Philosophy Overdose

Adam Toon gives the first lecture in a series of six on the nature of the mind called "The Story of the Mind: Cartesianism, Behaviourism and Fictionalism". These lectures were part of the 2023 Gottlob Frege lectures in theoretical philosophy given at the University of Tartu in December of 2023.

Uploaded 23-01-24

We often talk about the mind as an inner world. Cartesianism takes such talk seriously. Once, our inner world was taken to be a strange, immaterial substance. Today, we are told it will be found in the brain. Over the years, some have tried to do without this inner world, most notably behaviourists. But their efforts have largely been in vain. These lectures propose a new approach to the mind, known as mental fictionalism. According to this approach, our concept of mind is a metaphorical one: we project the “outer world” of human culture, especially language, onto the “inner world” of the mind. This inner world is a useful fiction: it does not exist—and yet we cannot avoid talking about it. The lectures introduce this idea and explore its implications for key questions concerning the origins, boundaries, and history of the mind. The lectures are based on Adam Toon’s recent book "Mind as Metaphor: A Defence of Mental Fictionalism" (Oxford University Press, 2023).

Adam Toon is an Associate Professor at the University of Exeter and Deputy Director of Egenis, the Centre for the Study of Life Sciences. He studied at King’s College, Cambridge and the London School of Economics. After his PhD, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Bielefeld and holder of a Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship. He works in philosophy of science and philosophy of mind and is also interested in the sociology of scientific knowledge. He is the author of "Mind as Metaphor: A Defence of Mental Fictionalism" (Oxford University Press, 2023) and "Models as Make-Believe: Imagination, Fiction and Scientific Representation" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). He is also co-editor (with Tamás Demeter and Ted Parent) of "Mental Fictionalism: Philosophical Explorations" (Routledge, 2022).

00:00 Intro
01:53 Talk
1:04:49 Q and A

#philosophy #metaphysics #philosophyofmind #descartes #mind #psychology #skepticism



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A version of an upload from the previous channel. It comes from a 1974 interview with Popper. The translation is my own. For more Popper: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhP9EhPApKE_VarWCx1d_Uogn_GxsVf-o

Uploaded 03-08-21

#philosophy #karlpopper #epistemology



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Brian Leiter discusses the thought of Nietzsche at Davidson College a few years back. The truth is terrible, Nietzsche tells us. There is no God, the universe lacks any ultimate meaning or purpose, and is filled with gratuitous pointless suffering. Our only relief comes with nonexistence upon death. Even the existence of the self, free will, objective value, and absolute truth and knowledge are wholly illusory. All forms and qualities are but mere human conventions, subjective expressions of our competing drives. The unquenchable desire for objectivity is the drive to transcend our finite bodily existence and grab hold of something universal, absolute, unchanging, and God-like. But there simply is none. So it is all too easy to become disillusioned and fall into an abyss of anguish and despair, turning away from existence and the drives, as suggested by the pessimistic philosophy of Schopenhauer. But Nietzsche urges against this turning away from life. For Nietzsche, existence is justified, but only as an aesthetic phenomenon. But what does this mean exactly? Brian Leiter explains. (My Summary)

Uploaded 04-06-21

More Nietzsche: https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhP9EhPApKE_ySvPE8kzFUkA5aO_cdKmb

#philosophy #nietzsche #ethics #historyofphilosophy



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When is it permissible to kill civilians in war? Jeff McMahan discusses the ethics of killing civilians in war in a talk at Ohio State University back in 2008. More on the morality of war: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/war/

Uploaded 15-04-25

#philosophy #ethics #justwar #moralphilosophy #war



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Dr. Peter Dennis gives a public lecture on the nature of rationality at the LSE in 2015. Peter Dennis is an LSE Fellow in the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method and a Forum for European Philosophy Fellow.

Uploaded 01-03-25

00:00 Talk
54:04 Q and A

#philosophy #rationality #epistemology



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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.

Uploaded 13-07-25

#philosophy #karlpopper #epistemology #science #philosophyofscience



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A reading of the beginning of Thomas Nagel's 1971 article "The Absurd", which I've always quite liked.

Uploaded 01-12-24

#philosophy #existentialism #ethics



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In this lecture on General Philosophy, Professor Peter Millican discusses free will and the problem of moral responsibility. This comes from a 2010 series on General Philosophy. The slides have been added.

Uploaded 08-06-21

This series of lectures was delivered by Peter Millican to first-year philosophy students at the University of Oxford. The lectures comprise of the 8-week General Philosophy course, delivered to first year undergraduates. These lectures aim to provide a thorough introduction to many philosophical topics and to get students and others interested in thinking about key areas of philosophy. Taking a chronological view of the history of philosophy, each lecture is split into 3 or 4 sections which outline a particular philosophical problem and how different philosophers have attempted to resolve the issue. Individuals interested in the 'big' questions about life such as how we perceive the world, who we are in the world and whether we are free to act will find this series informative, comprehensive and accessible.

More lectures on General Philosophy: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhP9EhPApKE_xo2wvkm6qPZrUlAiRNHXb

Source: https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/series/general-philosophy

#philosophy #freewill #determinism #causality #causation #mind #metaphysics #psychology



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One of America’s most prominent philosophers says his field has been tilting at windmills for nearly 400 years. Representationalism (or indirect realism)---the idea that we don’t directly perceive external objects in the world, but only our own inner mental images or representations of objects---has bedeviled philosophy ever since Descartes, and now is mucking up neuroscience as well, John Searle alleges. He has long defended the “naive” alternative that our senses do actually give us direct access to external reality, and he fires his latest salvo in his new book “Seeing Things as They Are: A Theory of Perception”. John is well-known for his no nonsense approach to philosophical problems, and there was plenty of straight talk here as he discussed his theory of perception, the subjective-objective divide, the scientific study of consciousness, and his dog Tarski.

Uploaded 26-06-21

This interview was given a few years back by Robert Pollie which I quite like from a podcast called the 7th Avenue Project: www.7thavenueproject.com.

#philosophy #epistemology #philosophyofmind #perception #consciousness #skepticism #mind



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Professor Dan Robinson gives the sixth in a series of 8 lectures on Thomas Reid's critique of David Hume at Oxford in 2014. In the third of his Essays on The Intellectual Powers of Man, Reid devotes the fourth chapter to the concept of 'identity', and the sixth chapter to Locke's theory of 'personal identity'. This latter chapter is widely regarded as a definitive refutation of the thesis that personal identity is no more than memories of a certain sort, less a “bundle of perceptions”. As he says, “This conviction of one’s own identity is utterly necessary for all exercise of reason. The operations of reason—whether practical reasoning about what to do or speculative reasoning in the building up of a theory—are made up of successive parts. In any reasoning that I perform, the early parts are the foundation of the later ones, and if I didn’t have the conviction that the early parts are propositions that I have approved or written down, I would have no reason to proceed to the later parts in any theoretical or practical project whatever”.

Uploaded 19-06-21

Under “David Hume”, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy begins with, “The most important philosopher ever to write in English”. His most formidable contemporary critic was the fellow Scot, Thomas Reid, the major architect of so-called Scottish Common Sense Philosophy. The most significant features of Hume’s work, as understood by Reid, are the representive theory of perception, the nature of causation and causal concepts, the nature of personal identity and the foundations of morality. Each of these topics is presented in a pair of lectures, the first summarizing Hume’s position and the second Reid’s critique of that position.

All Lectures: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhP9EhPApKE9nki7CXFPi7PMOi5W2g2-q

#philosophy #davidhume #personalidentity #skepticism #historyofphilosophy



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