Listen and Learn
I am a great fan of Philosophy Bites and you should be too.
As the large ruby vowel in the northeast corner of this web page indicates, my ideas on ethics, truth, consciousness, the self, justice, and the nature of life, the universe, and everything are not supplied by tax-exempt fans of desert nomads, pedophiles, polygamists, and incompetent science fiction authors. I got my first taste of philosophy in college and unlike my father’s experience at the hands of Jesuits, I actually enjoyed it. I didn’t take any beyond the intro class, but that gave me enough background via a survey to see a bit of the breadth of the field.
As I’ve become more committed and more public in my disavowal of the popular tales of the tax exempt, I’ve taken to listening to Point of Inquiry, the audio show put out by the Center for Inquiry. It helps the commute pass and it’s interesting, though you can tell when it’s a slow month when they start interviewing the regulars again. Despite that, Point of Inquiry rekindled my interest in philosophy, especially when talking about secular ethics and the values that make a finite life in a astronomically huge universe worth living.
Many of the ideas and topics covered by Point of Inquiry go back a long way, like most philosophy, to the pre-Socratic naturalists - people have been trying to sort this stuff out forever. Philosophy is vital for understanding what you believe and why, how you live your life, and so many other aspects of being human that it’s almost criminal how abstruse and inaccessible and (dare I say) irrelevant the current practice of academic philosophy has become. Enter Nigel Warburton and David Edmonds (no, not the Welsh rocker, but that’s a cool mental picture…) Nigel and David have some really interesting interviews on a variety of philosophical topics and spend just the right amount of time illuminating the subject for a novice. It’s not dumbed down or oversimplified, but it doesn’t devolve into nitpicky terminology, at least not without good reason - the episode on Marx’s ideas on ‘alienation’ kept the conversation lively even while diving into terminology.
Regardless of the big vowel, give Philosophy Bites a listen - you won’t regret it.
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