Robinson's Podcast

Alison Fernandes is a professor of philosophy at Trinity College Dublin. Prior to that, she did her graduate work at Columbia University, where she studied with two other denizens of the Robinson’s Podcast universe, David Albert and Achille Varzi. Alison is the author of the upcoming book with Cambridge University Press, The Temporal Asymmetry of Causation, some of the contents of which are the subject of this episode. After rehashing the dominant theories of causation, Alison and Robinson discussion backward causation and time travel, the temporal asymmetry of causation, and Alison’s agency theory of causation. You can keep up with her at alisonfernandes.net.

linktree: https://linktr.ee/robinsonerhardt

OUTLINE

00:00 In This Episode

00:46 Introduction

4:05 Alison’s Interest in Causation

5:36 Hume’s Theory of Causation

8:11 Dominant Accounts of Causation

14:33 Backward Causation and Time Travel

28:42 Causal and Temporal Asymmetry

42:22 Alison’s Account of Causation

53:24 A Return to Time Travel

56:55 Achille Varzi on Time Travel

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.

Luvell Anderson is a professor of philosophy at Syracuse University, where he’s also an affiliate faculty member of Women’s and Gender Studies and African American Studies. He is the co-editor of The Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Race and the soon-to-be-released Oxford Handbook of Applied Philosophy of Language. He is also currently working on a book about the philosophy of humor—The Ethics of Racial Humor—which is the topic of this episode. After beginning with a discussion of just what humor is, Luvell and Robinson move on to the distinction between racial and racist humor, Dave Chappelle, the ethics of roasting, what makes comedy human, and more. You can keep up with Luvell at andersonluvell.weebly.com and through his Twitter account, @luvell_anderson.

linktree: https://linktr.ee/robinsonerhardt

OUTLINE

00:00 In This Episode

00:28 Introduction

3:05 Luvell’s Interest in Comedy

5:32 What is Humor?

12:22 Slurs and Hate Speech

17:45 Is Humor Uniquely Human?

23:32 Racial Humor and Racist Humor

32:48 Sexist Humor

38:51 Dave Chappelle

44:05 Roasting Ethics

53:05 A Genetic Approach to Comedy

59:12 Horror and Humor

1:05:15 Comedy, Connection, and Progressive Change

1:09:40 What Makes Comedy Human

1:14:03 Audience Sensitivity

1:17:56 Humor and Media Psychology

1:21:54 Laughing With and Laughing At

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.

Christina Van Dyke is an emerita professor of philosophy at Calvin College and a visiting professor of philosophy at Barnard College, where she specializes in the medieval period. She is the author of A Hidden Wisdom: Medieval Contemplatives on Self-Knowledge, Reason, Love, Persons, and Immortality. Christina and Robinson discuss the philosophy of food and eating—its gendered aspects, its religious history, some ethical concerns, and eating disorders—before turning to animals in medieval philosophy, where they touch on Hildegard von Bingen, medieval bestiaries, and the secret society known as the Brethren of Purity. You can keep up with Christina at cvdphilosopher.net.

linktree: https://linktr.ee/robinsonerhardt

OUTLINE

00:00 In This Episode

00:30 Introduction

3:05 Christina and Medieval Philosophy

5:41 Christina’s Interest in The Philosophy of Eating

6:59 Are Food and Eating Gendered?

23:39 Food, Gender, and Religion

32:40 How Philosophy Might Help Us Eat Better

36:27 Animals and the Brethren of Purity

45:11 Hildegard von Bingen and Medieval Animals

58:05 Hydras, Bestiaries, and Arthurian Lore

1:03:35 Animals, and What Humans Are

1:07:45 Animals, Angels, and Humans

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.

Gabriel Greenberg is a professor of philosophy at the University of California Los Angeles, and currently a visiting professor at Stanford University. He works widely across the philosophy of mind, but in particular studies iconic representation, modality, and computation. Gabe and Robinson talk about the rough divide between representation and consciousness studies in the philosophy of mind before going into the distinction between signs and symbols, and how the brain interprets them. They finish with a departure into the world of philosophy, film, and cognitive science, discussing how our minds stitch together the scenes of a movie and integrate them into a whole.

linktree: https://linktr.ee/robinsonerhardt

Outline:

00:00 In This Episode

00:39 Introduction

5:17 Gabe’s Taste in Comics

9:53 Gabe’s Interest in Philosophy of Mind

18:14 What is a Representation?

26:02 Gabe’s Dialogue with Linguistics

27:51 Aboutness in the Philosophy of Mind

34:21 The Iconic-Symbolic Spectrum

59:48 A Semantics for Signs and Icons

1:09:33 A Course on Visual Narrative

1:11:20 Film and The Norms of Spatial Coherence

1:15:43 Film Spaces as Abstract Spatial Graphs

1:46:20 Film, Semantics, and Pragmatics

1:51:38 On Scott McCloud

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.

Scott Shapiro is the Charles F. Southmayd Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy at Yale Law School, where he is also the founding director of the Yale CyberSecurity Lab. Robinson and Scott talk about studying at Columbia University under the auspices of the legendary Isaac Levi, Sidney Morgenbesser, and Haim Gaifman before discussing the philosophy of law, one of Scott’s areas of expertise. Among the topics they touch on are the distinction between analytic and normative jurisprudence, the problem of the chicken and the egg, and progress in legal thought from Austin to Hart and beyond. Then they turn to Scott’s upcoming book, Fancy Bear goes Phishing: The Dark History of the Information Age, in Five Extraordinary Hacks, where Scott explores the intersection of cybersecurity, hacking, and legal philosophy. Scott is also the author of Legality and the host of the Jurisprudence Course podcast, the latter of which will soon have a second season. You can keep up with Scott on Twitter at @scottjshapiro, and preorder Fancy Bear Goes Phishing on Amazon.

Fancy Bear Goes Phishing: https://a.co/d/aPv2zpY

Legality: https://a.co/d/1qYg0OY

Jurisprudence Course: https://open.spotify.com/show/6yOIMnVASRLN2nPLlBL0Dn?si=0de8b550346942d6

Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottjshapiro

Outline:

00:00 In This Episode

00:20 Introduction

3:35 Scott the Jurisprude

7:49 War Stories From Columbia

18:36 Analytic Versus Normative Jurisprudence

22:23 The Chicken And The Egg Problem For Jurisprudence

28:03 Austin, Hart, and Progress in Legal Philosophy

44:43 Fancy Bear Goes Phishing

43:23: Cybersecurity and Legal Philosophy

59:02:40 Hacking Paris Hilton’s Cell Phone

1:05:07 The Psychology of Hackers

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.  

linktree: https://linktr.ee/robinsonerhardt

Jonathan Schaffer is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Rutgers University. He is an acclaimed metaphysician with a unique mind and approach to philosophy (and who has exquisite taste in epigraphs). Jonathan is best known for his work on monism, in which he contends that the cosmos is the lone fundamental object in reality, and on the grounding relation. He and Robinson begin by exploring monism, including its relationship to contemporary developments in physics, and then move on to the grounding relation, explicating just what this is and how it marks a departure from the dominant Quinean view of metaphysics.

linktree: https://linktr.ee/robinsonerhardt

Outline:

00:00 In This Episode

1:07 Introduction

4:54 Jonathan’s Epigraphs

10:02 What Is a Monist?

14:11 How Jonathan Became a Monist

17:06 Breeds of Monism

24:09 Mereological Nihilism

39:14 Have Jonathan’s Views Shifted Over The Years?

41:25 The Ontological Priority of the Whole

48:16 Monism and Quantum Entanglement

54:42 Occam’s Laser

59:40 Modal Considerations for Monism

1:03:17 Jonathan’s Interest in Grounding

1:06:33 Quinean Metaphysics and Grounding

1:15:22 The Aristotelian View of Metaphysics

1:18:21 Carnap and Grounding

1:21:33 What Grounds What?

1:26:32 Debunking Metaphysical Intuitions With Cognitive Science

1:39:38 Ground Functionalism

1:48:58 Grounding in Feminist Metaphysics

1:55:30 Jonathan’s Philosophical Program

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 Darwall is Andrew Downey Orrick Professor of Philosophy at Yale University and John Dewey Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan. He is a world-renowned moral philosopher who has worked broadly across the ethical landscape, making important contributions to Kant scholarship, legal philosophy, deontology, and countless other areas. Steve and Robinson discuss the history of modern ethics, beginning with Hugo Grotius and traveling up through Hobbes, Hume, Kant, Bentham, and Smith before ending with Marx, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche’s attack on morality.

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/robinsonerhardt

Outline:

00:00 In This Episode

00:22 Introduction

4:04 Steve’s Time at Yale

12:39 Ethics and Normativity

19:56 Hugo Grotius and the Birth of Modern Ethics

30:18 Hobbes on Morality

39:33 Hume on Morality

45:56 Kant on Morality

54:59 Jeremy Bentham on Morality

58:31 Adam Smith on Morality

1:10:51 A Brief Diatribe on Google

1:16:28 The Continental/Analytic Divide

1:23:17 Marx, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche’s Attack on Morality

1:35:21 Are Moral Philosophers Moral?

Patricia Churchland is UC President’s Professor of Philosophy Emerita at the University of California, San Diego. She is among the most well-known and impactful figures working in the philosophy of mind, and a prominent early neurophilosopher who advocated the importance of neuroscience in the philosophy of mind. Pat and Robinson discuss three broad topics: neurophilosophy and ethics—particularly with reference to two of her recent books, Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us about Morality and Conscience: The Origins of Moral Intuition—what neuroscience has to say about the problem of free will, and the neurophilosophical approach to consciousness. You can keep up with Pat’s work at patriciachurchland.com, as well as on Twitter, @patchurchland.

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/robinsonerhardt

Outline:

00:00 In This Episode

00:36 Introduction

3:07 A Family of Neuroscientists

12:27 What Is Neurophilosophy?

15:44 Neuroscience and Morality

22:13 Evolution and Morality

33:00 Mirror Neurons and Imitation

38:56 Neuroscience and Metaethics

47:58 Neurophilosophy, Free Will, & The Self

1:05:24 Neuroscience & David Chalmers’ Hard Problem of Consciousness

Achille Varzi is the John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University and Bruno Kessler Honorary Professor at the University of Trento. He is a world-renowned metaphysicist and logician, and widely regarded as the greatest living mereologist. Yet despite all this Robinson asks Achille about his sleep habits, though afterward they discuss some more important philosophical questions: What is ontology? What is metaphysics, and how is it different from physics? After some tangents on nominalism and truthmakers, the conversation ends with a reflection on some of the late Saul Kripke’s contributions to philosophy.

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/robinsonerhardt

Outline:

00:00 How Kangaroos Got Their Name

00:52 Introduction

4:54 Achille’s Start in Philosophy

11:24 Some Thoughts on Wittgenstein

16:57 Writing Philosophy in a Second Language

23:01 Achille’s Absurd Sleeping Habits

30:41 What is Metaphysics?

43:01 Distinguishing Physics From Metaphysics

50:48 Ontology, Metaphysics, and Truthmakers

01:23:37 Saul Kripke's Contributions to Philosophy

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.

Tim Maudlin is Professor of Philosophy at NYU. Before that, he did his undergraduate work in philosophy and physics at Yale and received his PHD from Pittsburgh in the History and Philosophy of Science. Tim is renowned as one of the leading philosophers of physics, and he also works in the philosophy of science and metaphysics. Among other things, Robinson and Tim talk about whether metaphysics should come prior to or after physics, the debates over absolute time and space, free will, the nature of physical laws, and David Lewis’s views on the Humean supermosaic. You can find out more about Tim and his work on his website, www.tim-maudlin.site.

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/robinsonerhardt

Outline:

00:00 Introduction

2:35 Studying Physics and Philosophy

8:38 Theoretical Physics, Foundations, and Metaphysics

15:54 Physics and Free Will

26:17 The Mathematical Structure of the Universe

37:49 Hume, Lewis, and the Supermosaic

49:16 Laws of Nature

1:04:02 Moral facts

1:18:03 Absolute and Relative Space

1:34:27 Space and the Ether

1:39:31 The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence

1:46:08 Absolute Space, Time, and Relativity

1:53:07 The Infinity of Time and Space