Overthink

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As Overthink comes to a close, why not take a look back? In Episode 182, Ellie and David tackle the concept of reflection and explain why it is so central to philosophy. What is the value of reflection, and what are its drawbacks? How does philosophy go astray when it treats the self as a product of reflection, and how can phenomenology and existentialism shed light on the proper role of reflection in our lives? Your hosts analyze the myth of Narcissus, discuss studies on reflection among animals such as rats and dolphins, and consider reflection as a visual metaphor for thinking. In the Substack bonus segment, Ellie and David reflect on Overthink and give some final thoughts before its end.Works Discussed:Ellie Anderson, Self-Relation: A Phenomenology of Ambiguity (forthcoming May 2027)Hans-Johann Glock, “Do Animals Have Thoughts?”Dieter Henrich, “Fichte’s Original Insight”Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of PerceptionGabriel Marcel, The Mystery of BeingOvid, MetamorphosisDavid Peña-Guzmán, When Animals DreamJD Smith et al. “The uncertain response in the bottlenosed dolphin (Tursiops truncatus)”

Highlight: Is reflection overvalued in philosophy?

* Merleau-Ponty thinks that the way we reflect—as a subject looking out at a world that is distinct from it—is inconsistent with the way our experience works. There is no distinct subject, no private sphere of consciousness, in our everyday existence prior to reflection. Since philosophy, generally, emphasizes reflection, distance, and theoretical abstraction, the world of experiencing is often overlooked.

* He calls this wrong view reflective analysis, and associates it with idealism—especially Kant and Descartes. He thinks that reflective analysis substitutes a reconstruction of experience for a description of it.

* Philosophy, to Merleau-Ponty, should really be describing experience, not constructing it.

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Nothing can devastate us more than the loss of a loved one. In this episode of Overthink, David and Ellie talk about mourning. What kinds of losses hurl us into a state of mourning? Are there healthy and unhealthy ways of mourning? Or does this distinction not apply in cases when we are dealing with irreparable loss? And how do we deal with the loss of someone when the feeling of loss doesn’t naturally resolve but rather stays with us like “an open wound,” as Freud says? To shed light on this difficult experience, your hosts explore Sigmund Freud’s distinction between mourning and melancholia, Roland Barthes’ account of grieving the death of his mother, as well as Emilio Uranga’s analysis of the role that culture plays in our experience of death. In the Substack bonus segment, Ellie and David discuss how Freud’s notion of ambivalence can help to make sense of mourning.Works Discussed:Roland Barthes, Mourning DiaryJulie Alev Dilmaç, “The new forms of mourning: Loss and exhibition of the death on the internet”Martin Heidegger, Being and TimeCorina Sas and Alina Coman, “Designing personal grief rituals: An analysis of symbolic objects and actions”Sigmund Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia”Emilio Uranga, “Dos teorias de la muerte: Sartre y Heidegger”Emilio Uranga, “Notas para un estudio del mexicano”Emilio Uranga, Analysis of Mexican Being

Highlight: Uranga and zozobra

* Mexican philosopher Emilio Uranga created an existential ontology rooted in Mexican history and experience. For Uranga, the “essence” of the human is the accident (the accident is at the junction of Being and Nothingness).

* An emotion associated with this ontology is zozobra, which is a state of extreme rest and incertitude. It is an awareness of living in a space where anything can happen and is closely related to his idea of being-as-accident.

* The word comes from maritime practice, when strong waves make a captain lose control of a ship, leaving the ship to the mercy of the waves.

* This emotional state, for Uranga, is anchored in the reality of the human condition, which is the condition of the accident; experiencing this emotion is what brings one to a more authentic existence.

Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue! In this episode, Ellie and David talk about weddings. What kind of celebration is a wedding? And what social function do these festivities serve? Do weddings necessarily legitimize the institution of marriage? Or can weddings be dissociated from this legal institution and its problematic history? As they ponder these issues, your hosts walk you down the aisle of history by considering how early Christians developed their views about weddings by embracing some aspects of Roman weddings while rejecting others as vain and contrary to virtue. They also explore the meaning of weddings symbols that are still with us today and look at how weddings can challenge exclusionary nationalist ideologies. In the Substack bonus segment, Ellie and David talk about the weddings they’ve been to and discuss historical factors that shape our current conception of weddings.Works Discussed:Stephanie Coontz, Marriage, a HistoryLaurie Essig, Love, Inc.Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of PassageBrooke Leany, “Something borrowed: The origins of Christian wedding rituals.”Ellen Rothman, Hands and Hearts: A History of Courtship in AmericaLisa Schwarzbaum, “Mamdani, His Mother and a Movie of Prescient Grace”Jonathan Wolff, “The Value of Ceremonies”

Highlight: Performance and Symbolism in Weddings

* An aspect of weddings that Habermas discusses is fuss

* Fuss is the idea that one purpose of a wedding is to be extravagant and ostentatious in a way that is meant to make a display of the event.

* Another aspect is social drama

* Social drama is the idea that, at a wedding, you don’t show up as your regular self, but as a persona, by wearing your best clothes, performing a specific role, etc.

* Acknowledgement and discussion of these aspects reveals how weddings are performative and symbolic in nature.

* Mira Nair’s film, Monsoon Wedding (2001), emphasizes the various performative and symbolic aspects that a wedding often has, and serves as a great example of the discussions that Ellie and David have in this episode.

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit overthinkpod.substack.com

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit overthinkpod.substack.com

After a BIG announcement (!!!), your hosts David and Ellie get into the economic and psychological features of the state no one wants to be stuck in: unemployment. How does capitalism structurally construct “wageless life” while nonetheless treating it as a personal failure or unhappy accident? What’s the connection between unemployment and reactionary politics? And is AI going to put us all out of a job? Correcting misconceptions about automation, UBI, and more, your hosts take you through some significant arguments about the impacts of unemployment and reflect on why this socially-constructed position can make us feel so worthless even when we know that we’re not the problem. In the Substack bonus segment, Ellie and David reflect on the end of Overthink and share some reasons for it.Works Discussed:Aaron Benanav, Automation and the Future of WorkAaron Benanav, “Is the AI Bubble About to Burst?”Eloundou et al., “GPTs are GPTs: An Early Look at the Labor Market Impact Potential of Large Language Models”Charles Babbage, On the Economy of Machines and ManufacturesMichael Denning, “Wageless Life”Wendy Brown, In the Ruins of NeoliberalismRegina Bateson, “Perceptions of pandemic resume gaps: Survey experimental evidence from the United States”

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Beauty is big business, and the rise of looksmaxxing and increasingly invasive treatments is raising the alarm on the ways that our looks matter in our personal and social lives. Ellie and David speak with philosopher Heather Widdows about how the emphasis on beauty in the present day constitutes a real shift from previous eras. Beauty is no longer taken as a sign of moral goodness, but itself has become a moral ideal. This applies worldwide. The “beauty ideal” is seeping into practically every culture and coming to be expected of more and more people for longer periods of their lifespan. They touch on the four elements of the beauty ideal that Widdows identifies and reflect on their own beauty practices and what it means to be complicit in a toxic system. In the Substack bonus segment, they touch on Lacan, America’s Next Top Model, and image-based profiles.Works discussed:Heather Widdows, Perfect Me: Beauty as an Ethical Ideal

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Is it easier to cheat now than ever? In episode 177 of Overthink, Ellie and David talk about cheating. From micro-cheating on your girlfriend to doping in sports, cheating appears to have escalated in various domains. Your hosts explain the relationship between cheating and rule-breaking, then question norms surrounding cheating in romantic relationships. Why is cheating considered the ultimate dealbreaker? Is it always dishonest? Finally, they address the rise of generative AI cheating in schools and the ethical numbing that promotes it. How is ChatGPT different from using a calculator? And has it become rational for students to cheat? In the Substack Bonus Segment, Ellie and David question whether we should even use the word ‘cheating’ for romantic relationships rather than infidelity.Works Discussed:Stuart Green, “Cheating”Natasha McKeever, “Is the Requirement of Sexual Exclusivity Consistent with Romantic Love?”Deborah Rhode, Cheating: Ethics in Everyday LifeJames D. Walsh, “Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College”

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Highlight: Ethical numbing

* Repeated exposure to ethical misconduct can produce a form of “ethical numbing,” which is how cultures of cheating take root.

* The more that people see others cheat, the less they regard it as cheating.

* This is evident in AI use in academic contexts. Students feel justified in using it because so many other students are, and they think they will be left behind if they don’t follow suit.

Related articles:

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Are you paying attention when you scroll online? In episode 176 of Overthink, Ellie and David draw your attention to attention. They explain why attention is so hard to define and debate the extent to which it should be equated with consciousness. Is attention the same thing as consciousness? Or are there important differences between these concepts? They consider different ways that attention has been classified, from “overt vs. covert” to “effortful vs. effortless” to “voluntary vs. involuntary.” Ellie and David then discuss the commodification of attention and how it has been intensified by the digital era, or what Chris Hayes calls “the age of attention.” How has social media changed the way we attend to the world, to ourselves, and to others? Is our attention still our own? Or has it become alienated? In the Substack Bonus Segment, Ellie and David talk about Simone Weil’s and Iris Murdoch’s ethical approaches to attention.Works Discussed:Jelle Bruineberg, “Rethinking the cognitive foundations of the attention economy”Chris Hayes, The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered ResourceWilliam James, The Principles of PsychologyCarlos Montemayor and Harry Haroutioun Haladjian, Consciousness, Attention, and Conscious AttentionThe Friends of Attention, Attensity! A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement

Highlight: Spontaneous thinking

* Spontaneous thinking refers to what happens in your mind when you are just existing, not performing any particular task. This activates the default mode network in your brain, and you engage in many spontaneous thoughts; you are remembering things, thinking about your values, daydreaming, etc.

* There is existential and cognitive value to spontaneous thinking, and it is important in consolidating a sense of self.

* The attention economy, by constantly grabbing our attention, stops us from spending valuable time with ourselves. Doomscrolling doesn’t just waste time that we could have spent doing something, but also time where we could have done nothing.

Related articles:

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Play it cool and play this episode. In episode 175 of Overthink, Ellie and David talk about what it means to be cool. From swag gap relationships to Mark Zuckerberg and the manosphere’s failed attempts at being cool, your hosts examine coolness’s ties to youth and subversion and its opposition to displays of wealth. They trace how coolness emerged from Black American culture in the 1930s, before being associated with Beat Poets and punk musicians. They consider precursors to cool, like the Italian term sprezzatura, and question the ontology and the morality of coolness. Is coolness an attitude or a state? Is it inherently narcissistic? Can you ever successfully “try” to be cool? In the Substack bonus segment, Ellie and David discuss coolness through an ethical perspective.Works Discussed:Joel Dinerstein, “Jazz Cool”Ted Gioia, The History of Jazzbell hooks, We Real Cool: Black Men and MasculinityDick Pountain and David Robins, Cool Rules: Anatomy of an Attitude

Highlight: Ironic detachment

* Ironic detachment, along with narcissism and hedonism, is one of Pountain and Robins’s criteria of coolness.

* It involves a wholesale rejection of sincerity and an unwillingness to express interiority. The cool person doesn’t say what they really care about, and they don’t want to seem invested in anything.

* Pountain and Robins point out that coolness spread in the post-war period. They argue that the horrors of the war led to a widespread disillusionment, where people found it hard to latch onto values. They thus turned inward, focusing on private experience and leading to ironic detachment from the world.

Related articles:

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What resources do Indigenous studies provide for addressing the crisis of human-made climate change? And how is the climate crisis linked to settler colonialism? In episode 174 of Overthink, Ellie and David chat with Indigenous philosopher and activist Kyle Whyte about his work on climate action. They discuss how Indigenous people are often blocked out of conversations about environmental impact, the common mischaracterization of the land back movement, and the importance of kinship. How are certain groups disproportionately affected by climate change? Is climate change actually a new problem? And how can respecting land rights of Indigenous people offer some solutions to climate change? In the Substack bonus segment, your hosts question who is called upon to respond to the crisis of climate change and how non-Indigenous people should engage in discussions surrounding climate change and colonialism.

Works Discussed:

Kyle Whyte, “Climate Action at the Speed of Consent”

Kyle Whyte, “Indigenous Climate Change Studies: Indigenizing Futures, Decolonizing the Anthropocene”

Kyle Whyte, “Settler Colonialism, Ecology, and Environmental Injustice”

Highlight: The “Speed of Consent”

* Mainstream discussions around climate change highlight a sense of urgency.

* More specifically, climate change is generally labelled as an emergency, as something that must be immediately solved, which urges immediate action without reflection. See: The Climate Clock, The Climate Emergency (UN), etc.

* “Urgency” as it is tied to climate action reinforces settler colonial logics.

* If climate action is approached with a sense of urgency, it prevents any ability to slow down, weigh decisions, build trust with communities, etc.

* The language of “urgency” prevents us from understanding and developing dynamics that will lead to constructive climate action.

* Developing constructive dynamics entails building trust and reciprocity with Indigenous communities.

* This sense of urgency implores us to use settler colonial approaches of addressing the climate crisis.

* Ex. Proposals for carbon sequestration technologies are anchored in further taking away the land of Indigenous communities.

* The “speed of consent” means moving at the speed at which Indigenous communities—as well as other communities—consent to climate solutions. In doing so, the rights and freedoms of Indigenous people are respected/enhanced, it is made sure that policies are viable/long-lasting/widely supported, and constructive climate solutions are ultimately more empowered and effective in their implementation.

This is a key concept within Whyte’s paradigm of climate action. This idea has many implications, such as revealing how the discourse around climate change shapes our understanding of what effective climate action really means.

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