Site • RSS • Apple PodcastsDescription (podcaster-provided):
Philosophy has been studied for thousands of years. It involves the use of reason and argument to search for the truth about reality - about the nature of things, ethics, aesthetics, language, the mind, God and everything else. This series of five introductory lectures, aimed at students new to philosophy, presented by Marianne Talbot, Department for Continuing Education, University of Oxford, will test you on some famous thought experiments and introduce you to some central philosophical issues and to the thoughts of some key philosophers.Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):
➤ Introductory philosophy lectures • Logic, argumentation, symbolic logic • Metaphysics and epistemology: reality, knowledge • Philosophy of language and mind: rationality, consciousness • Ethics and political philosophy: justice, how to live • History of philosophy overviewThis podcast offers an introductory survey of philosophy through a short set of lectures designed for people new to the subject. It presents philosophy as a disciplined use of reason and argument to investigate fundamental questions about reality, knowledge, morality, politics, language, and the mind. Across the series, listeners are oriented to what philosophers mean by careful reasoning, how arguments are constructed and assessed, and why logic—both in its symbolic forms and in everyday philosophical analysis—matters to philosophical inquiry.
The content spans several core areas. It examines metaphysical and epistemological questions about what exists, what kinds of things there are, what their nature is, and how (or whether) we can know them. It also explores issues in the philosophy of language and mind, focusing on topics such as rationality, consciousness, and how thoughts and experiences can be expressed through language. Ethical and political themes address how people ought to live and what principles might ground a just society or state.
Alongside these thematic introductions, the podcast situates contemporary philosophical problems within a broad historical arc, tracing major developments from early Greek thinkers to more recent philosophy. The series also draws on well-known thought experiments as a way to test intuitions and clarify concepts, giving listeners a sense of how philosophical questions are posed and pursued in practice.
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Philosophy of language and mind 2009-Jan-09 87 minutes |
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Metaphysics and Epistemology 2009-Jan-09 90 minutes |
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Ethics and politics 2009-Jan-09 92 minutes |
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The philosophical method - logic and argument 2009-Jan-09 94 minutes |
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A romp through the history of philosophy from the Pre-Socratics to the present day. 2008-Nov-13 92 minutes |