Robinson's Podcast

Ernest Lepore is a Board of Governors Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers. Though Ernie is best known for his work in the philosophy of language, he has also published on philosophical logic, metaphysics, and the philosophy of mind. Though Robinson and Ernie largely discuss the former, their conversation begins with a bevy of wonderful stories from the profession, as Ernie worked and studied with many of the greatest thinkers—and characters—of twentieth century philosophy, including Ed Gettier, Jerry Fodor, Donald Davidson, Michael Dummett, and W.V.O. Quine. They then turn to some quite general problems in the philosophy language, discussion the relationship between language and thought, meta-linguistic negotiation, and conventions before going through the main arc of his book on slurs jointly authored with Una Stojnic of Princeton University. Though Ernie is the author of too many books and articles to list within the confines of this description, a recent book mentioned many times in the conversation is Imagination and Convention: Distinguishing Grammar and Inference in Language (Oxford University Press, 2015), which Ernie cowrote with Mathew Stone, chair of the Department of Computer Science at Rutgers.

OUTLINE

00:00 IN THIS EPISODE

00:38 Introduction

05:33 Ernie’s Interest in the Philosophy of Language

14:17 Working with Ed Gettier, Jerry Fodor, Donald Davidson, and Michael Dummett

30:44 Language, Thought, and Convention

44:44 What is Meta-Linguistic Negotiation?

51:53 What is a Slur?

01:04:10 Philosophical Accounts of Slurs

01:13:50 Pejorative Content Accounts of Slurs

01:21:38 Non-Content Accounts of Slurs

01:30:52 A New Theory of Slurs

Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com

Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between. 

Chris Potts is Professor and Chair of the Department of Linguistics at Stanford University, and also Professor by courtesy in the Department of Computer Science at the same. Chris has worked on a wide variety of topics in linguistics throughout his career, but has published on conventional implicature—check out his book, Logic of Conventional Implicatures (Oxford, 2003)—large language models, and compositional reasoning, among many other subjects. Robinson and Chris begin by discussing the relationship between linguistics and philosophy before turning to topics in semantics and pragmatics—references, the principle of compositionality, swearing, and more. After some thoughts on Chomsky’s legacy in linguistics, they talk about the impact of ChatGPT on the classroom and whether large language models are capable of understanding.

00:00 In This Episode…

01:13 Introduction

04:16 Chris and Linguistics

12:34 Linguistics and Philosophy

22:43 Proper Names and Reference

27:00 The Principle of Compositionality

41:59 Adjectives, Innateness, and Chomsky

57:36 Quantifiers

01:01:36 Swearing and Linguistics

01:04:42 ChatGPT in the Linguistics Classroom

01:12:00 Does ChatGPT Understand?

Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com

Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between. 

Barry Loewer is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers. Before that he did his PhD in philosophy at Stanford (!). Barry works largely in the philosophy of physics, the philosophy of science, and metaphysics, and is a good friend of and frequent collaborator with another denizen of the Robinson’s Podcast universe, David Albert. It is their joint work on the “Mentaculus,” something approximating a “probability map of the universe,” that occupies much of the discussion in this episode. Robinson and Barry also talk about statistical mechanics and his upcoming book, What Breathes Fire into the Equations (Oxford University Press, to be released fall 2023 or early 2024), which is about laws, chances, and fundamental ontology. Check out Barry’s book on David: Essays on David Albert’s Time and Chance.

Background on Counterfactuals: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/counterfactuals/

Background on Statistical Mechanics: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/statphys-statmech/

OUTLINE

00:00 In This Episode…

00:29 Introduction

06:21 Barry‘s Road to the Philosophy of Physics

28:37 Fire in the Equations

43:16 Conditional Probability

54:11 Non-Humean and Humean Accounts of Laws

01:06:44 Probability

Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com

Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between. 

Jonathan Wolff is Alfred Landecker Professor of Values and Public Policy at the University of Oxford. He works in numerous areas of political philosophy. Some topics he has researched include equality and poverty, and he has worked in applied areas like Covid policy and gambling. In this episode, Jonathan and Robinson begin with a discussion of the nature of political philosophy before turning to some modern historical perspectives on the state, starting with Hobbes and traveling up through Marx and Rawls. They then turn to his current work in partnership with Avner de-Shalit on cities and equality. Some of Jonathan’s books include Disadvantage (Oxford, 2007), An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Oxford, 1996, and soon to be in its fourth edition), and Why Read Marx Today? (Oxford, 2002). 

Jonathan’s Website: https://jonathanwolff.wordpress.com

OUTLINE:

00:00 In This Episode…

00:35 Introduction

04:17 Jonathan’s Start in Political Philosophy

08:46 What is Political Philosophy?

18:24 Methodology in Political Science and Political Philosophy

22:42 Hobbes and the State of Nature

45:34 Rousseau on Government

51:12 John Stuart Mill on Liberty

1:01:25 Covid Policy and Moral Philosophy

1:08:49 Marx and the State

1:19:07 Rawls and Justice

1:33:07 Political Philosophy and the City

Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com

Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between. 

Anubav Vasudevan is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago, where he works in formal epistemology and the history of logic, though he has published in a number of other areas. Anubav and Robinson talk about his time at Columbia University studying with the mathematician, probability theorist, and philosopher Haim Gaifman before discussing some of Anubav’s thoughts on mathematics, physics, logic, and how they relate to philosophy. In the second half of the conversation they move on to some of Anubav’s work in the history of logic, touching on Leibniz and the Peripatetic school.

Background on Classical Logic: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-classical/

OUTLINE:

00:00 In This Episode…

00:50 Introduction

06:30 Mathematics and Philosophy with Haim Gaifman

23:44 From Physics to Philosophy

34:49 Philosophy and Scientific Inquiry

49:37 Why Formal Philosophy

57:05 What is Logic?

01:05:56 Monism and Pluralism in Logic

01:21:52 The Historical Roles of Logic in Philosophy

01:26:18 Peripatetic Logic

01:41:23 Leibniz and Logic

Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com

Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between. 

Pamela Hieronymi is Professor of Philosophy at UCLA. Before that, she did her undergraduate studies at Princeton and received her PhD from Harvard. Her work extends in a variety of directions, but some areas she works in include moral psychology, the philosophy of mind, ethics, and the philosophy of action. In this episode, she and Robinson discuss free will and moral responsibility, the topic of an upcoming book entitled Minds that Matter. Pamela begins by introducing moral psychology and the role of analytic philosophy in the debate over free will. Then she and Robinson discuss the extent to which we control our actions and thoughts, and how all of this relates to the question of moral responsibility. Pamela’s most recent book is Freedom, Resentment, and the Metaphysics of Morals (Princeton University Press, 2020).

Pamela’s Website: https://hieronymi.humspace.ucla.edu

OUTLINE:

00:00 In This Episode…

00:35 Introduction

04:40 - What is Moral Psychology?

06:30 - Agency and Analytic Philosophy

17:57 - Free Will, Moral Responsibility, and Determinism

21:57 - Control Over Thought and Environment

32:46 - Some Shortcomings of Other Accounts

35:50 - Kant and the Two-Standpoints View of Free Will

49:22 - Do We Control Our Beliefs?

54:33 -  Free Will and Moral Responsibility

1:11:16 - How Should We Act?

Robinson’s Website: ⁠http://robinsonerhardt.com⁠

Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between. 

Rachel Barney is Professor of Classics and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto. She received her PhD at Princeton and has taught at the University of Ottawa, Harvard, and the University of Chicago. She has worked widely across ancient philosophy, from the sophists to the Neoplatonists, though her primary focus is on Plato. In this episode, Robinson and Rachel discuss the sophists, beginning with just who they were and why they have been so maligned in contemporary discourse—even the word sophist today has pejorative connotations—and continuing through some of their most important thinkers, like Gorgias and Protagoras. Check out Rachel’s last book, Plato and the Divided Self (Cambridge University Press, 2012).

OUTLINE:

00:00 In This Episode...

00:34 Introduction

04:28 Rachel’s Interest in Ancient Philosophy

09:49 Misunderstanding the Sophists

20:04 What Displaced the Sophists’ Philosophical Practices?

26:17 Philosophy and Protophilosophy

29:39 The Main Sophists

33:43 Gorgias and Non-Being

53:37 On Protagoras

1:07:40 Religion and the Sophists

1:12:55 More on Protagoras

1:17:50 Virtue in Homer and Hesiod

1:28:05 Ancient Philosophy and How to Live

Robinson’s Website: ⁠http://robinsonerhardt.com⁠

Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between. 

Paul Horwich is Professor Philosophy at NYU. He has worked in a number of areas of philosophy, but is especially well-known for his writing on the philosophy of language, particularly with regard to truth and meaning—naturally, he has books by the same names, Truth (Oxford, 1990) and Meaning (Oxford, 1998). Robinson and Paul discuss the relationship between his work on these topics and the philosophy he started off researching—science and physics—before moving on to the question of philosophical realism across a number of domains before focusing on moral realism and whether there are such things as moral facts. 

OUTLINE:

00:00 In This Episode...

00:20 Introduction

03:26 From Physics to Truth

16:55 Truth and the World

35:24 Realism Across Domains

54:42 Moral Facts

Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com

Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between. 

Stephen Yablo is David W. Skinner Professor of Philosophy at MIT. Before MIT, he taught at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Steve works in metaphysics, philosophy of mathematics, and the philosophy of mind and language, though his work extends into other areas of philosophy as well. In this conversation, for instance, Robinson and Steve discuss the nature of philosophy and what distinguishes it from other fields, as well as the philosophy of jokes and humor. They also speak about the philosophy of language, and more particularly how to deal with negative existential statements (sentences of the form “such-and-such does not exist”). Check out Steve’s latest book, Aboutness (Princeton, 2019), which develops a theory of subject matter and its role in meaning.

OUTLINE:

00:00 In This Episode...

00:35 Introduction

05:55 The Demarcation Problem for Philosophy

34:32 Final Thoughts on What Is Philosophy?

37:47 Non-Existence Questions

1:19:21 Philosophy and Jokes

Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com

Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between. 

Robinson’s Podcast #76 - Nora Boyd, Siska de Baerdemaeker, & Vera Matarese: The Philosophy of Astrophysics

Nora Boyd is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Siena College. Siska de Baerdemaeker is a Researcher at Stockholm University. Vera Matarese is Assistant Professor in Philosophy of Science at the University of Perugia. Both Nora and Siska received their PhDs in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Pittsburgh, while Vera received hers in the Philosophy of Science at the University of Hong Kong. Along with Kevin Heng, Chair Professor of Theoretical Astrophysics at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich (and guest on episode #56), they are the editors of Philosophy of Astrophysics—an anthology on the philosophy of the same and the first of its kind—which will be released open access in early June 2023 (link below). In this episode, Nora, Siska, Vera, and Robinson discuss the origins of the project, as well as many of the topics it covers, such as black holes, dark matter, and whether astrophysics should even be considered a science at all.

The Anthology: https://link.springer.com/book/9783031266171

Nora Boyd: https://facultyweb.siena.edu/~nboyd/

Siska de Baerdemaeker: https://www.siskadebaerdemaeker.com

Vera Matarese: https://sites.google.com/view/veramatarese/home

OUTLINE: 

00:00 In This Episode…

00:54 Introduction

7:10 What is Astrophysics?

14:24 What Is the Philosophy of Astrophysics?

25:26 Is Astrophysics Science?

38:29 Astrophysical Models and the Tribunal of Experience

45:33 Data and Theory

1:01:32 Astrophysical Simulations

1:14:17 Fictional Objects 

1:20:00 Black Holes and Dark Matter

1:28:01 Processes and Pseudoprocesses

1:34:08 Time

1:47:20 Ethical Issues

1:42:06 Evidence, Theory, and Cold Dark Matter

Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com

Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between.