Ian Olasov: Philosophy for Everybody

Favorite Part of the Podcast: David: Why is philosophy so important for us to understand beyond academia? Ian: "Popular science fiction is loaded with philosophical questions and a lot of those questions are questions about human nature and what we are. They are really important questions and even if you don't necessarily get an answer from reading a work of philosophy, you get a kind of vocabulary or a way of understanding the world that you may not have gotten before. That's what philosophy does very well. It allows you to describe what's at stake, clarify and refine the questions that matter to us, and discover questions that matter to us." Ian Olasov is a graduate student at the Graduate Center of New York. His research centers around moral theory and the philosophy of language. He is currently writing his dissertation on moral discourse and focuses on the following questions: What speech acts are involved in moral discourse? When do people moralize? What can these teach us about the role of morality in everyday life? Olasov is also the founder of Brooklyn Public Philosophers, the first forum for philosophers working in the greater Brooklyn area to discuss their work with a general audience. Subscribe: iTunes | Overcast | Start Here: IanOlasov.com Brooklyn Public Philosophers Ian's Favorites: Crash Course WiPhi Gareth Matthews Martha Nussbaum Inside Higher Ed Jonathan Haidt David Hume Simon Blackburn Jack Sidnell Derek Barthet The Denial of Death Personal Identity 13th The New Jim Crow John Perry: Structured Procrastination Are Prisons Obsolete?