The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast
The Partially Examined Life is a podcast by some guys who were at one point set on doing philosophy for a living but then thought better of it. Each episode, we pick a short text and chat about it with some balance between insight and flippancy. You don't have to know any philosophy, or even to have read the text we're talking about to (mostly) follow and (hopefully) enjoy the discussion. For links to the texts we discuss and other info, check out www.partiallyexaminedlife.com. We also feature episodes from other podcasts by our hosts to round out your partially examined life, including Pretty Much Pop (prettymuchpop.com, covering all media), Nakedly Examined Music (nakedlyexaminedmusic.com, deconstructing songs), Philosophy vs. Improv (philosophyimprov.com, fun with performance skills and philosophical ideas), and (sub)Text (subtextpodcast.com, looking deeply at lit and film). Learn about more network podcasts at partiallyexaminedlife.com.

On David Chalmers's book Constructing the World (2012). How are all the various truths about the world related to each other? David Chalmers, famous for advocating a scientifically respectable form of brain-consciousness dualism, advocates a framework of scrutability: if one knew some set of base truths, then the rest would be knowable from them. Get the full discussion at partiallyexaminedlife.com.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_068_12-4-12.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 9:29pm CDT

Excerpts of discussions about David Chalmers's The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory, Thomas Nagel's Mind and Cosmos, and Paul Auster's City of Glass.
Direct download: PEL_Not_School_Digest_Nov-Dec_2012.mp3
Category:Not School Report -- posted at: 5:38pm CDT

On Rudolph Carnap's The Logical Structure of the World (1928). What can we know? Carnap thinks that all the various spheres of knowledge are logically interrelated, that you can translate sentences about any of these into sentences about sets of basic, momentary experiences. This book, aka the Aufbau, is his attempt to sketch out how this system of linguistic reduction can work (it doesn't). With guest Matt Teichman. Get the full discussion at partiallyexaminedlife.com.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_067_11-15-12.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 11:01am CDT

On W.V.O. Quine's "On What There Is" (1948) and "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" (1951). What kind of metaphysics is compatible with science? Quine sees science and philosophy as one and the same enterprise, and he objects to ontologies that include types of entities that science can't, even in principle, study. Also, troubles with the concept of synonymy, i.e. "same meaning." With guest Matt Teichman. Get the full discussion at partiallyexaminedlife.com.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_066_10-21-12.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 9:52am CDT

Our highlight reel in thanks to all you listeners who have brought us to the milestone of approximately two million downloads.
Direct download: PEL_Highlight_Reel.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 11:43am CDT

On Alexander Hamilton/James Madison's Federalist Papers (1, 10-12, 14-17, 39, 47-51), published as newspaper editorials 1787-8, plus Letters III and IV from Brutus, an Anti-Federalist. What constitutes good government? These founding fathers argued that the proposed Constitution, with its newly centralized (yet also separated-by-branch) powers would be a significant improvement on the Articles of Confederation, which had left states as the ultimate sovereigns. Get the full discussion at partiallyexaminedlife.com.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_065_10-7-12.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 1:39am CDT

On Fame: What the Classics Tell Us About Our Cult of Celebrity by Tom Payne (2010). What's the deal with our f'ed up relationship with celebrities? Payne says that celebrities serve a social need that's equal parts religion and and aggression. TV's Lucy Lawless (Xena, Spartacus, Battlestar Galactica) joins us to discuss the accuracy of this thesis. Looking for the full Citizen version?

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_064_9-10-12.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 11:14pm CDT

On philosophical issues in McCarthy's 2005 novel about guys running around with drug money and shooting each other, and about fiction as a form for exploring philosophical ideas. What can morality mean for people who have witnessed the "death of God," i.e. a loss in faith in light of the horrors of war? Who knows what McCarthy himself thinks? With guest Eric Petrie. Get the full discussion at partiallyexaminedlife.com.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_063_8-26-12.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 2:50pm CDT

On Candide: or, Optimism, the novel by Voltaire (1759). Is life good? Popular Enlightenment philosopher Leibniz argued that it's good by definition. God is perfectly good and all-powerful, so whatever he created must have been as good as it can be; we live in the best of all possible worlds. Voltaire loads this satirical adventure story up with horrific violence to demonstrate that Leibniz's position is just silly. Life is filled with suffering, and human nature is such that even in peace and prosperity, we're basically miserable. Yet we still love life despite this. Tend your garden! Get the full discussion at partiallyexaminedlife.com.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_062_8-3-12.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 11:38am CDT

On Friedrich Nietzsche's "On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense" (1873). What is truth? This essay, written early in Nietzsche's career, is taken by many to make the extreme claim that there is no truth, that all of the "truths" we tell each other are just agreements by social convention. WIth guest Jessica Berry, who argues that that Nietzsche is a skeptic: our "truths" don't correspond with the world beyond our human conceptions; all knowledge is laden with human interests. Get the full discussion at partiallyexaminedlife.com. Get Wes Alwan's guide to Nietzsche's essay here.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_061_7-17-12.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 6:11pm CDT

On Aristotle's Politics (350 BCE), books 1 (ch 1-2), 3, 4 (ch 1-3), 5 (ch 1-2), 6 (ch 1-6), and 7 (ch. 1-3, 13-15). Aristotle provides both a taxonomy of the types of government, based on observations of numerous constitutions of the states of his time, and prescriptions on how to best order a state. Get the full discussion at partiallyexaminedlife.com.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_060_6-28-12.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 11:56pm CDT

On Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (1981), mostly ch. 3-7 and 14-17. What justifies ethical claims? MacIntyre claims that no modern attempt to ground ethics has worked, and that's because we've abandoned Aristotle. We see facts and values as fundamentally different: the things science discovers vs. these weird things that have nothing to do with science. In Aristotle's teleological view, everything comes with built-in goals, so just as a plant will aim grow green and healthy, people have a definite kind of virtue towards which we do and should naturally strive. Get the full discussion at partiallyexaminedlife.com.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_059_6-10-12.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 9:43am CDT

On G.E. Moore's Principia Ethica, ch. 1 (1903); Charles Leslie Stevenson's "The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms" (1937), and Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue, ch. 1-2. Is there such a thing as moral intuition? Is "good" a simple property that we all recognize but can't explain like yellow? Or are moral terms just tools we use to convince other people to like things that we like? Get the full discussion at partiallyexaminedlife.com.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_058_5-23-12.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 8:00am CDT

On Bergson's Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic (1900). What is humor? Bergson says that, fundamentally, we laugh as a form of social corrective when others are slow to adapt to society's demands. Other types of humor are derivative from this. With guest Jennifer Dziura. Get the full discussion at partiallyexaminedlife.com.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_057_5-3-12.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 11:25am CDT

Continuing discussion of Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, Part I, sections 1-33 and 191-360. With guest Philosophy Bro. On "family resemlances" in concepts, dismissing philosophical puzzles as grammatical mistakes, and the private language argument. Get the full discussion at partiallyexaminedlife.com.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_056_4-19-12.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 11:40pm CDT

On Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, Part I, sections 1-33 and 191-360 (written around 1946). What is linguistic meaning? Wittgenstein argues that it's not some mysterious entity in the mind, but that it is a public matter: you understand a word if you can use it appropriately, and you know the context in which it's appropriate to use it and how to react when you hear it in that context. W. calls such a context a "language game," and sees language as big heap of these games, spanning a wide range of human activity. With guest Philosophy Bro. Get the full discussion at partiallyexaminedlife.com.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_055_4-12-12.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 3:21pm CDT

Continuing our discussion of Owen Flanagan's The Bodhisattva's Brain: Buddhism Naturalized (2011). Are the basic tenets of Buddhism compatible with a respect for science? We talk (eventually) about talk about karma, nirvana, emptiness, no-self, and the four noble truths. Get the full discussion at partiallyexaminedlife.com.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_054_3-19-12.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 5:40pm CDT

Discussing The Bodhisattva's Brain: Buddhism Naturalized (2011) with Owen Flanagan. What philosophical insights can we modern folks with our science and naturalism (i.e. inclination against super-natural explanations) glean from Buddhisim? Flanagan says plenty: We can profitably put Buddhist ethics in dialogue with familiar types of virtue ethics. However, we need to be skeptical of any claims to scientific support the superior happiness of Buddhists. Get the full discussion at partiallyexaminedlife.com.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_053_3-15-12.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 3:11pm CDT

On W.E.B. DuBois's "Of Our Spiritual Strivings" (1903), Cornel West's "A Genealogy of Modern Racism" (1982), and Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" (1963) and "The Black Power Defined" (1967), plus Malcolm X's "The Black Revolution" (1963). With guest Lawrence Ware. Get the full discussion at partiallyexaminedlife.com.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_052_2-28-12.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 6:50pm CDT

On Ferdinand de Saussure's Course in General Linguistics (1916) (Part I and Part II, Ch. 4), Claude Levi-Strauss's "The Structural Study of Myth" (1955), and Jacques Derrida's "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences" (1966). What is language? What is the relation between language and reality? With guest C. Derick Varn. Get the full discussion at partiallyexaminedlife.com.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_051_2-9-12.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 2:53pm CDT

On Robert M. Pirsig's philosophical, autobiographical novel from 1974. What's the relationship between science and values? Pirsig thinks that modern rationality, by insisting on the fundamental distinction between objects (matter) and subjects (people), labels value judgments as irrational. Society therefore largely ignores aesthetic considerations in the buildings and machines that litter our landscape. With guest David Buchanan. Get the full discussion at partiallyexaminedlife.com.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_050_1-10-11.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 2:08pm CDT

Discussing Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish (1975), parts 1, 2 and section 3 of part 3. With guest Katie McIntyre.

Direct download: PREVIEW-PEL_ep_049_12-14-11.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 2:10pm CDT

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