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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Discussing Maurice Merleau-Ponty's "Primacy of Perception" (1946) and The World of Perception (1948).

Discussing Jean-Paul Sartre's The Transcendence of the Ego (written in 1934).

Discussing Plato's "Euthyphro." With guest Matt Evans.

Discussing parts of David Hume's Treatise of Human Nature (1740) and Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). With guest Getty Lustila.

Discussing selections from Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel C. Dennett.

Discussing the arguments by Descartes, St. Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, William Paley, Kant, and others, as analyzed in J.L. Mackie's The Miracle of Theism: Arguments For and Against the Existence of God (1983), chapters 1-3, 5-6, 8, and 11. With guest Robert Scott.

Discussing Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s utopian novel Herland (1915) and psychologist Carol Gilligan's In a Different Voice (1983). With guest Azzurra Crispino.

Patricia Churchland on her new book Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us About Morality. We also discussed David Hume's ethics as foundational to her work, reading his Treatise on Human Nature (1739), Book III, Part I and his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), Section V, Parts I and II.

Discussing The Republic by Plato, primarily books 1 and 2.

Discussing Friedrich Schleiermacher's "On Religion; Speeches to its Cultured Despisers" (1799, with notes added 1821), first and second speeches. With guest Daniel Horne.

Discussing Russell's Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1919), ch. 1-3 and 13-18. With guest Josh Pelton.

Discussing John Locke's Second Treatise on Government (1690). With guest Sabrina Weiss.

Part 2 of our discussion of G.F.W. Hegel's "Phenomenology of Spirit," covering sections 178-230 within section B, "Self-Consciousness."

On G.F.W. Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), Part B (aka Ch. 4), "Self-Consciousness," plus recapping the three chapters before that (Part A. "Consciousness"). With guest Tom McDonald.

On Gottlob Frege's "Sense and Reference," "Concept and Object" (both from 1892) and "The Thought" (1918). With guest Matt Teichman.

Discussing Michel de Montaigne's Essays: "That to Philosophize is to Learn to Die," "Of Experience," "Of Cannibals," "Of the Education of Children," and "Of Solitude" (all from around 1580) with some discussion of "Apology for Raymond Sebond."

Discussing Martin Heidegger's Being and Time (1927), mostly the intro and ch. 1 and 2 of Part 1.

Discussing Edmund Husserl's Cartesian Meditations (1931).

Discussing Arthur Schopenhauer's On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, published in 1847 (as an expansion of his doctoral thesis from 1813).

On Soren Kierkegaard's "The Sickness Unto Death" (1849). With guest Daniel Horne.

Discussing Goodman's Ways of Worldmaking (1978). With guest painter Jay Bailey.

Primarily discussing "Reasoning: The Sixty Stanzas" and "Emptiness: The Seventy Stanzas," by the 2nd century Indian Buddhist Nagarjuna. With guest Erik Douglas.

Discussing Freud's Civilization and its Discontents (1930). Get the full episode at partiallyexaminedlife.com. For Wes Alwan's summary of this book, go here).

Discussing Spinoza's the Ethics, Books II through V.

Discussing Spinoza's Ethics (1677), books 1 and 2.

Discussing Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Discourse in Inequality (1754) and book 1 of The Social Contract (1762).

Discussing William James's "The Will to Believe".

Discussing articles by Alan Turing, Gilbert Ryle, Thomas Nagel, John Searle, and Dan Dennett. With guest Marco Wise.

On Pragmatism (1907) by William James and "The Fixation of Belief" (1877) and "How to Make Our Ideas Clear" (1878) by Charles Sanders Peirce.

Discussing Immanuel Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783). With guest Azzurra Crispino.

Discussing Plato's Theatetus and Meno.

On David Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748).

Discussing three essays by Arthur Danto from The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art (1986): the title essay, "The Appreciation and Interpretation of Works of Art," and "The End of Art."

Discussing G.W.F Hegel's Introduction to the Philosophy of History (1837).

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Discussing Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince (1532) and Ch. 1-20 of The Discourse on the First Ten Books of Titus Livy.

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On Werner Heisenberg’s Physics and Philosophy. Dylan Casey's first appearance (as a guest).

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On the Chuang Tzu, Chapters 2, 3, 6, 18, and 19. With guest Erik Douglas.

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Discussing The Genealogy of Morals (mostly the first two essays) and Beyond Good and Evil Ch. 1 (The Prejudices of Philosophers), 5 (Natural History of Morals), and 9 (What is Noble?).

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Discussing Fundamental Principles (aka Groundwork) of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785).

Discussing Jeremy Bentham’s An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation chapters 1-5, John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism, and Peter Singer's "Famine, Affluence, and Morality."

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Continuing last ep's discussion of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus with some Rudolph Carnap from his 1935 book Philosophy and Logical Syntax.

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Discussing the beginning (through around 3.1) of Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921).

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Discussing Gottfried Wilhelm Liebniz's Monadology (1714).

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Discussing Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Books I and II.

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Discussing Camus's "An Absurd Reasoning" and "The Myth of Sisyphus" (1942).

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Discussing Hobbes's Leviathan, Chapters 13-15.

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On Descartes's Meditations 1 and 2.

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Discussing Plato's "Apology." Does studying philosophy make you a better person? No.

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