Episode 166: Spinoza on Politics and Religion...

Continuing on Raphaël Millière and Cameron Buckner's "A Philosophical Introduction to Language Models, Part I: Continuity With Classic Debates." We go through the various arguably important features for intelligence, including particular ways of learning and comprehending languag ...  Show more

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 n ...  Show more

In this episode we finally get around to talking about Spinoza. It turns out normativity is kind of complicated when you think everything is strictly determined and there’s no such thing as contingency! We discuss the relationship between affect and power, the inherently socia ...

Spinoza is one of the most controversial and debated philosophers in the last few centuries. This episode attempts to give a very general overview of his perspective on God as well as some ways that it can be interpreted.

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On this episode of the podcast, we learn about Baruch De Spinoza. We find out why it was not only life-threatening to have an unpopular opinion during the time Spinoza lived, but also potentially very profitable. We also question whether religion is really to blame for the violen ...  Show more