Ep. 324: Plato's "Cratylus" on Language (Part...

Continuing on Consciousness Explained (Ch. 5, 12). We talk about appearance vs. judgment and whether Dennett's denial of this distinction makes sense or just holds for very short time-scales, as in the phi-phenomenon experiment. Does the rejection of appearances and rejection of ...  Show more

Future co-host philosophy Jenny joins past co-host improviser Bill along with the usual Mark and Mary for some tag-team mud swimming, hot takes about The Odyssey, and discussion and play about Bill's return to school, Maslow's hierarchy, gamified syllabi, some math stuff, and aca ...  Show more

Philosophy of language and Heraclitean flux in Plato's Cratylus 

So far, this is my favorite dialogue by Plato. I’ve only read 5 of them, so I have a ways to go, but this one covers the origin of language and the correctness of names. It answers this question - is there a reason behind the name of a thing or is it just by chance?Cratylus belie ...  Show more

In this week's episode, we learn about Plato's "Symposium", which you might think of as philosophy's version of fan fiction. We also learn about Plato's "Theory of Forms" and ask ourselves what makes a tree, well, a tree. This leads to discussion of Plato's famous "Allegory of th ...  Show more

David and Tamler continue their discussion of Plato's allegory of the cave. We talk about the connections with mystical traditions including Gnosticism, Sufism, and Buddhist paths to awakening. We also dig deeper into what Socrates calls 'dialectic' – what allows this method t ...