Explore every episode of the podcast Patterson in Pursuit

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Libertarians like myself tend to focus on the abuse of power hierarchies. The existence of a "ruling class" makes most of us uneasy. However, might these sociological structures serve a valuable purpose? Are they inevitable parts of human society?

Samo Burja joins me to discuss.

Resting at the heart of modern mathematics is the concept of infinite sets. It's a notoriously difficult concept, and in my own evaluation, it strikes me as logically contradictory.

So, I accept an invitation to talk with an ex-mathematician who specializes in set theory - perhaps he can set me straight and help me understand the basic ways of thinking about these "completed infinities."

I can't help but notice the West's reaction to the Charlie Hebdo massacre. It's so abstract.

If I were to be cynical, I'd say that people's reactions are fake. They don't really care about the tragedy; they care about social signaling to their peers.

Original article here: http://steve-patterson.com/charlie-hebdo-excuse-take-selfies/

Great show this week covering the social justice warrior phenomenon - the origins, causes, and damage that could be created if these people gain political power. We also talk about the liberalisation of New Zealand during the 80's, "trickle-down ideologies", and the impact of relativism in higher ed.

My guest is Dr. Jamie Whyte, who has a background in philosophy, studied at Cambridge, and saw first-hand the popularity of irrationalism within the academic system.

What were the indigenous beliefs of the Māori people of New Zealand? How did they view the world? How did they react when met with the first Christian settlers?

I'm joined by Dr. Hirini Kaa to help me answer these questions. We talk about the Maori worldview, history, religion, and impact of colonialism on New Zealand's indigenous people.

What is truth? Can we know anything about it? Is truth about propositions, or is it about the world?

Can a proposition be true and false at the same time? What about the infamous liar's paradox?

My guest this week thinks that logical contradictions are unavoidable - but also that they aren't as big a deal as classical logicians make them out to be. I think contradictions are a very big deal, so naturally, we have a great discussion.

This is Part II of the conversation I had with T.K. Coleman about race relations in the United States. We continue talking about the importance of intention versus action - focusing on people feelings versus focusing on their behavior.

A timely interview on the subject of race in America. Ideas matter, and some of them matter urgently. This is one of those topics where respectful, honest, and reasonable conversation is in high demand and short supply.

I hope my guest T.K. Coleman will spend a few more episodes diving into the subject with me, because we only scratched the surface here.

The theory of physicalism does not fully explain all the phenomena that I experience. The toolbox of concepts must expand.

Omnipotent. Omniscient. Omnibenevolent. These are the descriptions that theists often give when talking about God. But are they the only conceptions of God that are possible?

My guest today is Dr. John Bishop, who has written about non-standard conceptions of theism. We talk about his criticisms of the OmniGod, in addition to some fundamental concepts about faith and belief.

Do we live in a post-truth world? What does that term even mean?

I'm joined by Dr. Robert Nola, who has been teaching at the University of Auckland for almost half a century. We discuss fundamental questions about truth, talk about what "post-truth" means, and also cover the methodology of "faith" in the philosophy of religion.

For years, I've been making anti-Platonist arguments. Now, I think I was wrong. The universe seems to be composed of both concrete and abstract stuff.

What is the cause of somebody's stroke? Is it the laws of physics? The mechanics of biology? Or perhaps it's caused by the choices that they made? Is it all of the above?

My guest today is Dr. Mario De Caro, who has an interesting answer to these questions. He is a metaphysical pluralist, who believes in multiple categories of existence and causation, each of which is not reducible to the other.

The bittersweet paradox is another popular irrationalist argument, which claims that two mutually exclusive things can be experienced together - happy and sad, black and white, bitter and sweet.

Once again, this type of argument falls short, and precise language clears up any confusion. It conflates the appearance of mutual exclusivity with actual mutual exclusivity.

If two things are mutually exclusive, then they cannot be experienced together. If they are experienced together, it's a demonstration that they aren't mutually exclusive.

Merry Christmas and Bah Humbug! This is an analysis of my interview with a Christian theologian from Cambridge. I wasn't a big fan of his argument, which ultimately rested on a dubious distinction between "who" and "what."

Also in this episode: my attempt at rationally explaining the connection between Jesus and the Christian God.

Drug prohibition causes more harm than good - that's the argument from libertarians like Dr. Jeff Miron of Harvard. He analyzes the topic from an economic and practical standpoint.

In this episode, we also discuss the role of government in providing a social safety net. Can private charity do a better job than public charity? Jeff thinks so, and I agree with him.

For the last decade, I've been searching for certain foundations, and finally, I've found them. Logic represents the foundation for all knowledge, and it's the subject of my first book on philosophy: Square One: The Foundations of Knowledge.

If you are interested in objective truth, certain knowledge, and logic, then pick up a copy. Anybody can read it and understand - it's not written for academics, and it doesn't contain useless jargon.

All of my work - present and future - draws from the ideas in Square One. If I've made a mistake here, you can confidently discard the rest of my worldview without hesitation.

Though it's bound to upset people, I don't think being in the military is honorable. I think it's a sign of weakness, and in most circumstances, it causes more harm than good.

Submitting to orders is not noble. Killing people because you were commanded to isn't courageous. Believing propaganda is not respectable.

Soldiers are how they've been used: as political pawns for ambitious men.

What are numbers? What are concepts? Do they exist, or do we just act like they exist?

I'm joined by Dr. Jody Azzouni of Tufts University. He's a philosopher who has been arguing for nominalism for years - the idea that numbers and abstract objects don't exist at all. 

His position is a wonderful contrast to the previous interviews I've done on this topic, where the guests have been Platonists. My own views sit in-between nominalism and Platonism.

I think abstract objects exist, but they do not exist in a Platonic realm. They exist in our minds. When we stop thinking about them, they stop existing.

If consciousness can't be explained within the conceptual toolbox of physicalism, then what's an alternative theory? Are we stuck with dualism?

This is my breakdown of the interview with Professor Bram about consciousness, machine intelligence, and the implications of rejecting reductive physicalism.

Since recorded history, people have been talking about "religious" or "spiritual" experiences. It's a shame that intellectuals are no longer able to discuss them openly. It's become taboo.

Fortunately, my guest doesn't care about taboos, and he shares some details about his own religious experiences, and I do as well.

We're not the only intellectuals with these experiences, and it's about time we start talking about it. The ideas are too important to leave unexamined.

Cultures are not delicate flowers that must be preserved until the end of time. Cultures emerge from different individuals trying to best navigate life. Cultures have positive traits and negative traits. As humans, we should steal the positive and leave the negative behind.

Episode 100 of Patterson in Pursuit! Wow, what a milestone. Thanks to everybody who has listened to and supported the show. I hope it's created value for you.

In this episode, I share my personal thoughts about the show, some of my motivations, the conversations that were impactful to my own philosophy, and some funny experiences along the way. And of course, more heretical thoughts about the philosophy of mathematics.

It all started with mashed potatoes...

Buddhist philosophy focuses on some of the most difficult questions in philosophy - what is the "self"? What is the self's relationship to consciousness? Are there meaningful boundaries in the universe, or is everything a mental construction?

To help me answer these questions, I'm joined by Dr. Janet Gyatso of Harvard University, who is the Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies.

What's the difference between sex and gender? Is "being a woman" different than "identifying as a woman"?

I suspect that a great deal of controversy surrounding transgender people comes down to the way we use language. If we keep a sharp distinction between sex and gender, any tension resolves itself.

Is the Trump phenomenon reactionary? Is it a cultural movement? What do conservatives think about Trump?

I'm joined by the distinguished Dr. Harvey Mansfield, who has been teaching political philosophy at Harvard for more than 50 years. He has a distinctive conservative voice, and he shares his analysis of the 2016 election.

I have basic questions about Christian theology - What is God? Who is Jesus? What's the connection between humans and God? What does it mean to be "saved"? Does Christianity imply dualism?

To find answers, I spoke with the theologian Dr. Ian McFarland at the University of Cambridge in England.

Where are the meaningful boundaries in reality? If there are none - if boundaries are a construction of the mind - then there is no difference between "self" and "not-self", or between "the perceiver" and "the perceived".

In this way, mystics claim that "all is one".

It's a beautiful idea, though I don't think it's quite accurate. Regardless, it needs to be rationally defended and grappled with.

It's no secret that I'm a curmudgeon. My rule of thumb is that "everybody is wrong about everything all the time." However, this extreme skepticism might be a methodological mistake. To challenge me, I'm joined by T.K. Coleman, who is one of the most positive thinkers around.

Slavery was an injustice. Nobody disputes that. However, it's not clear that reparations will correct the injustice.

In my view, reparations have rhetorical power, but they will not fix the problem. In fact, they will cause additional injustice. Reparations are theft in the present to pay for theft in the past. 

The world of ideas is moving past academia. We're in the midst of it. More and more people are realizing that the "experts" aren't as knowledgeable as they've been told - and that formal credentialing doesn't guarantee you a job upon graduation.

The community of dissatisfied intellectuals is growing, and I want to be part of it. Let's build the community that we'd like to see.

Not all certainly true propositions are logically necessary. I discovered this several years ago while laying in bed, thinking about steak. 

Who said philosophy should be confined to a classroom?

Do logic and rationality have limits? Are there ways to "get outside" of rational thinking? Do altered states caused by psychedelics provide true insight about the world, or are they illusory?

These are the questions I discuss with Dr. Bernardo Kastrup, who shares some of his personal experiments and insights gained psychedelic drugs.

Is the brain a computer? Do machines calculate the same way humans do? Can artificial intelligence ever be conscious?

What does it even mean to be "intelligent"?

To help me answer these questions, I spoke with Dr. Bram van Heuveln of RPI.

Statistical anomalies: are they divine, or merely coincidental? One-in-a-million events are consistent with two mutually exclusive theories - so how to choose between them?

Questions like this throw us inescapably into the world of philosophy and theoretical reasoning. 

Breakdown of John Searle's philosophy of mind. His own resolution to the mind/body problem is called "biological naturalism".  

In my analysis, Searle is a closet dualist - even if he despises the title. 

Religious people have a certain quality that I've noticed over the years. It isn't about their beliefs. It isn't about their methods for reasoning. It's about something else: their commitment to the truth as they perceive it.

If that's true, then religiosity isn't a bad thing itself. In fact, if it's coupled with philosophy and critical reasoning, it's something to admire.

"The truth is that there is no truth". That roughly summarizes postmodern philosophy.  To my mind, this is an elementary error. It is a self-evident contradiction. However, I admit that I'm biased towards logic and rationality. 

To help me understand postmodernism better, I am joined by Dr. Stephen Hicks, who explains the history and ideas of postmodern philosophy.

Progressives are masters of indignation. But before talking about how things "should be", it seems wise to first understand how things actually are.

Worldviews not guided by economics are inaccurate at best, and dangerous at worst.

For nearly a century, the concept of "infinite sets" has rested at the foundations of modern mathematics. I have a tough time grasping this concept, so I asked Dr. Daniel Isaacson of Oxford University to help me out.

We cover two definitions for infinity, discuss the metaphysics of mathematics, and cover some basic "intuitionist" concepts.

I've always been fascinated by so-called "crazy" people. Why do they believe what they believe? Could they be right?

What if I'm the crazy person, while they are the sane ones? Perhaps they only appear crazy to me because my mind is broken?

After worrying about these ideas for years, I've settled on an answer. There is only one objective standard for sanity: logic.

The mind-body problem has been discussed for thousands of years. Does consciousness require the supernatural? 

Dr. John Searle emphatically says no. He's known for his own resolution to the mind-body problem, called "biological naturalism", and that's what we discuss today. It fits somewhere between eliminative physicalism and dualism.

We cannot overlook the boundaries of our concepts. If our concepts are fuzzy, then our thinking will be fuzzy. Continuums present a serious logical challenge to many ideas.

As far as I can tell, the best way to overcome the problems of continuums is to eliminate them altogether.

Is everything ultimately mental? Do we need a theory of a physical world at all? Dr. Bernardo Kastrup joins me again to talk about idealism.

This time, we go into great detail, both put our ideas to the test, and the result was one of my favorite interviews ever. I end up asking Bernardo some of the most difficult questions in philosophy. 

Breaking down my interview with Dr. Bruce Cain of Stanford University. He and I both agree that more democracy isn't always a good thing - but we disagree about everything else.

We go from talking about the foundations for democracy to examining the foundations of all government - and inevitably end up talking about anarchism.

Is logic just a Western convention? Do other cultures have other logics? 

No and no. Logic is the inescapable rules of existence, and those rules do not depend on our conception or understanding of them.

They are presupposed by every thought and every proposition. I didn't invent the laws of logic, but I've discovered them, along with many other philosophers throughout history.

An increasing amount of "experts" do not seem to understand the basics of their field. Economics is no exception.

To understand the world, I am convinced one must understand economics - and you have to start with the basic concepts. If the basics are wrong, your analysis will be foundationally flawed.

I'm joined by Dr. Donald Boudreaux, who writes a lot about the basics, and we cover some of the important ideas that have to be understood before analyzing anything more complex.