Podcast

Subscribe to Elucidations:       This month, we discuss reasons for action and belief with Mark Schroeder, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern California. Click here to listen to our conversation. Consider one question from this episode. Can we decide what to believe, the way we decide how to act? We can, for instance, decide to worship at a church or temple. But if we do so in January in Chicago, can we decide to believe that the weather on our way to worship is warm? Or, more significantly, can we decide to believe in God? Pascal (in)famously suggested that we should in fact decide to believe in God. He suggested that if we believe in God when we needn’t, we waste a bit of time; but that if we don’t believe and good when we need to, we condemn ourselves eternally. That reasoning may seem right, but many have noted that it does not much help one actually believe in God. Then again, if one finds oneself in a crisis, one may indeed find one’s self believing in God, if only for lack of other hope. In such circumstances, has one decided to believe in God? Does one have reason to? (Perhaps this helps explain why religion often looks beyond reason, to such “unreasonable” traditions as readings, rites, and roles.) ...

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. But our guest argues that while gratitude might not itself comprise the most weighty moral phenomenon, it can be “telltale” of moral interactions and relationships, and of their complexification in modern moral philosophy. ...

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. Here’s what we mean by “monotonic”: You will learn that if a conclusion follows from certain information, then more information won’t affect your conclusion. Consider this example: Suppose that per your college, if you take six philosophy classes, then you can minor in philosophy. Then if you know you’ve taken six philosophy classes, you should be able to conclude that you can minor in philosophy. Additional information – say, about the many other classes you have taken – should not affect your conclusion. Well and good. (After all, who wouldn’t want to study philosophy?) ...

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. But of course, in the middle ages, God was both a subject of professorial study and popular energy. Scholars reasoned knowledge about God, but God meant more to many more people beyond the academy. To them, God was more than a notion. ...

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. Where does she fit into mainstream, professional philosophy? Does she fit in at all? Salmieri encourages us to consider Rand with the perspective we afford others who have proven pivotal in philosophy: say, Descartes and Locke. In their own day, Descartes and Locke both did much else besides philosophy; but their larger critiques involved philosophy, and were deepened all the more so because they did not restrict themselves to their day’s philosophy. Those critiques have gone on to shape philosophy profoundly, so much so that today we can take their once-unique approaches for granted – and so we can take their being philosophers for granted. Perhaps we do not yet appreciate the impact Ayn Rand can ultimately have on philosophy? ...

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.” ...

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. He brought it to his physics department, but they said it was too philosophical. So he brought it to his philosophy department, but they said it was pure physics. Eventually, he got his philosophy department to accept a new thesis on how philosophy, physics, and math could together understand the advancements of the new century. ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       This month, we discuss Benedict de Spinoza’s work on the good embodied life with Susan James, Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London. Click here to listen to our conversation. Spinoza (1632-1677) was born in what was then one of Europe’s most free Jewish communities, in Holland. Perhaps thanks to that, he developed ideas centuries ahead of his time. But even for his free community, his ideas were far too forward. In fact, his ideas so impassioned his Jewish congregation that it did “excommunicate, expel, curse and damn” him for “evil opinions and acts”: “no one should communicate with him orally or in writing, or show him any favour, or stay with him under the same roof, or within four ells of him, or read anything composed or written by him.” At the time, Spinoza was 23. He did not submit. Instead, he went on to produce much of today’s most studied early-modern ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology. ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       This month, we discuss the moral philosophy of Adam Smith with Christel Fricke, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oslo, and Research Director at the Center for the Study of Mind in Nature in the Department of Philosophy, Classics, and History of Art and Ideas at the University of Oslo. Click here to listen to our conversation. ...

Subscribe to Elucidations:       This month, we talk political philosophy with Mark Lance, Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Justice and Peace at Georgetown University. Click here to listen to our conversation. Anarchy. Sounds like the wild west or something, doesn’t it? Lawlessness indeed sounds pretty terrifying. But our guest argues that anarchism isn’t at all about lawlessness; that anarchists are indeed very much in favor of society being governed. The difference is that the ideal is one of self-governance. Start with small groups of people coming to a reasonable arrangement on the basis of compromise and discussion, and only scale up whatever you have to in order to keep the bare minimum up and running. Many aspects of our modern life might even be preserved under anarchism: for example, there would still be law enforcement, and there would still be a body of representatives in charge of maintaining basic infrastructure. But what there wouldn’t be is a stable class of people in whom the power to rule is vested over the long term. Instead, different people would regularly rotate through the role of being political representatives, to ensure that when they act in their capacities as spokespeople, they truly are speaking on behalf of the groups they represent. ...