“Life is hard,” philosophy can help

	Boston Review ⁦‪@BostonReview‬⁩ "You can get over yourself, but you also need to get over the ideologies that make it very hard to see yourself and your place in society in an accurate way." Philosophers Kieran Setiya and Anil Gomes explore questions of self, society, and more: bostonreview.net/articles/how-p…   10/21/22, 2:30 PM

This ancient Greek thought experiment will have you questioning your identity

Or not…

The famous Greek philosopher Heraclitus posited that we don't step in the same river twice. Everything is constantly changing, though we're not likely to notice. The equivalent in our species can be summed up very well in a statement by Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert: "Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they're finished."

…

https://bigthink.com/culture-religion/this-ancient-thought-exercise-will-have-you-questioning-your-identity/

"Losing My Religion" talk, Thursday 3 pm

 

John Rawls and what is just (Midterm Report Video)

 For this clip I discuss a bit about my interpretation of John Rawls' views on "who should deserve what" and other aspects of his Theory of Justice. Also, here are the discussion questions:

1) Do you think those who were born gifted deserve more than those who were not?

2) Do you think we chose our destinies, or do you think our decisions are made before we are consciously aware of them?

Midterm report presentations

UPDATED 10.19 Let me know in comments below if you're still not on it.

==

Suggested topics. We’ll schedule three or four presentations per class, 10 minutes each plus discussion time. Your goal is to tell us something interesting and important about your topic that we’d not have learned by reading our assigned texts. Indicate your top two preferences in the comments space below, remember to include your section #. When midterm presentations conclude we'll commence final report presentations, in the same order. (Your final presentation can be a continuation of the midterm topic, or you can select a new topic related to our concluding texts.)

If it's a nice day when you report, you can take us outside (so avoid being tied to a PowerPoint or other indoor-dependent tech).

 

SEP 27

1. Immanuel Kant vs. Jeremy Bentham: Is ethics about creating the greatest happiness for the greatest number?: #7 Griffin Kennedy, #11 Desiree Douthier

 

2. Arthur Schopenhauer's philosophy of pessimism: #7 Jon Blalock [This topic is available, if anyone wants to impress me at the last minute. -jpo]

#11 Hannah Crumley, Leah Knight #12

 

3. The rise of virtue ethics: Lydia Ashby #7, #11 Sabirin Elmi, Daisy Gonzalez #12

 

4. [FL 19-20 or HWT 20-22] Kaleb Toon #12

 

SEP 29

1. Charles Darwin's natural selection: its importance for philosophy: #7 Sam Hutto, #11 Alexa Nolan, Betti Houser #12

 

2. Karl Marx's revolutionary philosophy: Amy Menendez #7,  Seth Cook #11, Edgar Reyes #12

 

3. Moksa: Heidi Engle #7, Rumi Wein #11, Emily Seeto #12

 

4. [ FL 21-22 or HWT 23-24]

 

OCT 4

1. William James's pragmatic philosophy: #7 Matthew Zipp, #11 David King, #12 Chris Barnes

 

2. Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy: What's an "ubermensch"? What is "eternal recurrence"?: #7 Cason Neill #11, John Wright #12

 

3. Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents OR The Future of an Illusion: #7 Will Abell, #11 D'Andre Phillips, #12 Mia Hubbard

 

4. Nietzsche and Dostoevsky on Nihilism, David King #11

[FL 23-24 or HWT 25-26]

 

OCT 6 - Exam 1 (So probably time for just one or two presentations today) 

1. Bertrand Russell's "Why I Am Not a Christian" or "The Conquest of Happiness" : Chloe Rush #7, Cesar Zapata #11

 

2. The French Existentialists (Sartre, de Beauvoir, Camus): Jon Blalock #7, Kenny York #11, Kharis Djao #12

 

3. The distinctiveness of American pragmatism: Will Abell #7, Laney #11, Josh Holmes #12

 

4. [HWT 27-28]

 

OCT 13

1.Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy: Cole McBee #7, Wilder Strong #11, Josh Keifer #12

 

2. Hannah Arendt on “the banality of evil”: Savannah Spann #7, Isaak Cadet #11, tyler walker #12

 

3. Karl Popper & Thomas Kuhn on philosophy of science: #7 Alex H, Sydney Boyce #11, samantha pleitez #12

 

4. Phillipa Foot’s & Judith Thomson’s thought experiments: Benjamin Anderson #7, Yesenia Garcia #11; Grecia Landeros #12

 

 

OCT 18

1.  John Rawls’ theory of justice: mona ikbariah #7, Ardiola Medi #11, Devon McNeal #12

 

2. Alan Turing & John Searle on Artificial Intelligence: Aaron Petty #7, Reid Robertson #12

 

3.Peter Singer’s utilitarian philosophy Sophia Williams #7, Karissia Gonzalez #11, Gabriel Rocha #12

 

4. Free Will in relation to John Rawls' theory of justice, Jacob Cuva #7

5. Aviree Moore #11 Dante Alighieri's philosophy of morality and judgement (Divine Comedy)

OCT 20

1. Meghan Hodges #7 Hypatia (her history and death); Ariana Arenas #11 Hypatia's history, her endurance in a patriarchal society, and death; 

2. Ashley G #7 Diogenes of Sinope: one man's peculiar approach to philosophy; Rudolph Serrat #11 Diogenes and his Cynic philosophy

3. Delanney Hight #11 Laura Bassi's feminism; Reid #12 Why philosophers ask questions 

4. [WGU -p.122. FL 31-32] Rejgar Tovi- #7, Nathan Buckley #11, William McDonald #12

   --Some topic suggestions related to WGU: Kant on Enlightenment; Orwell and Huxley on dystopia; Jean-Jacques Rousseau's philosophy of childhood education in Emile; Rousseau's relationship with David Hume; Voltaire's view of  Rousseau; Rousseau and Kant on the meaning of freedom; Rousseau's character flaws in relation to his philosophy; Hannah Arendt on natality; Nietzsche's "metaphysical wound" (see p.93); Philosophy's role in helping us grow up; ...

 

OCT 25 

1. [WGU -p.165] Kayla Pulling #7, William James #7, #12 Nathan Sysenkham

   --Some topic suggestions related to WGU: How education, travel, and/or work may contribute to growing up; the importance of raising free and happy children (and how to do it); the impact of the Internet on brain development, attention, etc. (see p.145); Rousseau on walking (see Reveries of the Solitary Walker); ...

2. [FL 33-34] Noah Ferguson #7

 

OCT 27 

1. [WGU -p.165-192. Simone Dobelbower #7

    --Some topic suggestions related to WGU: Kant, Arendt, Hegel, and/or Marx on the meaning of work; Paul Goodman's Growing Up Absurd;  "Planned obsolescence" (see p.178); Herbert Marcuse's One Dimensional Man and the culture of advertizing; ...

2. [FL 35-36] Abanoub #7

Neiman, Kant, & Why Grow Up

 Useful background for Susan Neiman's Why Grow Up...

 

 

Hannah Arendt on the banality of evil

"In refusing to be a person Eichmann utterly surrendered the single most defining human quality: that of being able to think; and consequently he was no longer capable of making moral judgements..." 

 

(Trailer)

Wittgenstein

 

 

 

Questions October 20

 Rawls, Turing & Searle, Singer-LH 38-40, FL 29-30, WGU -p.79.

LH

1. What did John Rawls call the thought experiment he believed would yield fair and just principles, and what was its primary device?

2. Under what circumstances would Rawls' theory permit huge inequalities of wealth between people?

3. What was the Imitation Game, and who devised a thought experiment to oppose it?

4. What, according to Searle, is involved in truly understanding something?

5. How do some philosophers think we might use computers to achieve immortality?

6. What does Peter Singer say we should sacrifice, to help stranger

7. Why did Singer first become famous?

8. How does Singer represent the best tradition in philosophy?

Susan Neiman, Why Grow Up? Subversive Thoughts for an Infantile Age (WGU -p.35)

1. Being grown-up is widely considered to be what?

2. Why did Kant say we choose immaturity?

3. Why is judgement important?

4. What is "the most pernicious bit of idealization"?

5. What is philosophy's greatest task?

FL

1. What changed for pro wrestling in the 1980s?

2. What happened in the 1980s to make dressing up for Halloween a "thing"?

3. What former child star had a ranch called Neverland in middle age?

4. How did the advent of home video, cable, and the Internet make adults more childlike?

Discussion Questions:

WGU

• Do you think of growing up as "a matter of renouncing your hopes and dreams"? 1
• Do you like the "well-meaning Uncle's" advice? Or the Rolling Stones'? 4
• Is Kant right, in "What is Enlightenment?," about why people "choose immaturity"? 5
• If distractions, especially "since the invention of cyberspace," are "literally limitless," is Enlightenment in Kant's sense a realistic goal for most people? 9
• Do you agree that it takes courage to think for yourself? 11
• Is travel necessary for growing up? 13-16
• Is Larry Summers wrong about language-learning? 16
• Do you believe the best time of life is between the ages of 18 and 28? 20
• How innocent should childhood be? What do you think of the way French children were raised in the 17th century? 24
• Do you wish you'd had a Samoan childhood? Do you think tests in school prepare you for life? 27
• Is it bad to be "WEIRD" (In the sense of the acronym)? 32
• COMMENT?: "...the important decisions are made by others we cannot even name. Or did you choose a world in which oil companies profit from wrecking the planet? Women are stoned for adultery or murdered for going to school? Children die of easily preventable diseases or are collaterally damaged by drones? Do your choices make a difference to any of these?" 34

Mar17

Questions Oct 18

Wittgenstein, Arendt, Popper & Kuhn, Foot & Thomson-LH 34-37, FL 27-28, WGU Introduction-p.35... 

1. What was the main message of Wittgenstein's Tractatus?

2. What did the later Wittgenstein (of Philosophical Investigations) mean by "language games," what did he think was the way to solve philosophical problems, and what kind of language did he think we can't have?

3. Who was Adolf Eichmann, and what did Arendt learn about him at his trial?

4. What was Arendt's descriptive phrase for what she saw as Eichmann's ordinariness?

5. Both Popper and Kuhn changed the way people understood science. What did Popper say about the method for checking a hypothesis and what name did Kuhn give to major breaks in the history of science? 

6. What is the Law of Double Effect? Many people who disagree with its principle--and with Thomson's violinist thought experiment--think that whatever our intentions we shouldn't play who?

WGU

1. Being grown-up is widely considered to be what? Do you agree?

2. Is Leibniz's optimism more likely to appeal to a small child? Why? 3

3. What was Kant's definition of Enlightenment? 5

4. What do Susan Neiman's children say she can't understand? Do you agree? 9

5. Why is judgement important? Is this a surprising thing to hear from a Kantian? 11

6. Being a grown-up comes to what? 12

7. What did Paul Goodman say about growing up? Are his observations are still relevant? 19

8. Why (in Neiman's opinion) should you not think this is the best time of your life, if you're a young college student? 20

9. What did Samoan children have that ours lack? 27 Can we fix that?

10. What is philosophy's greatest task? 31

Discussion Questions:

• Was Wittgenstein's main message in the Tractatus correct? 203
• What are some of the "language games" you play? (What are some different things you use language for?) 204
• Can there be a "private language"? 206
• "Eichmann wasn't responsible..." 208 Agree?
• Are unthinking people as dangerous as evil sadists? 211
• Is "the banality of evil" an apt phrase for our time? 212
• Was Popper right about falsifiability? 218
• Was Kuhn right about paradigms? 220
• How would you respond it you woke up with a violinist plugged into your kidneys? Is this a good analogy for unwanted or unintended pregnancy? 226

FL

• Pro wrestling is obviously staged. Why is it so popular?
• What do Burning Man attendees and other adults who like to play dress-up tell us about the state of adulthood in contemporary America? 245
• What do you think of Fantasy sports? 248
• Was Michael Jackson a tragic figure? 250
• Is pornography "normal"? 251

Sam Harris on free will

Wanted to share this (slightly long) speech about free will that Sam Harris gave about ten years ago.  Given that it is the most compelling case against the existence of free will that I have heard, and that Harris had me convinced after watching this some years ago, I thought it'd be worth sharing for any who are curious about weather or not our neurophysiology calls the shots. 

Hope you enjoy 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCofmZlC72g&t=145s

Acorns and oaks

"Simple, everyday acts can go a long way”... If planting an oak tree is the first small step in rethinking everyday life, it could matter a lot. https://t.co/QTAOuf2MhN

— Phil Oliver (@OSOPHER) October 17, 2022

Overthinking

If you're an Eeyore, befriend a Pooh.

Eeyore stood by himself and thought about things. Sometimes he thought sadly to himself, “Why?” and sometimes he didn’t know what he was thinking. So when Pooh came stumping along, Eeyore was very glad to be able to stop thinking for a little. ~A.A.Milne #mondaythoughts pic.twitter.com/MPYzadzCE7

— A.A.Milne (@A_AMilne) October 17, 2022

What is Existentialism?

 

Midterm report presentations continue

 Check the revised presentation schedule, make sure you're on it. Let me know if you still need help identifying a topic.

Big weekend ahead

Also looking forward to the return of the Southern Festival of Books, though it’ll be Saturday afternoon before we get there. https://t.co/ksEsgpqfmV

— Phil Oliver (@OSOPHER) October 11, 2022

Questions Oct. 13

Russell, Ayer, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Camus-LH 31-33, HWT 24-26 (Transience, Impartiality), FL 25-26

1. Reading whose autobiography led young Bertrand Russell to reject God? OR, What did he see as the logical problem with the First Cause Argument? Do you agree with Russell about this?

2. The idea of a barber who shaves all who don't shave themselves is a logical ______, a seeming contradiction that is both true and false. Another example of the same thing would be a statement like "This sentence is ___." Do these examples show a deep problem with language and its ability to accurately portray reality?

3. A.J. Ayer's ______ Principle, stated in his 1936 book Language, Truth and Logic, was part of the movement known as _____ ______. Is unverifiability the same thing as meaninglessness?

4. Humans don't have an _____, said Jean Paul Sartre, and are in "bad faith" like the ____ who thinks of himself as completely defined by his work. Is it possible to avoid bad faith in every situation?

5. What was Sartre's frustrating advice to the student who didn't know whether to join the Resistance? Should he have said something else?

6. When Simone de Beauvoir said women are not born that way, she meant that they tend to accept what? Are any essential identities conferred by birth?

7. Which Greek myth did Albert Camus use to illustrate human absurdity, as he saw it? Do you ever feel that way? Do you worry that someday you might, in work or relationships or something else?

HWT

1. What do you think of the Japanese sensitivity to nature and the seasons? 293
2. What do you think of Shinto's "no clear-cut separation between the aesthetic, the moral, and the religious"? 294
3. What do you think it means to think without concepts? 295
4. Do you agree with what "the enlightened [Buddhist] declares"? 296
5. Is time more a feeling than a concept? 296 What would Kant say?
6. What do you think of Hume's "is/ought gap"? 297
7. What can tea teach us? 299
8. What is wabi-sabi? 300
9. Was Kravinsky crazy? 301 How about Peter Singer? 302
10. Should we consider the welfare of distant strangers as much as of kith and kin? 303
11. Are Mozi and Mill saying the same thing? 304
12. Kant's categorical imperative, again: any comment? 309
13. Do you like Rawls' veil of ignorance idea? 309
14. Do you agree with the key principles of the Enlightenment? 310
15. Is Owen Flanagan right about "no sensible person"? 312
16. Is the mixing desk a good metaphor for moral pluralism? Do you agree that it's not the same as laissez-faire relativism? 314-15

Discussion Questions

• Reading Mill's autobiography led young Bertrand Russell to reject God. Do you agree or disagree with his reasoning? Why? 185

I for a long time accepted the argument of the First Cause, until one day at the age of eighteen I read _____'s Autobiography, and I there found this sentence: "My father taught me that the question 'Who made me?' cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question `Who made god?'" That very simple sentence showed me, as I still think, the fallacy in the argument of the First Cause. If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument. It is exactly of the same nature as the Hindu's view, that the world rested upon an elephant and the elephant rested upon a tortoise; and when they said, "How about the tortoise?" the Indian said, "Suppose we change the subject." The argument is really no better than that. Why I Am Not a Christian

(More Russell Quotes)

• Should it bother us that logical paradoxes that seem to be true AND false can be formulated in grammatically correct statements? Does this show something important about the limits of language, thought, and (thus) philosophy? 186
• Were young A.J. Ayer and the Positivists on the right track with their Verification Principle? Or was the older, post-Near Death Experience Ayer wiser about beliefs that cannot be conclusively verified? 190, 194
• Do you agree with Sartre that humans, unlike inanimate objects such as inkwells, don't have an essential nature? Is our common biology, DNA etc. not essential to our species identity? 197
• If you become deeply involved in your work  (or seem to, like Sartre's Waiter) are you in "bad faith"? 198
• What do you think of Sartre's advice to the student who didn't know whether to join the Resistance? 199
• Do you agree with Simone de Beauvoir about accepting a gender identity based on men's judgments? 200
• Is life a Sisyphean struggle? Is it "absurd"? Do you agree with Camus that Sisyphus must be happy? Why or why not? 201

FL

• Do you see any parallels between 1962 (as reflected in the SDS Manifesto, for instance) and today? 212
• What's your opinion of "Gun nuts"? And what should we do about the epidemic of gun violence in America? 218
• Do you think of The Force (in Star Wars) as a "spiritual fantasy" or does it name something you consider real? 222
• Was the sudden and widespread availability of contraception (The Pill) in the '60s a positive development, all things considered? 230
• Is the fantasy of perpetual youth an infantilizing force in America? 233 (Compare with our next read, Why Grow Up)
• Are we becoming "fake humans"? 234

Oct13/14

==

Podcasts-Sartre, de Beauvoir, Camus, Russell, Wittgenstein, Ayer, Arendt, Popper, Ordinary Language, Trolley Problems

In Our Time

Sartre. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jean-Paul Sartre, the French novelist, playwright, and philosopher who became the king of intellectual Paris and a focus of post war politics and morals. Sartre's own life was coloured by jazz, affairs, Simone de Beauvoir and the intellectual camaraderie of Left Bank cafes. He maintained an extraordinary output of plays, novels, biographies, and philosophical treatises as well as membership of the communist party and a role in many political controversies. He produced some wonderful statements: "my heart is on the left, like everyone else's", and "a human person is what he is not, not what he is", and, most famously "we are condemned to be free". Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how Sartre's novels and plays express his ideas and what light Sartre's life brings to bear on his philosophy and his philosphy on his life.

Simone de Beauvoir. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir. "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman," she wrote in her best known and most influential work, The Second Sex, her exploration of what it means to be a woman in a world defined by men. Published in 1949, it was an immediate success with the thousands of women who bought it. Many male critics felt men came out of it rather badly. Beauvoir was born in 1908 to a high bourgeois family and it was perhaps her good fortune that her father lost his money when she was a girl. With no dowry, she pursued her education in Paris to get work and in a key exam to allow her to teach philosophy, came second only to Jean Paul Sartre. He was retaking. They became lovers and, for the rest of their lives together, intellectual sparring partners. Sartre concentrated on existentialist philosophy; Beauvoir explored that, and existentialist ethics, plus the novel and, increasingly in the decades up to her death in 1986, the situation of women in the world.

Camus. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Algerian-French writer and Existentialist philosopher Albert Camus. Shortly after the new year of 1960, a powerful sports car crashed in the French town of Villeblevin in Burgundy, killing two of its occupants. One was the publisher Michel Gallimard; the other was the writer Albert Camus. In Camus’ pocket was an unused train ticket and in the boot of the car his unfinished autobiography The First Man. Camus was 46. Born in Algeria in 1913, Camus became a working class hero and icon of the French Resistance. His friendship with Sartre has been well documented, as has their falling out; and although Camus has been dubbed both an Absurdist and Existentialist philosopher, he denied he was even a philosopher at all, preferring to think of himself as a writer who expressed the realities of human existence. Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957, Camus’ legacy is a rich one, as an author of plays, novels and essays, and as a political thinker who desperately sought a peaceful solution to the War for Independence in his native Algeria.

Bertrand Russell. Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential British philosopher Bertrand Russell. Born in 1872 into an aristocratic family, Russell is widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytic philosophy, which is today the dominant philosophical tradition in the English-speaking world. In his important book The Principles of Mathematics, he sought to reduce mathematics to logic. Its revolutionary ideas include Russell's Paradox, a problem which inspired Ludwig Wittgenstein to pursue philosophy. Russell's most significant and famous idea, the theory of descriptions, had profound consequences for the discipline.

In addition to his academic work, Russell played an active role in many social and political campaigns. He supported women's suffrage, was imprisoned for his pacifism during World War I and was a founder of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. He wrote a number of books aimed at the general public, including The History of Western Philosophy which became enormously popular, and in 1950 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Russell's many appearances on the BBC also helped to promote the public understanding of ideas.

Ludwig Wittgenstein. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, work and legacy of Ludwig Wittgenstein. There is little doubt that he was a towering figure of the twentieth century; on his return to Cambridge in 1929 Maynard Keynes wrote, “Well, God has arrived. I met him on the 5:15 train”.Wittgenstein is credited with being the greatest philosopher of the modern age, a thinker who left not one but two philosophies for his descendents to argue over: The early Wittgenstein said, “the limits of my mind [language] mean the limits of my world”; the later Wittgenstein replied, “If God looked into our minds he would not have been able to see there whom we were speaking of”. Language was at the heart of both. Wittgenstein stated that his purpose was to finally free humanity from the pointless and neurotic philosophical questing that plagues us all. As he put it, “To show the fly the way out of the fly bottle”.How did he think language could solve all the problems of philosophy? How have his ideas influenced contemporary culture? And could his thought ever achieve the release for us that he hoped it would?With Ray Monk, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southampton and author of Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius; Barry Smith, Lecturer in Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London; Marie McGinn, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of York.

Ordinary Language Philosophy. Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Ordinary Language Philosophy, a school of thought which emerged in Oxford in the years following World War II. With its roots in the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Ordinary Language Philosophy is concerned with the meanings of words as used in everyday speech. Its adherents believed that many philosophical problems were created by the misuse of words, and that if such 'ordinary language' were correctly analysed, such problems would disappear. Philosophers associated with the school include some of the most distinguished British thinkers of the twentieth century, such as Gilbert Ryle and JL Austin.

Hannah Arendt. In a programme first broadcast in 2017, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the political philosophy of Hannah Arendt. She developed many of her ideas in response to the rise of totalitarianism in the C20th, partly informed by her own experience as a Jew in Nazi Germany before her escape to France and then America. She wanted to understand how politics had taken such a disastrous turn and, drawing on ideas of Greek philosophers as well as her peers, what might be done to create a better political life. Often unsettling, she wrote of 'the banality of evil' when covering the trial of Eichmann, one of the organisers of the Holocaust.

Karl Popper. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century, Karl Popper whose ideas about science and politics robustly challenged the accepted ideas of the day. He strongly resisted the prevailing empiricist consensus that scientists' theories could be proved true. Popper wrote: “The more we learn about the world and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, specific and articulate will be our knowledge of what we do not know, our knowledge of our ignorance”. He believed that even when a scientific principle had been successfully and repeatedly tested, it was not necessarily true. Instead it had simply not proved false, yet! This became known as the theory of falsification.He called for a clear demarcation between good science, in which theories are constantly challenged, and what he called “pseudo sciences” which couldn't be tested. His debunking of such ideologies led some to describe him as the “murderer of Freud and Marx”. He went on to apply his ideas to politics, advocating an Open Society. His ideas influenced a wide range of politicians, from those close to Margaret Thatcher, to thinkers in the Eastern Communist bloc and South America. So how did Karl Popper change our approach to the philosophy of science? How have scientists and philosophers made use of his ideas? And how are his theories viewed today? Are we any closer to proving scientific principles are “true”?

==

The Scientific Method. Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the evolution of the Scientific Method, the systematic and analytical approach to scientific thought. In 1620 the great philosopher and scientist Francis Bacon published the Novum Organum, a work outlining a new system of thought which he believed should inform all enquiry into the laws of nature. Philosophers before him had given their attention to the reasoning that underlies scientific enquiry; but Bacon's emphasis on observation and experience is often seen today as giving rise to a new phenomenon: the scientific method.The scientific method, and the logical processes on which it is based, became a topic of intense debate in the seventeenth century, and thinkers including Isaac Newton, Thomas Huxley and Karl Popper all made important contributions. Some of the greatest discoveries of the modern age were informed by their work, although even today the term 'scientific method' remains difficult to define.

The Meaning of Life According to AJ Ayer. What was an English philosopher doing at a New York party, saving the young model Naomi Campbell from a rather pushy boxing heavyweight champion, Mike Tyson? The philosopher was Alfred Jules Ayer, who was just as at home mixing with the glitterati as he was with Oxford dons. On the one hand he was an academic, on the other a celebrity and bon viveur.

So what does this logician have to say about the meaning of life?

In 1988, a year before his death, he gave a lecture at the Conway Hall in which he set out his notion of existence. By this time, ‘Freddie’ Ayer was one of the UK’s most prominent public intellectuals, with regular television and radio appearances, discussing the moral issues of the day.

Ayer’s former student at Oxford, philosopher AC Grayling, remembers the tutor that became his friend. He explores the man of contradictions – the atheist who almost recanted after a near-death incident; the deep thinker with a weakness for mistresses and Tottenham Hotspur. What was his contribution to philosophy? How did it inform the way he lived his life? What, if anything, can we learn from Freddie’s view on the big question?

Trolleyology
The Philosopher's ArmsSeries 4 Episode 2 of 4

Pints and Philosophical Problems with Matthew Sweet. This week, trolleyology: how should you decide between two morally troubling courses of action? This is a question which affects both soldiers in the heat of action and decision-makers in the NHS. Matthew is joined in the snug by philosopher David Edmonds.

==

Philosophy Bites

Sebastian Gardner on Jean-Paul Sartre on Bad Faith

Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness is sometimes described as the bible of existentialism. At its core is the notion of Bad Faith. For this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast Sebastian Gardner, author of a recent book about Bei...

Kate Manne on Misogyny and Male Entitlement

Cornell philosopher Kate Manne discusses misognyn, male entitlement, together with the notion of 'himpathy', a term she coined, in this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast. Manne is the author of two recent highly influential books, ...

Ray Monk on Philosophy and Biography

Ray Monk discusses the relationship between philosophy and a philosopher's life in this interview with Nigel Warburton for the Philosophy Bites podcast. Can understanding the biographical context of a philosopher and the type of person t...

David Edmonds on Wittgenstein's Poker

For this second special lockdown episode of Philosophy Bites, Nigel Warburton interviewed David Edmonds about his bestseller Wittgenstein's Poker, which he wrote with John Eidinow. This brilliant book is an exploration of an event that...

Melissa Lane on Plato and Totalitarianism

Was Plato's ideal state a totalitarian one? Karl Popper, thought so, and made his case in The Open Society and Its Enemies. Melissa Lane, author of Plato's Progeny discusses Popper's critique of Plato in this episode of Philosophy Bites....

David Edmonds on Trolley Problems

Is it ever morally acceptable to kill one person to save five? Most people think that it can be. But are we consistent in this? In this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast Nigel Warburton interviews David Edmonds (co-creator of Philo...

Julian Baggini on Thought Experiments

Philosophers often use elaborate thought experiments in their writing. Are these anything more than rhetorical flourishes? Or do they reveal important aspects of the questions under discussion. Julian Baggini, editor of The Philosophers'...