone bad at it? Click here to listen to our conversation. We don’t always think of conversation as a skill. Often, we think of it as something that just happens automatically; I need to talk someone, and I walk over and just tell them what’s on my mind. But there’s a lot of careful work that goes into having a good conversation: you modulate the way you address the person based on your knowledge of how they are and aren’t comfortable talking, you take into account what you know about their experiences, and approach the exchange as an opportunity to learn. In this episode, Myisha Cherry runs through some of what it takes to be a good conversationalist, in the hope that being our best selves while talking to one another can facilitate difficult conversations. ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       Full transcript here. This month, we talk to Greg Kobele (Universität Leipzig) about what linguistics is and how abstract mathematics can be of use to it. Click here to listen to our conversation. Linguists study the rules that speakers of a given language actually follow when they speak. Not made-up rules like “never end a sentence with a preposition,” which no one ever follows (including the teachers who shame their students for not following them), but the actual rules you need to know in order to understand English. Like how you have to say “My name is Matt” rather than “My name are Matt.” This may seem like a trivial task, but in fact the rules that native speakers of a given language actually follow when they know the language are mind-bogglingly complicated, when you try to sit down and describe them precisely. Lots of incredibly smart people have been trying to sit down and describe the rules of English precisely, and they’re still nowhere near done. ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       Full transcript here. This month, we sit down with Chike Jeffers (Dalhousie University) to discuss the work of W.E.B. Du Bois. Click here to listen to our conversation. It’s the end of the American civil war. 4 million slaves have just been freed. Now what do we all do? The question still wasn’t settled by the turn of the century, when an interesting debate between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois sprung up. Washington thought the best way forward for black Americans was to build up economic power and let political power come later. Du Bois, on the other hand, thought that becoming politically enfranchised (while concurrently building up economic power) was indispensable and a prerequisite for achieving full enfranchisement as citizens. ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       Full transcript here. This month, Toby Buckle of the Political Philosophy Podcast and I are doing a joint episode. Click here to listen to it! Instead of the usual format wherein I draw that month’s guest out about a particular topic, Toby Buckle and I have a freeform conversation about why we do podcasts, the universality of fundamental moral principles, and the nature of political disagreement. ...