Meaningoflife.tv: Sophia (fast)

Rob and Kevin make small talk ... Kevin describes and laments the grade economy ... What's the relationship between grades and learning? ... Bryan Caplan's "The Case Against Education" and how it has traumatized Rob ... Unschooling ... If schools suck so much, how did Rob and Kevin learn? ...

A new home for Sophia ... The (latest) defenestration of Kathleen Stock ... How sincere are pro-trans rights public intellectuals? ... Justin Weinberg's essay on the Kathleen Stock incident ... David: "It's the squishy middles that are gonna kill us" ... Dan: deplatforming people on social media is effectively censorship ... The death of public discourse and the rise of Trump ... How consensus crumbles ... David: we should get rid of the harm principle ...

Kevin's book, Education in the Marketplace ... Dan and Kevin's concern for Coleman Hughes' intellectual freedom ... How young is too young for movement conservatism? ... What was the Intellectual Dark Web? ... The IDW's central contradiction ... How Dan got involved with the conservative movement ... ... ... and why he left it ... Dan's advice to Hughes: don't trust the movement ...

Megan: philosophy of religion shouldn't focus on "proofs for God" ... Determining rational grounds for supernaturalism ... Why Dan rejects epistemic foundationalism ... Megan's Christian agnosticism, Dan's Jewish atheism ... Wittgenstein's engagement with philosophy of religion ... What kind of authority would it be good for us to submit to? ... Dan has a revelation ... Has philosophy forgotten that it's a humanistic discipline? ...

Robert's essay, "The Philosophy Rapture" ... What counts as "relevant" philosophy? ... Philosophy's "dirty insider game" ... Why are great philosophers overrepresented at elite universities? ... Generational decline, intellectual and attitudinal ... Do intellectual celebrity cultures produce shrinking intellectual gene pools? ... Dan: Our present-day celebrity philosophers will destroy the discipline ...

The new issue of Milton's comic book, Thompson Heller: Detective Interstellar ... Christopher Hitchens' influence on Milton's comic ... The anxieties of robot personhood ... The economic determinants of comic book production ... How a new comic writer finds an artist ... The comic book art division of labor ... Thompson Heller's future ...

Joshua’s views on basic beliefs ... How do we get from experience to justified belief? ... The connection between knowledge and awareness ... Is Dan actually a foundationalist? ... Where the chain of warrant ends ... Joshua’s engagement with the big questions in philosophy ... Running up against the boundaries of inquiry ...

Why Kevin chose not to vote ... The two-party system vs. a multiparty parliamentary system ... Dan accuses Kevin of not confronting what the election was about ... Is Kevin acting like a spoiled brat? ... The logic of straight-ticket voting ... Kevin accuses Dan of having a pessimistic view of democracy ...

The origins of "standpoint theory" ... Are Dan and Crispin white? ... Defining standpoint theory ... Dan: Standpoint theory presents an irrefutable hypothesis ... Crispin: "All knowledge is from some standpoint" ... Dan: There is no single black perspective on race ... Why don't people trust experts? ... Is this argument good for society right now? ...

A review of Kate Manne's book Entitled sparks an online philosophy feud ... Is America systematically misogynistic? ... How Twitter incentivizes bad behavior ... The professional norms around book reviewing ... Dan sees "no honor all the way down" on the other side ... Self-immolating philosophers ... Is there a case for keeping some topics off limits? ...

Jaime explains how Marx understood ideology ... Our tendency to get facts wrong in a self-serving way ... Cognitive biases that lead the working class astray ... Why do we have reason? ... "Thank God for the ruling class!" ... How do the elite get what they want? ... Imagining the meetings of the megarich ...

How can there be persons? ... Against hypostatic ontological commitment ... Things vs. thingy things ... Mind over matter, or vice versa? ... Are there minds? Dan isn't sure. ... Have philosophers gone beyond their ambit? ... Philosophy as service to people ...

The incredible achievement of the Marvel Cinematic Universe ... The choices that led to the MCU's greatness... ... ...and the choices that didn't quite work out ... Critiquing Black Panther, Captain Marvel, and Dr. Strange ... Milton foresees future "Has Marvel Lost Its Way?" thinkpieces ... Blatant speculation on upcoming films ... Dan fears wokeness ruining Marvel movies ...

Explaining Crispin’s position on explanatory unity ... Dan: Meaning is part of social reality, it’s not all in our heads ... What is the substance of our ontological commitments? ... Why Dan thinks philosopher W.V.O. Quine is almost right ... The conspicuous absence of philosophers from the public discourse about values ... Metaphysics is not as complicated and important as people think it is ...

Why does bad CGI make us feel weird? ... Where digital effects work (The Avengers) vs. where they don't (CATS) ... Gollum vs. Thanos, Roger Rabbit vs. Jar Jar Binks ... The tragic digital miscues of The Irishman ... Are practical effects dead? ... The closing of aesthetic diversity ...

Russell’s book, The Tyranny of Opinion: Conformity and the Future of Liberalism ... Preserving the liberal tradition ... Can the genie of stakes-inflation be put back in the bottle? ... Dan: Woke illiberalism is a kind of luxury ... Russell’s recommendations for keeping the liberal tradition alive ... The role of legislation and institutions in tamping down illiberalism ...

What are persons? ... Why don't we say "my legs went to the store"? ... Actions and intentions ... The case of the robot who voted ... Are addicts in control of their actions? ... The moral culpability of a naughty dog ...

Doug's new book, Philosophy Smackdown ... Plato's Cave and the three layers of wrestling reality ... What it means when wrestlers break the fourth wall ... Real life can be "just as scripted as wrestling, if not more so" ... How and why moral virtue changed in wrestling ... The only performance where people say "you know it's fake, right?" ... What philosophers could learn from professional wrestling ...

Are we really as social as the Stoics believed? ... Distinguishing between the “objective” and the “real”... ... ...and between the “real” and representations of the “real” ... Dan: It makes no difference whether or not values are objective ... Massimo’s solution to the omnivore’s dilemma ... Massimo: “Values are never separate from facts” ...

Spoiler alert! Critiquing Star Trek: Discovery and Picard ... Serial vs. episodic storytelling ... Why Dan hated Discovery's main character ... Is the show too woke? ... Debating the big twist in Picard ... Dan: Two things screw up Picard as a Star Trek show ... Throwing science out the window ... Milton: Audiences don't know what they want ... Have younger viewers turned away from science fiction? ...