Site • RSS • Apple PodcastsDescription (podcaster-provided):
In this series of podcasts Marianne Talbot uses some famous arguments in the history of philosophy to examine philosophy as a discipline. By harnessing participants’ intuitions on both sides of the various arguments she encourages her audience actually to do philosophy. In listening to these podcasts you can yourself learn how to do philosophy, not by listening to someone else do it, but by starting to do it for yourself.Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):
➤ Beginner-friendly philosophical method • Evaluating arguments and logic • Descartes’ cogito • Freedom vs equality • Deontology and utilitarianism • Gettier problems • Possible worlds • Objective facts in scienceThis podcast introduces philosophy for beginners by using well-known arguments and thought experiments to show how philosophers reason and how listeners can practice the discipline themselves. Rather than presenting philosophy as a set of settled conclusions, it treats it as an activity: identifying claims, uncovering assumptions, and weighing competing intuitions and counterexamples.
Across the series, the focus is on core areas of philosophy and on the methods used to do philosophical work. It begins with logic and argument analysis, using a classic example from Descartes to illustrate how arguments are structured and how their validity and soundness can be assessed. It then moves into moral and political philosophy, exploring tensions between values such as freedom and equality and comparing major ethical frameworks, including deontology and utilitarianism.
The podcast also addresses central questions in epistemology and metaphysics, examining challenges to traditional definitions of knowledge through Gettier-style problems and discussing debates about possible worlds and whether “unactualised possibilities” should be considered real. It concludes with philosophy of science, probing what counts as an objective fact and how scientific theories depend on the kinds of facts we take the world to contain.
A concluding question-and-answer session responds to audience queries and clarifies themes from the lectures, reinforcing the overall aim of helping listeners engage directly in philosophical reasoning.
| Episodes: |
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Questions and Answers Session 2014-Nov-11 82 minutes |
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The Philosophy of Science 2014-Nov-11 75 minutes |
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Epistemology and Metaphysics 2014-Nov-11 77 minutes |
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Moral and Political Philosophy 2014-Nov-11 90 minutes |
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Logic and Argument: the Methodology of Philosophy 2014-Nov-11 83 minutes |