Closereads: Philosophy with Mark and Wes

On "An Argument for the Identity Theory" (1966), which unlike U.T. Place who merely argued that minds could be brains, argues that minds must be brains, in all possible worlds.

The argument appears functionalist: mental states are defined by their causal roles, and causality is naturally the realm of the physical, so mental causality makes most sense if it is a way of talking about physical causality.

Read along with us.

You can choose to watch this on video.

Subscribe to Closereads at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy; follow us there via the free tier to get many other episodes like this one ad free, or pay us to get part 2 and everything else we've recorded. (Alternatively, support both PEL and Closereads at https://www.patreon.com/partiallyexaminedlife for a nice combo deal.)

The post Closereads: David Lewis on Mind-Brain Identity (Part One) first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.

On The Concept of Mind (1949), Ch. 6, "Self-Knowledge." Ryle is arguing against a Cartesian take on mind that he sees as over-intellectualizing. In this case, it is not the case that every conscious act is itself an object of an act of consciousness: Not all consciousness is self-conscious, and introspection itself must involve a layer of mentality (the act of self-consciousness) that is not itself the object of an act of consciousness.

Read along with us, starting on p. 136 (PDF p. 199).

Subscribe to Closereads at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy; follow us there via the free tier to get many other episodes like this one ad free, or pay us to get subsequent parts to this and everything else we've recorded. (Alternatively, support both PEL and Closereads at https://www.patreon.com/partiallyexaminedlife for a nice combo deal.)

The post Closereads: Gilbert Ryle on Self-Knowledge (Part One) first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.

On "Are We Explaining Consciousness Yet" (2001), an article published with and commenting on papers by psychologists, neurologists, etc. on the state of consciousness studies at the time, featuring his newer metaphor for consciousness, "fame in the brain."

Follow along with us.

You can choose to watch this on video.

Subscribe to Closereads at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy; follow us there via the free tier to get many other episodes like this one ad free, or pay us to get part 2 and everything else we've recorded. (Alternatively, support both PEL and Closereads at https://www.patreon.com/partiallyexaminedlife for a nice combo deal.)

The post Closereads: Late Dennett on Consciousness (Part One) first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.

On "First Person Authority" (1984). What warrants our superior knowledge of our own mental states, as oppose to those of others? Why is this not obvious?

Read along with us.

You can choose to watch this on video.

Subscribe to Closereads at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy; follow us there via the free tier to get many other episodes like this one ad free, or pay us to get part 2 and everything else we've recorded. (Alternatively, support both PEL and Closereads at https://www.patreon.com/partiallyexaminedlife for a nice combo deal.)

The post Closereads: Donald Davidson on Self-Knowledge (Part One) first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.

How shall we break down the universe into basic types of things? Peirce has an idiosyncratic way of thinking about this problem and coming up with his division, revolving around the steps and presuppositions involved in predicating something.

Read along with us.

You can choose to watch this on video.

Subscribe to Closereads at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy; follow us there via the free tier to part two and many other episodes like this one ad free, or pay us to get parts 2-5 and everything else we've recorded. (Alternatively, support both PEL and Closereads at https://www.patreon.com/partiallyexaminedlife for a nice combo deal.)

The post Closereads: Peirce’s New Categories (Part One) first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.

On "Realistic Monism: Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism" (2008). Strawson argues that physicalism should not just be taken as matter in motion. Instead, the physical is a broader category that includes not just chairs and molecules, but also "my experience of red." Yet he's not trying to say that experiences are just brain states; they clearly include qualia (what it's like to experience red). And he's also not just trying to solve the problem by redefining "physical" to include "mental" (though he is doing that). Instead, he's claiming that we have no warrant to claim that the properties of the physical are exhausted by what third-person science can investigate, and that we can't solve the mind-body problem unless we posit that (at least some) physical objects have a mental aspect. Sounds like Spinoza to us! Read along with us.

Get subsequent parts of this ad-free at ⁠patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy⁠. You can choose to watch this on unedited video.

The post Closereads: Galen Strawson on Panpsychism (Part One) first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.

On Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, sec. 551-559, which are sections assigned for but not actually covered on The Partially Examined Life ep. 394.

We get more info on how The Enlightenment supposedly mischaracterizes faith, but also how faith sees The Enlightenment and what Hegel considers to be good points coming out of The Enlightenment's critique.

Get more parts to this via https://patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy. You can choose to watch this on video.

The post Closereads: Hegel on Faith vs. The Enlightenment, aka PEL ep. 394 (Part Three) first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.

We read part of The Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944), specifically the parts about Homer's epic as an allegory for the merely apparent triumph of modernism (capitalism, instrumental reason) over myth (savagery, magical thinking).

Homer is odd for H&A because even stylistically, the epics present a mixture of cultures: They glorify violence, but their form is very ordered, and their very popularity makes them the first mass-culture products of the West. Throughout The Odyssey, Odysseus is in effect saying goodbye to the mythical world as he turns each challenge into a tool in his quest to get home. H&A use the episode with the Sirens as an allegory for how the workers are deafened to the call of anti-social myth (they have their work to do!), while the upper class can hear it but is helpless to actually act on it; like Odysseus tied to the mast, they too are strapped into the capitalist machine.

Read along with us; Ch. 2, "Odysseus or Myth and Enlightenment," starts on PDF p56 (p35), but we quickly backtrack to the first mention of Odysseus in Ch. 1 (the same essay we began previously) on PDF p46 (p25).

Get more parts of this at https://patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy.

You can choose to watch this on video.

The post Closereads: Horkheimer & Adorno on The Odyssey (Part One) first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.

On Ch. 2 "The Honest Soul and the Disintegrated Consciousness" in Sincerity and Authenticity (1972). This chapter focuses on a reading of Diderot's Rameau's Nephew and what Hegel made of it in the Phenomenology, so it's essentially for us a second opinion re. what we've been talking about on The Partially Examined Life.

Read along with us.

Watch this as unedited video.

To get future parts, subscribe at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

The post Closereads: Lionel Trilling on Sincerity (Part One) first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.

On "Against Narrativity" (2004), where Galen (son of P.F.) argues that the prevalent philosophical and cultural camp is wrong. This objectionable camp (the Narratives) says that we understand our lives by telling ourselves a story about ourselves. Moreover, this is how we make meaning out of our lives, and how we thus behave ethically, taking responsibility for our past and future: how we have integrity.

Galen rejects both the descriptive claim here (that this is how we all, or at least those of us functioning as designed, process our experience) and the moral claim (that ethical comportment requires that we experience our lives narratively. Read along with us.

You can choose to watch this on video. To get future parts, subscribe at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

The post Closereads: Galen Strawson Against Narrativity (Part One) first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.

On an excerpt from Soren Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846) that critiques Hegel's idea of logic (dialectic) and then argues for his own conception of "truth as subjectivity."

In this first part, he's mostly focusing on Hegel. First (along with the rest of the world), K. denies Hegel's idea that logic is equivalent to physics (or biology, or any other analysis of what actually exists). Furthermore, the idea of a "system" is only one that (according to K) makes sense if you're looking down on the universe from God's perspective. Everything else is in progress: the object you're trying to know is changing, and you as subject are changing.

Follow along, starting on PDF p. 2 (document p. 196).

To get all parts of this discussion, you'll need to support us at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy⁠.

The post Closereads: Kierkegaard on Knowledge (Part One) first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.

We're within the Self-Consciousness chapter of The Phenomenology of Spirit, specifically starting at sec. 206, which is the transition between two sections we've already considered on this podcast: Stoicism (and Skepticism) and Reason. The more famous part of the self-consciousness portion of the book is on the Master-Slave conflict, and in this section, we've got a similar dividedness, but it's all within one psyche, like you're being tortured by a voice in your head that you don't realize is just part of you.

We go between three different translations here: Pinkard, Inwood, and finally Miller, which is what we normally use and will use going forward.

You can choose to watch this on unedited video. To get future parts, subscribe at ⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy⁠⁠⁠⁠.

The post Closereads: Hegel’s “Unhappy Consciousness” (Part One) first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.

Mark and Wes read and discuss the short 2007 article, "Can We Get Our Materialism Back, Please?" Here Bruno Latour complains that materialism as modern common sense conceives of it is actually idealist: It is a social construction. Instead, a "thick" concept of material things acknowledges and details their historical (i.e. material in the Marxist sense) origins.

Read along with us.

You can choose to watch this on video.

Get all episodes ad-free at https://patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy.

The post Closereads: Latour on Materialism first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.

On Franz Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks, ch. 7, B. "The Negro and Hegel." Hegel describes the abstract attainment of self-consciousness through recognition, but is this actually how it works in real slavery and its aftermath?

Read along with us, p. 216 (PDF p. 234).

You can choose to ⁠watch this on video⁠.

Get all episodes ad-free at https://patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy.

The post Closereads: Fanon on Hegel first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.

While we modern folks have a generally clear distinction between law as in descriptive laws of nature and law as in ethical or civil commandments, these Medieval philosophers saw these as very much related if not actually the same thing, given that humans can ignore the dictates of their nature, i.e. reason, whereas the rest of nature just proceeds according to natural law, which for these theologians means God's dictates. So what actually is the relation, in general, between law and reason?

Our text includes Aquinas' presentation of this issue and his near-contemporary Duns Scotus' commentary on it. Read along with us.

You can choose to watch this on video. To get future parts, subscribe at ⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy⁠⁠⁠⁠.

The post Closereads: Aquinas and Scotus on Law (Part One) first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.

On "The Problem of Christianity," vol. 2, lecture 12, ch. 9, "The Will to Interpret."

The point is to help explain Royce's idea of a community of interpretation, and the idea is that in the very act of interpreting a single individual, I'm bringing in some kind of public lexicon, i.e. other people beyond us two. Even though other people are fundamentally separate from us, we make some sort of leap that is the foundation of community: the will to interpret you as if your mind were accessible to mine.

Read along with us.

You can choose to watch this on video.

Get all Closereads episodes ad-free at https://patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy.

The post Closereads: Royce on Interpreting Others first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.

On Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, Part C (AA) Reason, V. The Certainty and Truth of Reason. This section comes right after the self-consciousness sections, and so its big puzzle is why? Why is full recognition by another self-consciousness necessary for Reason, and consequently what is Hegel's conception of Reason?

Read along with us, on PDF p. 175, i.e. section 231.

You can choose to watch this on YouTube.

To get future parts, subscribe at ⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy⁠⁠⁠.

The post Closereads: Hegel on Reason (Part One) first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.

In this famous, impossibly ancient (ca. 1900 BC!) Egyptian text, a man negotiations with the part of his soul that's supposed to help him in the afterlife. Can he kill himself now and still get all the benefits of an honorable death? His ba says no. Is this actually philosophy, or just a glimpse into the strangeness of a long-gone culture? You decide!

Read along with us.

You can choose to watch this on video.

Get this ad-free along with every Closereads recording at https://patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy.

The post Closereads: Dispute Between a Man and His Ba first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.

From Disputed Questions in De Anima (1269) as presented in Thomas Aquinas: Selected Philosophical Writings (Oxford 1993), "Passage 18: Soul in Human Beings."

The question is how Aquinas, as an Aristotelian who therefore thinks the mind is the form of the body, can agree with the Christian doctrine that the soul exists after death. The answer is surprisingly weird: The body-less soul is incomplete, so we'd need to have the end-of-times full-bodily-resurrection of all the good people in order to have a truly satisfactory heaven.

Read along with us. The Aristotle chapter from "De Anima" (Part III, Ch. 5) is here, PDF p. 41.

You can choose to watch this on video.

Get this ad-free along with every Closereads recording at patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy.

The post Closereads: Aquinas and Aristotle on Soul first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.

On Leviathan (1651), ch. 21, "On the Liberty of Subjects." Thomas Hobbes is known for defending absolute monarchy, so as you'd predict, he's not going to say we have a lot of "natural" liberties.

We do always have the right to self-defense, but that doesn't mean that the sovereign can't with complete justice command you executed (even if you're innocent). Yet Hobbes wants to say that even under a repressive regime we all have lots of liberty, in the sense of no one physically stopping us from doing what we will. And he wants to dismiss as unintelligible any other sense of liberty tied to non-physical obstacles, so this entirely rules out any debate about free will.

Read along with us, starting on p. 161 (PDF p. 197).

You can choose to watch this on video.

Get the ad-free version of this and all of our episodes, including many supporter-exclusive ones, at https://www.patreon.com/closereadsphilosophy.

The post Closereads: Hobbes on Liberty first appeared on The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast.