Egg Timer Philosophy (Eric Roark)

The 2023 Summer series will highlight themes from George Orwell's classic dystopian creation, 1984. The initial episode covering the first quarter of the book will be released June 28th, the second episode on July 12th, the third on July 26th, and the last on August 9th.

A free copy of 1984 can be found here: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt

Send over your questions, comments, and ideas for future episodes to: eggtimerphilosophy@gmail.com

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What is the fundamental element of reality? In 1714 Leibniz published the Monadology and gave a very interesting answer to this question. There he argued that a non-physical part less basic substance called a Monad was indeed the fundamental element of reality. Tune in to learn more about Monads and see if you think Leibnitz was on to unlocking one of the oldest metaphysical quandaries.

You can find a free copy of the Monadology here: https://www.plato-philosophy.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/The-Monadology-1714-by-Gottfried-Wilhelm-LEIBNIZ-1646-1716.pdf

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This episode of the egg timer takes a look at Buddha's first and second noble truths.  Particular attention will be given to the idea of attachment.

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This  episode covers major themes from Descartes's fifth meditation in his  'Meditations on First Philosophy'.  His primary focus in the fifth meditation is to address how it is that thoughts relate with the essence of abstract objects like triangles as well as material objects such as mountains.  Descartes gives special attention in this meditation to how claims about knowledge of God's essence necessarily relate with God's existence in ways that cannot be applied so directly to other things.

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Today on the egg timer a film review of, 'The Truman Show'

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To see the trailer for the film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlnmQbPGuls

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This episode of the egg timer takes a look at the relationship between economic inequality and history.  Special attention will be given to Robert Nozick's Wilt Chamberlin example.  

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This episode of the egg timer cracks open Albert Camus existential interpretation of the Myth of Sisyphus.  Listen in as Greek mythology and French existential thought are scrambled up.

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This episode of the egg timer explores Henry David Thoreau's 1849 essay 'Civil Disobedience' .  Thoreau's approach to civil disobedience is put in the spotlight and we see how his view compares and contrasts with that of major 20th century advocates for civil disobedience such as Gandhi and King.

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This episode of the egg timer is devoted to exploring and attempting to define the concept of use.

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During this episode of the egg timer three major themes/questions related with truth are covered.  What is it that truth applies to?  How do subjectivity and objectivity relate with truth? What are the major philosophical approaches to thinking about truth?  

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This episode of the egg timer delves into the depths of Nirvana through Buddha's third and fourth noble truths.  This episode is a continuation of last week's episode that explored Buddha's first and second noble truths.

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If we dismantle a ship one plank at a time and replace the rotting wood with new planks of wood slowly over a few decades and then wake up to find that the ship no longer has any of the original parts left is it the same ship?  This is the puzzle of the Ship of Theseus. During this episode questions about identity over time will float past ships and be applied to persons as well.

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This episode of the egg timer takes a look at the relationship between freedom and mental conflict.  Could a person who experiences mental peace value freedom?  Probably not.  Tune in to find out why.  

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The topic for this episode is how to morally evaluate cases where a person has a 'do not resuscitate tattoo' and is brought to a hospital in need of life saving medical interventions but is unable to verbalize or outwardly express their wishes.  What's a doctor to do?  

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This episode of the egg timer is devoted to the Platonic Dialouge of Crito.  In this Dialouge Socrates finds himself in prison awaiting a death sentence and his friend Crito has come to visit.  Crito comes with the enticing offer of helping Socrates escape from prison.  Listen to why find out why Socrates rejects the offer and accepts his sentence of death.

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This episode of the egg timer takes a look at the implications that God's foreknowledge has for free will.  If God knows all there is to know about the future can people make free choices and can those free choices involve alternative possibilities for the person making the choice?  William James thought the answer was yes, tune in to find out why he thought this and how well his view stands up.

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Today's episode takes a look at the nuanced idea of egalitarianism.  Tune in to find out why the view is much more than simply giving everyone the same.

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In 1643 Elisabeth, Princess of Bohemia, wrote a series of letters to Descartes which posed a strong objection to his dualism.  Tune in to learn more about that objection and how Descartes responded in a lively correspondence with the Princess.

You can find the correspondences between Elisabeth and Descartes about dualism here: https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/descartes1643_1.pdf

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This episode of the egg timer explores the major themes of Advaita Vedanta within the Indian Philosophical Tradition with special attention given to how the view distinguishes empirical reality from ultimate reality.  

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This episode of the egg timer takes a look at Emma Goldman's defense of anarchism as a viable political theory and approach to life.  For many people anarchism is a non-starter but Goldman's defense is thought provoking and well worth considering.

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Could people in the not too distant future become immortal?  Sounds unlikely, right.  Well, tune in to find out how this might not be so unlikely.  

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This third installment of the Summer Series returns to 1984 where Winston and Julia are becoming increasingly entangled in a dangerous conspiracy against The Party.

A free copy of 1984 can be found here: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt

Send over your questions, comments, and ideas for future episodes to: eggtimerphilosophy@gmail.com

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This episode of the egg timer takes a look at Isaiah Berlin's 20th century political philosophy classic, 'Two Concepts of Liberty'.  Tune in to learn more about the distinction Berlin makes between positive and negative liberty and why he rejects the idea that political communities should strive to enhance positive liberty.

Here is a link to Berlin essay: https://cactus.utahtech.edu/green/B_Readings/I_Berlin%20Two%20Concpets%20of%20Liberty.pdf

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Over the course of the Summer the egg timer will be having a Summer podcast series covering the ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche.  See release dates below for episodes topics in the series and also check out the egg timer website at eggtimerphilosophy.com for associated readings for each episode.

June 11, 'Truth and Perspectivism': June 25, 'Will To Power': July 9, 'Ubermensch': July 23, 'Nihilism': August 6, 'The Arts'

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The focus of this egg timer will be John Locke's thoughts about tacit consent and the role it plays in justifying the legitimacy of government.  

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On this third installment of the Nietzsche Summer Series the topic will be Nietzsche's Ubermensch.  Join in for an episode that takes a look how Nietzsche developed this vexing idea. Check out details about the Nietzsche Summer Series at eggtimerphilosophy.com

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In 1950 Alan Turing introduced an inventive test to explore whether people could distinguish between interacting with another person or with a machine.  That test has been come to be known as the Turing test and it continues to be one of most important ideas in the philosophy of technology.  Listen in to find out more about Alan Turning's innovative and thought provoking test.

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This episode of the egg timer will focus on public goods and free riders.  Do people have obligations to pay for things that generally benefit them?  Listen is as this question is cracked open.

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Should society regulate objectionable speech?  This episode of the egg timer considers and critiques John Stuart Mill's answer to this long standing and difficult question.

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For today's episode a couple of thought experiments meant to provoke some critical thought surrounding utilitarian ethics.

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Descartes first meditation from his Meditations on First Philosophy kicks off the Summer Series.  Listen in the find out how Descartes demolishes all of his beliefs in order to begin the search for a foundation for anything that he can know with absolute undoubtable certainty.

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Art Attribution: Frans Hals  - André Hatala [e.a.] (1997) De eeuw van Rembrandt, Bruxelles: Crédit communal de Belgique, ISBN 2-908388-32-4.

This episode of the egg timer takes a look at the economics and ethics of the secondary ticket market.  This is a market understandably loathed by many but the existence of the market involves economic and psychological factors that often go ignored.

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This episode of the egg timer delves into the topic of harm.  Harm is often treated is a purely comparative way by asking if a person has been made 'worse off' than they were before the harm.  But as we'll see this idea is not nearly so iron clad as it is often treated.  

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This episode of the egg timer scrambles up existential themes from the first half of Albert Camus's 'The Stranger'.

You can find the full text of 'The Stranger' here: https://archive.org/stream/CamusAlbertTheStranger/CamusAlbert-TheStranger_djvu.txt

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Consent is the topic for this egg timer.  Along with thinking about the role of consent within an ethical system focus will also be given to the various types of consent that philosophers often focus upon: direct, tacit, and hypothetical.  

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What separates science from other areas of inquiry?  Karl Popper argued that it is the activity of falsification.  Tune in to hear about Karl Popper's falsification driven view of scientific inquiry.

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This episode of the egg timer reviews the topic of religious liberties and toleration within political communities.  Special focus is given to the tension between the state as a being understood as a supreme authority with the belief by many that actually this is false and God, not the state, is the supreme authority. 

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Today's topic is how to best think about ethical truth as it relates with truth in other areas of human inquiry such as mathematics and the natural sciences.  Many people believe that truth within ethics is something very different than truth within math, physics, or chemistry.  This episode takes a critical look at how well that belief stands up.  

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Today's episode looks at some major themes from Thomas Kuhn's 1962 book, 'The Structure of Scientific Revolutions'.  That book was one of the most important and influential philosophical works of the 20th century and led many scientists and others to reconsider the nature of science.  Tune in to learn a bit more about Kuhn's groundbreaking approach to scientific inquiry.

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Today on the egg timer we are joined by guest host Martin Bunzl.  Join in as Dr. Bunzl discusses his new book, Thinking While Walking: Reflections on the Pacific Crest Trail.  

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Herbert Spencer was an extremely influential 19th century thinker but his ideas exist in relative obscurity today.  He coined the phrase 'survival of the fittest' and wrote extensively on a variety of topics within evolutionary theory, political thought, sociology, psychology, and ethics.  Tune in to learn more about Spencer's ideas and how they are still plenty relevant today.

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For this episode a discussion of self-defense with emphasis given to the ideas of proportionality and aggression.

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How do we create a just society? In this episode of the egg timer we take a look at how John Rawls used the idea of ignorance to provide a very inventive answer to this question.

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Image Attribution: English: Published by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Photograph taken by Alec Rawls, John's son. The portrait was uncredited on the original dust jacket, but Alec is identified as its photographer on the copyright page of the 1994 German-language first edition of the book John Rawls by Thomas Pogge., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Philosophical presentism is the view that the present or present entities are the only things that are real.  Tune in to learn more about this intriguing view.

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Today's episode concludes the Summer Series and takes a look at how Descartes makes his final push to move from global skepticism to general knowledge.

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Art Attribution: Frans Hals  - André Hatala [e.a.] (1997) De eeuw van Rembrandt, Bruxelles: Crédit communal de Belgique, ISBN 2-908388-32-4.

Can human nature and freedom coexist?  Maybe, but if so a new way to look at both ideas will probably be needed.  Enjoy this episode of the egg timer as the topic of how human nature and freedom might relate with one another is explored.

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This episode of the egg timer takes a look at the possibility of offering a comprehensive economic view without an ethical foundation.  Those prospects are not good.

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In 1963 Edmund Gettier's short paper offering counterexamples to the idea that knowledge amounts to justified true belief sent shock waves around the philosophical world.  Tune in to learn more about Gettier's influential ideas that still garner a great deal of attention today.

You can find a copy of Gettier's paper here: https://fitelson.org/proseminar/gettier.pdf

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This episode of the egg timer explores a passage from Robert Pirsig's 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' to better understand the relationship between time and experience.

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For today's episode a look at the topic of expected value through the lens of the lottery.  

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This episode of the egg timer covers Descartes's Third Meditation within his Meditations on First Philosophy.  During the Second Meditation Descartes made the case for people having absolute certainty, knowledge, that the self as a thinking thing exists in some fashion.  In his third Meditation Descartes goes further and attempts to demonstrate that people can possess absolute certainty about an external world beyond the self.  

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Art Attribution: Frans Hals  - André Hatala [e.a.] (1997) De eeuw van Rembrandt, Bruxelles: Crédit communal de Belgique, ISBN 2-908388-32-4.

This episode of the egg timer tackles the question: what are rights?  In order to answer this question the relationship between rights and obligations is cracked open.  

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If you could plug into in a machine that would provide you with the experience of any desire and wish that you had while all the time your brain were hooked up to electrodes running to the machine would you flip the switch and plug into the machine?  This thought provoking question posed by Robert Nozick is the topic of this week's egg timer.  And yes Nozick wrote about this idea roughly 25 years before the first Matrix film was released on the big screen.

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Do people conducting business have any ethical obligations beyond following the law and making as much profit as possible?  On Today's episode we will explore Milton Friedman's influential answer to this question.

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Can we owe duties to people who do not yet exist? Tune in as this vexing philosophical and ethical question gets scrambled up.

This episode of the egg timer takes a look at why Aristotle thought the best type of life could only be the life of contemplation.  

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Do people have natural procedural rights to be judged by fair and reliable processes?  That's the topic for this episode of the egg timer.  Tune in for an application of natural rights to an age old question.  

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What principles of justice would people agree to under a veil of ignorance that prevents them from knowing things about themselves such as their ethnicity, gender identity, and sexual orientation? John Rawls says, the 'difference principle' and the 'liberty principle'.  This episode breaks down and discuss each of these ideas.

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Image Attribution: English: Published by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Photograph taken by Alec Rawls, John's son. The portrait was uncredited on the original dust jacket, but Alec is identified as its photographer on the copyright page of the 1994 German-language first edition of the book John Rawls by Thomas Pogge., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Imagine you are conducting a trolley and the break gets stuck.  If you do nothing the trolley will kill five workman on your path.  But you can quickly switch tracks where the trolley will kill one person.  Should you pull the lever and switch tracks?  That's the question on this episode of the egg timer.

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Can God make a rock so big that He cannot lift it?  This episode of the egg timer explores the answer that Thomas Aquinas gave to this seeming paradox.

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Under what conditions should people living without a government agree to form a government?  On this episode of the egg timer we see the answer that Thomas Hobbes gave nearly four hundred years ago to this long standing question among political philosophers.

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Does freedom require alternative possibilities?  That's the question for this episode of the egg timer.  Tune in as Harry Frankfurt's enduring answer to this question is cracked open.  

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Do the Gods love the good because it is good or is something good because the Gods love it?  That's the dilemma that Plato posed through the voice of Socrates in his dialogue Euthyphro and the topic for this episode of the egg timer.

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On this episode of the egg timer the topic is Charles Horton Cooley's looking glass self.  Cooley offers a fascinating and dynamic social interpretation of the self.  Tune in to find out more.

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On this episode of the egg timer the topic will revolve around questions concerning what constitutes the body as well how advanced technology will force people to rethink the rights that protect the body.

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On this episode of the egg timer the distinction between act and rule utilitarianism is given a closer look.

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This episode of the egg timer considers the distinction between threats and offers.  Many people typically think that offers are morally permissible and threats are not. This thought is normally right but as we will explore things are more complicated than they first appear.

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If you knew every physical fact about the world but had only experienced the confines of a black and white room would you learn anything new when you see a ripe red tomato for the first time?  This episode of the egg timer considers this thought experiment and the threats to the physicalist world view that it poses.

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This episode of the egg timer takes a critical look at the view of ethical relativism.  It is a commonly held belief that the foundation of ethics rests on relative judgments that will differ greatly between different groups of people.  Listen in to find out how well that idea holds up.

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This episode covers Descartes's Second Meditation within his Meditations on First Philosophy.  Here Descartes introduces his infamous idea, 'I think, therefore I am'.

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Listen in the learn more about the late nineteenth century philosopher and historian Peter Kropotkin.  Kropotkin was a communist and anarchist.  He argued that mutual aid, not competition, defined the evolution of species, including that of human beings.  

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This episode of the egg timer is devoted to discussing the major themes within Aristotle's approach to ethics.

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In the second Nietzsche summer series episode the topic will be the Will to Power with specific focus on the text 'Beyond Good and Evil'.  The Will to Power played a critical role in Nietzsche's thoughts and he considered it to be a more basic aspect of humanity than even self preservation.  Tune in to find out just how Nietzsche thought that conventional morality was little more than a human creation to deny this most basic aspect of humanity.  Check out details about the Nietzsche Summer Series at eggtimerphilosophy.com

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For Today's episode of the Egg Timer Justin McBrayer discusses ideas related with his book, 'Beyond Fake News: Finding the Truth in a World of Misinformation'.  Listen in as Justin discusses the increasingly prominent problem of navigating the media in an environment of disinformation and falsehoods.  

For further information about Justin's book you can check out his webpage about his book here: https://www.justinmcbrayer.com/fake-news

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Is eating meat a moral practice?  Today's episode explores this question with specific attention given to a very interesting analogy between eating meat and swinging a baseball bat into a cow's skull offered by Robert Nozick.

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This episode of the egg timer previews Albert Camus's 20th century classic novel 'The Stranger'.  The next two episodes of the podcast will be devoted to taking a look at the major philosophical themes within that work.

You can find the full text of 'The Stranger' here: https://archive.org/stream/CamusAlbertTheStranger/CamusAlbert-TheStranger_djvu.txt

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On today's episode we delve deeper into the ethical conundrum of the trolley problem.

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This episode of the egg timer continues with themes from Kant's epistemology and metaphysics within his Critique of Pure Reason and looks specifically at the topics of space and time.  Listen in to find out how Kant thought that space and time where necessary for understanding anything at all.

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This episode of the egg timer cracks open Immanuel Kant's discussion of the Phenomena and Noumena.  The Phenomena are objects which we apprehend through our 'sensible intuition' or appearances, while the Noumena are the transcendental 'things in itself'.  Tune in to listen to how Kant attempts to navigate these key aspects of his metaphysical worldview.  

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This episode of the egg timer focuses on Karl Marx's thoughts about relative deprivation.  Special focus will be given to how relative deprivation relates with the principle of 'equal pay for equal work'.

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For this episode of the egg timer a look at the classic prisoner's dilemma.  This is the game that ushered in contemporary game theory in the 1950's and it remains highly relevant today.

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This episode of the egg timer takes a look at Hannah Arendt's thoughts about the banality of evil.  Arendt's treatment of evil was one of the most important and controversial ideas within 20th century political philosophy.  

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Max Stirner is not a household name but his nineteenth century anti-authoritarian views set the stage for anarchist and libertarian views with relevance today.  Tune in to find out more about Stirner's pioneering ideas.

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This episode of the egg timer takes a critical look at what the commons are and why they matter to the history of ideas.

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Today's episode of the egg timer takes a look at Thomas Malthus's ideas about population and the significant influence that they had on 19th century thought.

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For most people price gouging is a very cut and dry ethical issue.  Tune in to find out how considerations of scarcity make the issue more complex than it first appears to be.

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On this episode of the egg timer, and the first in the Nietzsche Summer series, we explore Nietzsche 1873 essay 'On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense'.  Special attention is given to the strong connection that Nietzsche makes between conventional notions of truth and the formation of metaphor.  Check out details about the Nietzsche Summer Series at eggtimerphilosophy.com

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Knowledge is often defined today as justified true belief.  This episode is devoted to taking a look at each part of this influential approach to understanding what knowledge amounts to.

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On this episode of the egg timer the topic is the bootstrapping problem within the empirical sciences.  In particular, the question of what reasons do we have to think that vision is a reliable and true representation of reality will be discussed.  Often answers to this question double down on using vision as an answer to this question, but as we'll discover that answer just gets caught in the wheels of circular reasoning.

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Do the evils of the world provide evidence against the existence of God?  Listen in as this question is explored on this episode of the egg timer.

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This episode of the egg timer is focused around exploring the nature of assumptions.  What is an assumption and how do they play a crucial role in our thinking?  Tune in to find out how assumptions are crucial to thinking but as the same time lead to a vexing paradox. 

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Tune in for a discussion of ethical issues related with organ donation and specifically what a system of organ donation ought to be like.

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How should the state be defined?  This episode of the egg timer takes a look at Max Weber's influential attempt to answer this question. 

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Take a look at the cover art for the episode.  What do you see?  I see a duck but many other people see a rabbit.  Listen in to find out how the rabbit duck illusion brings with it some very interesting philosophical discussion.

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For this Holiday edition of the egg timer the topic will be the economic, social, and philosophical aspects of gifts and gift giving.  Can all gifts be given an economic analysis or is there something about gifts and gift giving that cannot be quantified into dollars and cents?  Listen in as the economy of gifts gets a new ribbon.  

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What role should luck play in our moral assessments?  If a person intends to harm another but as luck would have it is not able to do so should we morally assess their action the same as if they had succeeded in harming another?  Tune in as those and other questions related with moral luck are discussed on this episode of the egg timer.

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Listen in to find out details about the Descartes Summer Series.

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What exists?  George Berkeley argued that the only things that exists are minds and ideas.  Find out more about this odd but strangely compelling view on this episode of the egg timer.

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For today's episode of the egg timer the topic will be Martin Luther King's distinction between just and unjust laws.  King had a well developed view about the difference between just and unjust laws.  Tune in to find out what King has to say about this important difference.

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This episode of the egg timer explores James Rachels's influential essay, 'Active and Passive Euthanasia'.  Rachels suggests that the distinction based upon the difference between killing and letting die that has shaped medical policy surrounding euthanasia in the United States is deeply flawed.  Tune in to find out why Rachels holds this position.

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