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A Philosopher and a Scientist engage each other and Ideas.
Episodes
Sunday Jul 26, 2020
Sunday Jul 26, 2020
The value of history is that one has the chance to make sense of their present circumstances. How did we get to now? Can we come up with the best solutions to our problems if we think we understand how those problems arose in the first place? Fingers crossed.
In 1959, author and scientist, C.P. Snow, gave a lecture on what he saw as a problem in the West. Two intellectual and influential cultures had formed and become entrenched; one, a literary culture and the other, a scientific one. If they had anything in common, it didn’t matter for the commitments they had made to their respective vocations were too great to be bridged without great effort.
In this episode the Dawdlers discuss the lecture and the state of its themes in our current age.
Monday Jul 13, 2020
Monday Jul 13, 2020
What is a dream? How do we come to form “cherished aspirations” as one dictionary put it? Why do we bother? And how can such aspirations be American? How can such aspirations be shared widely?
Equality, egalitarianism, opportunity. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. For whom do these bells toll?
Is it a good dream? And does one “have to be asleep to believe it”?
In this long short, the Dawdlers take on a request from a listener and discuss “The American Dream.”
Monday Jun 15, 2020
Monday Jun 15, 2020
This episode is slightly different, in that it is our first attempt at recording while doing a Live Stream! Sounds about the same I reckon. But we're excited anyway.
An analysis of Thomas Nagel's 1974 paper "What is it Like to Be a Bat?", which initiated "decades of confusion" in the philosophy of mind literature, and gave us the phrase still in use today "what-it's-like"-ness as a pseudo-definition for consciousness.
Sunday Jun 07, 2020
Sunday Jun 07, 2020
After another mammoth Dawdle, the Dawdlers finally return to the Margins seeking specters, and find this time the anti-improvement, anti-guru, self-improvement guru Alan Watts.
They consider some of Mr. Watts' most controversial opinions with oodles of juicy quotes.
As is the nature of considering the centrality / marginality of thinkers, many guests come to the party this week, but Alan has always loved an audience!
Wrap up your kashaya, assume the lotus, and get yer enlightenment-- sucka!
00:00:00 - 00:16:40 - Margin Haunters vs. Flat Earthers / Membership to the Clubhouse
00:16:40 - 00:21:10 - Watt a Man
00:21:10 - 00:50:00 - Watts' Attacks on Virtue, Morality, Honesty, and Capitalism
00:50:00 - 01:16:11 - Watts the Philosophy of the Dawdle / (Ir)Responsibility / Creativity
01:16:11 - End - Watts' "The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are" / Ryan's Frustrations
Monday Jun 01, 2020
Monday Jun 01, 2020
The thigh-ly anticipated second half of the Richard Rorty Dawdle. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Part II!
Tuesday May 26, 2020
Tuesday May 26, 2020
Can’t we all just get along and get awards for attendance? Or not? Your science is not better than my poetry!
This week we talk about Richard Rorty’s “Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature”. In Part 1 of this topic (WHAT!?) there are plenty of misgivings, mischaracterizations, and misunderstandings along the way. But we keep retuning to this framework of ours: the modes of inquiry (E3: Triamond Joy!). These include overseeing, truth seeking, and game playing (and engineering but Harland has yet to come around to it). Rorty wants to scrap much of it. Por qua?
Let’s play some games!
-Dawds
Sunday May 17, 2020
Sunday May 17, 2020
Again, we return to “The Great Filter”. Ryan is obsessed! This time, Ryan, like millions before him—millions!—has a solution to Fermi’s Paradox and “The Great Silence”. It’s “The Great Server”! Yaaaaaaay!
Bury those ear buds deep in your ears! It’s about to get virtual!
-“The Dawdlers”
Sunday May 03, 2020
Sunday May 03, 2020
Man does not live by bread alone. He also lives with social anxiety and is a bit of a control freak. These neuroses fuel him too. Oh, and lies. This is also critical. Lies must be told. How else can you get people to do shit you don’t want to?
In this episode you will be treated to a Pre-Covid discussion had back in December of 2019 that these Dawdlers were too lazy to knit together into a fine piece of auditory (f)art. The topic? Religion and explanations for its creation and subsequent changes.
Enjoy your lockdowns. Oh, and don’t forget to treat others the way you wish to be treated. And if you wish to be treated like shit then too bad for the others, amirite?
-Dawdlers
00:04:21 – Defining terms // What is Religion? // What is culture?
00:12:48 – Asking questions // Tinbergen’s “Four Questions” // Origin, spread, and maintenance // Traits – morphology, physiology, behavioral, life history
00:23:05 – Hypotheses // David Sloan Wilson’s “Adaptive vs. Non-Adaptive” framing // Adaptive Hypothesis (AH) 1: “The Watcher” // AH2: “The Organism” // AH3: “The Parasite” // AH4: “The Useful Fiction” // AH5: “The Echo” // Non-Adaptive Hypothesis (NH) 1: “The Dinosaur” // NH2: “The Blind Matthew”
01:17:09 – Winners & Losers // Everything is happening, everyone’s a winner // Ameliorating fear makes sense and shit just happens…
Sunday Apr 26, 2020
Sunday Apr 26, 2020
Still getting our footing here at Dawdler’s HQ. Hence this klunky transition back we’ve been doing since we dropped out after American Thanksgiving. This episode is a long short. Not much structure like a typical long episode, but it is what it is, right?
This time we use a twitter thread Ryan saw that raised some flags for him. It’s a thread discussing what might best be described as discussing the business of science. Yuck! Though sources aren’t really cited and quotes aren’t given, we still end up where always do anyway. Something like, “The hustlers are dead! Long live the hustlers!!” SAD!
Lots of love!
Dawds
Monday Apr 20, 2020
Monday Apr 20, 2020
Intent or accident? That is the question. No good deed goes unpunished! But in what world is that!? One where shit is just banging together towards a blah entropic state or one with biased negentropic filters that favor the hustlers?
This week the Dawdlers discuss the notions of luck and karma and the preference for inhabiting systems—especially social systems like, y’know, SOCIETY—that reward good deeds.
Wouldn’t it be nice…