Audio recording of a lecture by Ronald M. Dworkin on his book "Justice for Hedgehogs" at the Carnegie Council in 2011. The title is a reference to the Ancient Greek poet Archilochus who wrote that "the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." Ronald Dworkin argues for one big thing: the unity of value.

#philosophy #politicalphilosophy #ethics #moralphilosophy #jurisprudence

Audio from: https://youtu.be/v_hQpvQYhOI

More Short Clips: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhP9EhPApKE8v8UVlc7JuuNHwvhkaOvzc

You may also want to check out the following on Wittgenstein vs Socrates: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp8KXhYlhsg

#philosophy #wittgenstein #bryanmagee #historyofphilosophy

Professor David Wallace discusses the nature of probability and some of the philosophical puzzles that arise regarding how to understand and make sense of probability. He begins by distinguishing between subjective probabilities (which are about our beliefs) and objective probabilities (which are about the world itself). He then goes on to discuss various interpretations of probability and some of the difficulties that arise for each. This comes from a talk given in a series on the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics back in 2015 at Oxford.

00:00 Concepts of Probability
01:04 Subjective Probability
02:14 More-Objective Probabilities
03:49 Very Objective Probabilities
05:52 Two Questions about Objective Probability
08:40 Frequentism
13:52 Probability from Symmetry
16:59 Probability as Primitive
18:10 The "Why" Question
20:10 The Principal Principle
24:43 A Dearth of Solutions to the Why Question

#philosophy #probability #epistemology #philosophyofscience #historyofphilosophy

Audio recording of the second lecture by Ken Gemes on Nietzsche. Nietzsche claims that with the rejection of religious underpinning of the value of truth (e.g. truth as God’s word and as something absolute), we can now raise the question of why and to what extent we should value truth. He argues that our need for meaning conflicts with our will to truth because such a will tends to destroy all mythologies including the mythology of value – our will to truth reveals that values are not objectively 'out there' in the world, but are merely our own projections onto the world. This knowledge eviscerates the world of meaning. This does not mean that Nietzsche rejects the value of truth. He instead rejects the notion, inherited from the Judeo-Christian worldview, that truth is an unconditional value. Such a notion of truth, destructive of all myth and meaning, is unliveable. The very claim that the truth is valuable, even if not unconditionally valuable, is itself one of those myths that help give life meaning.

You can find the previous talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHShypzrqGw

Note, this is a re-upload.

00:00 Talk
46:53 Q&A

#nietzsche #philosophy #ethics #historyofphilosophy

A short clip of Galen Strawson discussing his master argument against the very possibility of free will and moral responsibility; one which applies whether or not determinism is true. This comes from an episode of the In Our Time podcast a few years back on the topic of free will. For more information and full episodes, go to: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qykl

"The _causa sui_ is the best self-contradiction that has been conceived so far; it is a sort of rape and perversion of logic. But the extravagant pride of man has managed to entangle itself profoundly and frightfully with just this nonsense. The desire for 'freedom of the will' in the superlative metaphysical sense, which still holds sway, unfortunately, in the minds of the half-educated; the desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for one’s actions oneself, and to absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance, and society involves nothing less than to be precisely this _causa sui_ and, with more than Baron Munchhausen’s audacity, to pull oneself up into existence by the hair, out of the swamps of nothingness." -Nietzsche

#philosophy #freewill #determinism #causality #causation #metaphysics

The legacy of the political philosopher John Rawls is discussed by Michael Sandel (Harvard University), Steve Macedo (Princeton University), and Anthony Laden (the University of Illinois Chicago) with host Gretchen Helfrich in an episode of Odyssey from Chicago Public Radio back in 2002.

#philosophy #politicalphilosophy #politicaltheory #rawls #johnrawls #ethics

A reupload of audio recording of Karl Popper discussing his views on observation and induction, specifically how knowledge and science do not start from observation, but that all observation itself is theory-laden. Indeed, as he explains, the view that all knowledge and science rests on observation leads to induction, which Popper famously rejected due to the so-called problem of induction, first formulated by David Hume. As such, Popper didn't think that induction played any justificatory role in science at all, which is precisely why he ended up with his famous falsificationist view that theories and hypotheses can only be refuted or falsified (i.e. via deduction), but they can never be proven true or positively supported with observational evidence (i.e. via induction). These clips all come from a 1989 interview on falsificationism and some of the main criticisms. It is a re-upload of something that I put together a while ago. More details will be added later.

#philosophy #karlpopper #epistemology #science #philosophyofscience

A clip of professor Shelly Kagan discussing the famous thought experiment of the experience machine which comes from Robert Nozick and which serves as an argument against hedonism about well-being. This comes from a lecture on death given at the Southern Methodist University back in 2013.

More on the nature of well-being: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/well-being/

#philosophy #hedonism #ethics #nozick #moralphilosophy

A clip of Hannah Arendt from her 1964 interview with Günter Gaus. Among other things, she discusses the dethroning of the community spirit by the modern age and with it the prime importance of the political and the shrinkage of the public realm, which is associated with the uprooting of the masses and the resulting isolation and atomism in the modern world (something which, by the way, she thought made possible totalitarianism in the 20th century, both from the right and the left). She also touches on the labor-consumption process, the public sphere, and the increasing inability to act publicly in the modern world.

Full Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVSRJC4KAiE

#philosophy #hannaharendt #politicaltheory #politicalphilosophy

Audio recording of a lecture by Ronald M. Dworkin as part of his 1988 Tanner lectures on human values at Stanford University on the foundations of liberalism. This was the first of his Tanner lectures. Note, this is a re-upload.

00:00 Lecture
1:04:07 Q&A

#philosophy #politicalphilosophy #ethics #politicaltheory #liberalism #moralphilosophy