MeaningofLife.tv: Science of Spirituality

What are persons? ... Why don't we say "my legs went to the store"? ... Actions and intentions ... The case of the robot who voted ... Are addicts in control of their actions? ... The moral culpability of a naughty dog ...

Rutger's new book, Humankind: A Hopeful History ... Debunking the "veneer theory" of human nature ... Are violence and war intrinsic to human nature? ... The human self-domestication thesis ... Why Bob doesn't like the idea of people "deserving punishment" ... Is it bad to emphasize the dark side of human nature? ... What the debunking of the Stanford Prison Experiment can teach us ... Giving money to rich people: Why the U in UBI? ... Would UBI turn us all into couch potatoes (or worse)? ...

Doug's new book, Philosophy Smackdown ... Plato's Cave and the three layers of wrestling reality ... What it means when wrestlers break the fourth wall ... Real life can be "just as scripted as wrestling, if not more so" ... How and why moral virtue changed in wrestling ... The only performance where people say "you know it's fake, right?" ... What philosophers could learn from professional wrestling ...

Abby's research on "death anxiety" ... Demoralization, purpose, and meaning ... Death anxiety and the quality of life of health care providers ... Abby's experience contracting the coronavirus ... Is religious belief a cure for death anxiety? ... Is life without death worth living? ...

A Scientology ship commander calls the pandemic "suppressive and anti-social" ... Turning to L. Ron Hubbard during the pandemic: radiation as a state of mind ... The appeal of groups like Scientology in a crisis ... The pandemic is the rare mainstream event that got Scientologists' attention ... Hubbard and Trump, Scientology and post-truth ... Nikita’s experience with an exercise similar to "past lives auditing" ... We thought the Internet was a threat to Scientology. Were we wrong? ...

John’s new book, Mood and Trope ... From the "linguistic turn" to the "affective turn" ... Kant vs. Nietzsche vs. Heidegger vs. Deleuze ... In praise of unsystematic criticism ... Clarifying some Heideggerian terminology ... From the sublime to the Anthropocene ...

Are we really as social as the Stoics believed? ... Distinguishing between the “objective” and the “real”... ... ...and between the “real” and representations of the “real” ... Dan: It makes no difference whether or not values are objective ... Massimo’s solution to the omnivore’s dilemma ... Massimo: “Values are never separate from facts” ...

Spoiler alert! Critiquing Star Trek: Discovery and Picard ... Serial vs. episodic storytelling ... Why Dan hated Discovery's main character ... Is the show too woke? ... Debating the big twist in Picard ... Dan: Two things screw up Picard as a Star Trek show ... Throwing science out the window ... Milton: Audiences don't know what they want ... Have younger viewers turned away from science fiction? ...

Paul describes the view from Toronto ... Zero- and non-zero-sum aspects of the pandemic ... Paul: Canada's multiparty system helps defuse polarization ... A disaster without solidarity ... How our emotions caused us to underreact to the pandemic ... Masks and mobs ... Trump's fragile feelings ... Why has the external threat of the disease not united humanity? ... A deep dive into the meaning of statistical significance ...

Remembering Andrew’s recently deceased dog Eddy ... Can we explain the bond between dogs and people? ... The many disgusting things that dogs love ... Andrew angers the cat lovers in the audience ... Are there actually "cat people" and "dog people"? ... Dogs' use of affection as a tool ... What can we learn from dogs about how to be present? ... Andrew: "I do think that after death I will be with my dogs" ... Andrew wants the economy to open up—a little ...