Philosophy Overdose

In this program, Bill Moyers interviews philosopher and educator Mortimer Adler about his book on Aristotle and his process of interpreting great Greek philosophers’ work into modern day language.

Uploaded 27-02-24

#philosophy #ethics #aristotle



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Professor Raimond Gaita gives the first talk in a series on 'Prejudice, Reason and Understanding' at the Australian National University as part of the Freilich Foundation's Eminent Lecturer Series back in 2013.

Uploaded 27-04-25

Some years ago, Mirko Bagaric, then Professor and Dean of Law at Deakin University in Melbourne, published in the Age an opinion piece in which he argued that we should torture people in certain circumstances if doing so would save many lives. His article provoked incredulity amongst some people: what had seemed to them to be undiscussable and which they believed had partly defined their political culture just because it was undiscussable, was again “on the agenda”. Bagaric was in his turn incredulous that people could be so lacking in respect for rational discussion as to believe that some matters were undiscussable or unthinkable, and that they could be so morally and politically irresponsible as to deem undiscussable something that could potentially save thousands of lives. In the first two lectures, Raimond Gaita tries to bring out what he takes to be most serious in the incredulity voiced by Bagaric and his critics in order to explore what it shows about political discourse that aspires to be a conversation of citizens. He will explore why the ideal that even in ethics and politics, reliable and sound cognitive achievements is best achieved in a tone-free zone, is widespread amongst philosophers, at least in the analytical tradition. He will suggest that attractive as it may be as an elaboration of how best to rise to the claims of reason, it erodes the kind of judgment and sobriety necessary to critical thought about ethics and politics and thereby impoverishes our understanding of what the distinction between legitimate illegitimate persuasion comes to in those realms. It erodes entirely, he will argue, the conditions necessary for the conversation of citizens.

In these lectures, Raimond Gaita explores an ideal of a democratic politics as ‘a conversation of citizens’. Reflection germane to the topic goes back at least to the time of Socrates. In Plato’s Gorgias, whose bitter political tone has often been noted, Socrates says to an aspiring young orator that he is good at oratory but bad a conversation. He meant, in part, that oratory betrays a trust intrinsic to real 'conversation’ that one’s partner in conversation will respect ones need to be legitimately persuaded to a belief – that she will not exploit her skills and one’s vulnerability to them, for example. For that reason, Socrates did not look upon oratory as a morally neutral skill that could serve good or bad ends. He regarded it, as many now regard spin, as rotten through and through. More often than not, belief requires trust and so an inquiry into persuasion which honors that trust, will be in part an inquiry into how to discipline trust so that it becomes the expression of good judgment rather than gullibility, for example. Reason, its limits, judgment, trust, sobriety, and realism as these show themselves in ethics and politics is the topic.

00:00 Talk
40:04 Q and A

#philosophy #ethics #moralphilosophy



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A common defense of the various and sometimes cruel ways in which human beings use the other animals is that human beings are just more important than the other animals are: what happens to human beings matters more. In this lecture, Christine Korsgaard begins by arguing that the trouble with this claim is not so much that it is false, as that it makes almost no sense at all. The difficulty rests in the fact that everything that is important must be important to someone. A defense of this claim requires nothing less than a theory of why there is such a thing as “the good” at all. She will sketch such a theory and then raise some objections to it, which will take us into an examination of the relation between having a self and having a good. Although it is not true that some creatures are “more important” than others, it is true that the fact that some creatures have less of a self means that things may be, in a general way, less important to them.

Uploaded 15-04-25

This talk was given by Christine M. Korsgaard (Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Philosophy at Harvard) at the University of Berkeley as part of the 2016 Howison Lectures in Philosophy.

00:00 Talk
56:02 Q and A

#philosophy #ethics #moralphilosophy #animalethics



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Audio recording of a lecture given by the English philosopher Antony Flew on voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide at the Australian National University back in 1980.

Uploaded 30-03-25

#philosophy #ethics #medicalethics #moralphilosophy #bioethics



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Professor Emma Borg gives the first lecture in a series on "Reasons for Action" as part of the 2024 Frege Lectures in theoretical philosophy at the University of Tartu.

Uploaded 08-04-25

Do people generally do what they do on the basis of the reasons they have for acting? The standard philosophical answer - common-sense psychology or folk psychology - says yes. But recently the idea that humans are generally rational, reasons-responsive beings has come under considerable pressure, as a number of empirical findings (often in the fields of social, comparative, and developmental psychology) seem to suggest that, on the contrary, people are often blind to reasons, acting on gut feelings and intuitions, and are subject to various biases and other errors of reasoning. Although these empirical findings are now well-known (reaching beyond the ivory tower into the public consciousness), Emma Borg suggests that the precise problem for common-sense psychology remains unclear. There are (at least) three different arguments that could be made based on the empirical data. In her lectures, Emma Borg explains these three arguments and argues that the proponent of the common-sense view has responses to each of them. She concludes that the case against common-sense psychology can be rejected, and that we should hold on to the notion that action (of a typical adult) involves acting based on reasons.

Emma Borg is Professor of Philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy, University of London. Her main research interests are the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and business ethics. Borg is the author of Minimal Semantics (2004) and Pursuing Meaning (2012), as well as two forthcoming books: A Very Short Introduction to Meaning and Acting for Reasons: In Defence of Common-Sense Psychology (all published by Oxford University Press). The latter book is also the basis for her Frege Lectures.

00:00 Intro
03:18 Talk
1:05:13 Q and A

#philosophy #epistemology #psychology #rationality



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Audio recording of a 1966 lecture by Ernest Nagel on knowledge and cognitive meaning at the Cooper Union Forum in a series on Philosophy for Modern Man. Note, the last minute or so of the lecture is missing.

Uploaded 27-05-24

#philosophy #epistemology #positivism #science #philosophyofscience



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Audio recording of a 1966 lecture by Brand Blanshard on reason and ethics given at Wheaton College (Massachusetts).

Uploaded 27-06-25

#philosophy #ethics #moralphilosophy #utilitarianism #historyofphilosophy



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Audio recording of the first of two lectures by Ken Gemes on Nietzsche. In this first talk, Ken Gemes introduces Nietzsche as the philosopher of the death of God. Nietzsche claims that we have not yet fully understood the ramifications of the modern rejection of belief in God. Giving up the belief in God undermines all our values, though many cling to those values in the absence of God or of any other justificatory basis for those values. When we truly appreciate the meaning of the death of God, we will, says Nietzsche, lapse into nihilism; the inability to find any foundation for values and meaning in the world. This Nietzsche presciently predicts as the future of Europe for the next two hundred years. Nietzsche does not endorse nihilism but seeks to move beyond it to a new affirmation of this world, the one and only world. But what does Nietzsche mean exactly by nihilism? This is discussed in the talk.

Uploaded 07-06-21

The next lecture by Ken Gemes on Nietzsche: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ejV1cHZL58

Note, this is a re-upload.

00:00 Talk
31:42 Q and A

#philosophy #nietzsche #nihilism #atheism #historyofphilosophy



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Anita Avramides (University of Oxford) gives a talk in 2023 as part of the Aristotelian Society. Anita Avramides is currently a Senior Research Fellow in Philosophy at St Hilda’s College, University of Oxford. Her work is in the philosophy of mind and of language. In the last few years, she has published mainly on the problem of other minds. For more information about the Aristotelian Society, go to: https://www.aristoteliansociety.org.uk

Uploaded 30-12-23

00:00 Introduction
03:52 Knowing-That and Knowing-What
10:44 From Cassam to Dretske
19:29 Epistemic Closure
25:39 Back to Cassam
32:38 Stanley Cavell
50:09 Concluding Thoughts

#philosophy #epistemology #ethics #philosophyofmind



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Dan Robinson gives the 4th lecture in a series of 8 on Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Kant claims that, "our sense representation is not a representation of things in themselves, but of the way in which they appear to us. Hence it follows that the propositions of geometry... cannot be referred with the assurance to actual objects; but rather that they are necessarily valid of space... [and] space is nothing else than the form of all external appearances". [Prolegomena 286-287]

Uploaded 05-06-21

This series looks at German Philosopher Immanuel Kant's seminal philosophical work 'The Critique of Pure Reason'. The lectures aim to outline and discuss some of the key philosophical issues raised in the book and to offer students and individuals thought provoking Kantian ideas surrounding metaphysics. Each lecture looks at particular questions raised in the work such as how do we know what we know and how do we find out about the world, dissects these questions with reference to Kant's work and discusses the broader philosophical implications. Anyone with an interest in Kant and philosophy will find these lectures thought provoking but accessible.

This is series of lectures was given in 2011 at Oxford. Note, the audio has been improved.

All 8 lectures: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhP9EhPApKE_OdgqNgL0AJX9-gwr4tmLw

#philosophy #kant #epistemology #metaphysics #empiricism #skepticism #historyofphilosophy



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