A Discourse About Nothing

A Discourse About Nothing

By Pierce MarksSociety & CultureReligion & SpiritualityArtsPhilosophy
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A Discourse About Nothing episodes

  • Episode 9: The Culture War is a Lie

    Pierce and Matt try to make sense of the current state of the culture war.

    https://notdiscourse.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/episode-9_-the-culture-war-is-a-lie.mp3

    A Discourse About Nothing is made with Jetpack Podcast. Full show notes and every episode at https://notdiscourse.wordpress.com/

    2 hr
  • Episode 8: How Coronavirus Made Me Realize I’m a Jerk (and that I need a new moral paradigm)
    https://notdiscourse.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/epsiode-8_-how-coronavirus-made-me-realize-im-a-jerk-and-need-a-new-paradigm.mp3

    Pierce is back to scold you! Danny is on for the first time! I haven’t been outside in a month!

    Show-notes

    Overall Point: Our way of seeing the world and considering our place in it is selfish, naive and disconnected from reality.

    Details of how we see the world:

    (1) My assuming that I have so many options on what I can do with my life is naive and selfish, in that it presumes that I, unlike everyone else in history, can just go do whatever I want.
    (2) My way of deciding what I value, what I put up with, what I pursue has been founded on calculations of my own happiness pleasure, or how my actions affect the happiness of others. This is naively optimistic and futile: it shows I am living unaware of how precarious and fragile life is. Further, it is selfish in two ways: it rests on a tacit assumption that my happiness, and the happiness of other individuals as individuals, ought to be the only or primary consideration in determining what is worthwhile.
    (3) Assuming that my death will be meaningful indicates that my view of myself is much higher than my view of the vast majority of people through history.
    (4) My habits as a consumer indicate that I elevate myself above everyone else, because while I pursue my happiness through consumption, I do this at the expense of others.
    (5) Laughing at, and making light of, our evil, without working to change it, betrays our lives as leisurely and disconnected from moral concerns. This indicts our character in proportion to how rich we are.
    (6) Seeing my actions which constitute slight moral improvement as ‘sacrifices’ rather than as doing the bare minimum, or considering the end of those actions to be my own improvement, indicates that I conceive of even morality itself as centered around me.

    Thus, we need a new way of seeing the world which consoles us, wards off despair, and doesn’t lapse back into naive, self-centered optimism.

    Lecture Pierce mentions: Intrinsic Value, the External POV, and Meaning

    A Discourse About Nothing is made with Jetpack Podcast. Full show notes and every episode at https://notdiscourse.wordpress.com/

    50 min
  • Episode 7.5: A Response to Very Bad Wizards on Ecclesiastes
    https://notdiscourse.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/ep-7.5-response-to-very-bad-wizards.mp3

    In this mini-episode, Pierce solves a murder, and responds to some other dudes on their angsty interpretation of Ecclesiastes.

    (Picture: Albrecht Durer’s “Knight, Death and the Devil.”)

    Very Bad Wizards (Podcast)

    A Discourse About Nothing is made with Jetpack Podcast. Full show notes and every episode at https://notdiscourse.wordpress.com/

    23 min
  • Episode 7: The Meaning of Life and Intrinsic Value
    https://notdiscourse.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/episode-7-meaning-and-intrinsic-value.mp3

    Pull up a chair, and shut your mouth while Pierce once again lectures you about morality, religion and Jordan Peterson. Listener BEWARE!

    (Picture: Young William James looking pretty sick.)

    Sources:

    Wolf, Susan. “Meaningfulness: A Third Dimension of the Good Life”

    Scruton, Roger. “Of Beauty and Consolation.”

    Peterson, Goldstein and Craig on the Meaning of Life

    Peterson on Purpose (Why do people put crap music over these clips?)

    Marks, Pierce. “Metaethics and Absurd Angst.”

    Swinburne, Richard. “Simplicity of Evidence of Truth.”

    Swinburne, Richard. “The Probability of the Resurrection.” (there’s a lot of work on this…)

    Shafer Landau, Russ. “Moral Realism.”

    Tolstoy, Leo. “A Confession.”

    William, James. “The Varieties of Religious Experience (Lectures IV-VII).”

    A Discourse About Nothing is made with Jetpack Podcast. Full show notes and every episode at https://notdiscourse.wordpress.com/

    45 min
  • Episode 6: Thoughts on Jordan Peterson
    https://notdiscourse.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/episode-6-thoughts-on-jordan-peterson.mp3

    Pierce and Matt pull themselves up by their bootstraps, get high and tight fades, and talk about the internet’s favorite frog, Jordan Peterson.

    Sources:

    Cathy Newman Interview

    Jordan Peterson on the “Left Wingers Going Too Far”

    Peterson and Scruton on the Transcendent

    Peterson, Goldstein and Craig on the Meaning of Life

    A Discourse About Nothing is made with Jetpack Podcast. Full show notes and every episode at https://notdiscourse.wordpress.com/

    1 hr 9 min
  • Episode 5: Serenity and Serenity

    Pierce and Matt analyze the character, Malcolm Reynolds, from Firefly and Serenity.

    https://notdiscourse.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/episode-5-final.mp3

    A Discourse About Nothing is made with Jetpack Podcast. Full show notes and every episode at https://notdiscourse.wordpress.com/

    52 min
  • Episode 4: The Witcher Episode Feedback
    https://notdiscourse.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/episode-4.mp3

    Pierce goes solo this week to answer some feedback we received in our previous two-part episode.

    A Discourse About Nothing is made with Jetpack Podcast. Full show notes and every episode at https://notdiscourse.wordpress.com/

    21 min
  • Episode 3: The Witcher 3, Consolation and Religion (Part 2)
    https://notdiscourse.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/episode-3.mp3

    Pierce breaks down how the video game, The Witcher 3, radically influenced his philosophical study and introduces Matt to meta-ethics. Part 2 of 2.

    A Discourse About Nothing is made with Jetpack Podcast. Full show notes and every episode at https://notdiscourse.wordpress.com/

    27 min
  • Episode 2: The Witcher 3, Consolation and Religion (Part 1)
    https://notdiscourse.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/episode-2-complete.mp3

    Pierce breaks down how the video game, The Witcher 3, radically influenced his philosophical study and introduces Matt to meta-ethics. Part 1 of 2.

    A Discourse About Nothing is made with Jetpack Podcast. Full show notes and every episode at https://notdiscourse.wordpress.com/

    35 min
  • Episode 1: Why make a philosophy podcast?
    https://notdiscourse.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/episode-1_-why-make-a-philosophy-podcast_.mp3

    Pierce and Matt introduce the new podcast.

    A Discourse About Nothing is made with Jetpack Podcast. Full show notes and every episode at https://notdiscourse.wordpress.com/

    27 min

About A Discourse About Nothing

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A philosophy scholar and a philosophy newcomer discuss and breakdown philosophy in an effort to make the study more accessible.