The Dawdler's Philosophy

Shorts - E11: Authority

Are you talkin' to me?  This week the Dawdlers contemplate asymmetrical power dynamics regarding behavioral modification; from parent/child to peace officer/citizen, how do we feel about and deal with exertions of Authority?

Shorts - E10: End ofs

How 'bout another Short!? This time the Dawdlers go off about "End ofs". You know, the "End of the World" type ideas. Consider us ambivalent. Enjoy for the world will soon be over!

Shorts - E9: Stupidity

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. ~Albert Einstein

The only way to comprehend what mathematicians mean by Infinity is to contemplate the extent of human stupidity. ~Voltaire

Present audience excepted-- surely --but Carlo Cippola, George Carlin, and Jonathan Swift aren't the only ones who think that there's a bit too much Stupidity exhibited by the human race.  In this week's Short, the Dawdlers join the chorus.  

Haunting the Margins - E2: Terence McKenna

We all dull and enhance our senses in various ways. Some of us, few of us can explore the extremes of sensory manipulation. Even fewer can understand what it means.

The Dawdlers return to the theme of Haunting the Margins. This time they take a trip with Terence McKenna, the late hallucinagenic experimentalist of the 20th Century. Uncle Terence had loads of ideas and a remarkably lucid penchant for expressing them.

A man of his time who is worth our time.

McKennas, the Anderson's of Ireland (the Johnsons of Ireland is already taken by the O'Briens. But let's face it, the O'Briens are merely the Grants of Sweden, so...).

00:03:50 - Terence McKenna, the man

00:06:37 - The theme of Haunting the Margins, review

00:10:47 - HTM characterizations // humor // taboo // radicalism // career // populism //marginal to who? // associates?

00:52:47 - Harland's mandatory insertion of radical skepticism

00:58:20 - T McK's ideas // the Logos

01:16:10 - Time Wave Theory

01:34:32 - Stoned Ape Hypothesis

02:03:53 - Margin haunters are too awesome

Shorts - E8: Artificial Intelligence

Are there inherent limits to the behavioral capacities of artifacts?  How would that differ from human bodies?  Are not both arrangements of universe, of "stuff"?  Why would one substrate permit abilities inaccessible to others?  In this week's Short the Dawdlers muse about Artificial Intelligence: what are its limits, if any-- and should we fear?  

E25: A Fetish of Fallacies - Are All Fallacies Created Equal?

“Live” but “not live”, that’s what The Dawdler’s Philosophy Podcast is. “Live” in that it is generally unscripted where we tend to not know exactly what the other host will say. And “not live” in that you can’t listen to it as it is unfolding for the first time. We’re fine with this; obviously, or we would change it. But it does require some preparation in order to pull it off in as constructive a way as possible.

This episode, the Dawdler’s ask: are all fallacies created equal? Well, hard to say if we learned about possible answers to that question as much as we did about ourselves. We meander through confidence illusionists, Ryan’s issues with fallacy call-out culture, ad hominem “focus shifting” in fallacy claims, Harland’s appeal to “don’t hate the player, hate the game” counterpoint to Ryan, the fallacy fallacy, and much, much less. Anyway, by the end Ryan shuts down and Harland won’t shut up.

We’ll laugh about this later, right?

The Dawdlers

Shorts - E7: Anything is Possible

No, this isn't a New Age affirmation.  It isn't a derisive denouncement of low likelihood.  It's the Dawdlers giving their takes on modal logic!  Herein are considered types of possibility, and how responsible epistemology might interface with metaphysical musings.  Who has the arguments to back up absolute impossibility claims?  If not us, then, well, as far as we know: Anything is Possible!  

E24: In Lieu of Arguments - The Gettier Problem

In art, genius is forgiven if it isn't consistent. Hell, it's probably revered more if it's inconsistent. It's fluid. Not so in philosophy. Consistency is king. Without it one becomes lost and strays from the path.

In this episode the Dawdlers (well, Harland, mostly) try their best to explain why a cherished method and paper are inconsistent and are representative of bad philosophy. It's a famous paper too. Not sure how famous the method is.

What are these things, the paper and the method? Why, Edmund Gettier's paper "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?" and Herman Cappelen's "method of cases" from "E22: A Farewell to Armchairs", of course! Here is but another example of philosophers using intuition to form the better part of their reasoning.

Back to class, everyone. Recess is over.

00:07:00 - Gettier claims JTB is Insufficient for Knowledge - Gettier Cases - Smith and Jones and the 10 Coins

00:16:33 - The use of Intuitions by Gettier & its illegitimacy - Broken Clocks & Sustained Objections

00:26:44 - The Gettier Problem - JTB+ - Ryan thinks it's ugly

00:37:44 - Patches: No False Beliefs - No Defeaters - Causal Connection

00:47:50 - A trip through Fake Barn County to Reliablism - The Lottery Problem - The Tracking Theory & Possible World Semantics

01:05:20 - Aesthetics Returns, Philosophy & Silliness

01:11:15 - Normative Semantics of Epistemic Terms

01:32:00 - You gotta start somewhere

Shorts - E6: What Came First: Thinking or Language?

Ever try and prank someone but it back fires and they just go about their business as if they were not even remotely aware of what just didn’t happen? Yeah, that’s this episode.

E23: The Moonlight Walks - Aesthetics in Science

Yeats repeats “a terrible beauty is born” in his poem “Easter, 1916”. The poem expresses the emotional limbo of Yeats as he grapples with the post World War I Irish rebellion in response to the broken promise of Irish liberation. Out of acts of violence, comes the hope of freedom. Or is it the hope of freedom that fuels acts of violence?

Whence progress?

Do we make progress with ideas, and if so, does it not require a "terrible beauty" as a means of initiation?

In this episode the Dawdler’s use Sabine Hossenfelder’s book “Lost in Math” as a guide to explore where, if anywhere, we ought to place appeals to beauty in our intellectual searches. It’s a theme that has surfaced now and again on the podcast and here the Dawdlers take a bit of a plunge.

Settle down with your inner chimp. It’s about to get unreasonable.

00:06:43 – Topic Introduction

00:12:54 – Philosophy of Aesthetics? // Two Theses on Taste

00:22:44 – G.E.P. Box’s Scientific Feedback Loop

00:26:16 – Falsifiability vs. Unplausifiability // Constraints on the Foundations of Physics

00:37:36 – Arguments from Beauty/“Naturalness” // Symmetry Stuff

00:52:24 – Biases

00:56:00 – Harland and Ryan duke it out about aesthetic concerns in ideas?