Robinson's Podcast

Graham Harman is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Sci-Arc, the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles. He is one of the leading metaphysicians in the continental tradition of philosophy and an influential philosopher of art. Robinson and Graham discuss his work at the forefront of the speculative realist trend in the contemporary continental world, where he is known for his object-oriented ontology, or OOO. They also talk about the philosophy of art and architecture, touching on figures like H.P. Lovecraft and Duchamp, who Graham has written about extensively in his work. Check out Graham’s latest book, Architecture and Objects, linked below: Architecture and Objects: https://a.co/d/ewHg5Ur OUTLINE 00:00 In This Episode… 01:54 Introduction 05:22 Graham and Continental Philosophy 13:04 Speculative Realism and Object-Oriented Ontology 27:05 On Debating Slavoj Žižek 30:28 Fictional Objects 34:42 Real and Sensual Objects 52:14 Aesthetics OOO 59:47 Was Performance the First Art? 01:07:53 H.P. Lovecraft and Philosophy 01:17:33 Surrealism, Dada, and Literalism 01:23:19 Architecture, Philosophy, and Metaphysics 01:46:06 Philosophical Formalism and Architecture 02:00:20 Final Thoughts Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between. 

Graham Oppy is Professor of Philosophy at Monash University. Before that, he did his undergraduate work in Melbourne and his graduate work at Princeton. Though Graham is best known as a philosopher of religion, he has also published on the philosophy of math, language, aesthetics, and more. In this episode, Robinson and Graham begin by discussing the nature of argument: What makes an argument successful? What’s a good argument? How should we think about arguments in areas of deep disagreement? They then move on to a discussion of ontological arguments in the philosophy of religion, where one argues for the existence of god—or gods—without any prior assumptions. Ontological Arguments: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ontological-arguments/ Majesty of Reason: https://www.youtube.com/@MajestyofReason OUTLINE 00:00 In This Episode… 00:40 Introduction 05:04 Graham and the Philosophy of Religion 11:45 Arguments 14:12 What Makes a Good Argument? 38:00 How to Talk Around Deep Disagreement 48:23 How Arguments Vary Across Disciplines 56:13 Ontological Arguments for the Existence of God 01:31:29 Cosmological Arguments Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between. 

Frank Jackson is Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University. He is best known for the knowledge argument and Mary’s Room—its accompanying thought experiment—but has published widely in the philosophy of mind, epistemology, metaphysics, and the philosophy of language. Graham Priest is a Distinguished Professor in the philosophy department at the CUNY Graduate Center. Like Frank, he is one of the most influential philosophers of the past fifty years, and has done important work on a wide range of topics, ranging from the philosophy of mathematics to logic and eastern philosophy. In this episode, Robinson, Frank, and Graham talk about David Lewis and his immense legacy in the philosophical world. They cover his character—Frank and Graham were friends with him for many years—as well as some of his work, ranging from the thesis of modal realism to Humean supervenience and the philosophy of set theory. David Lewis: ⁠https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/david-lewis/⁠ Graham’s Website: ⁠https://grahampriest.net⁠ OUTLINE 00:00 In This Episode… 01:17 Introduction 07:54 David Lewis as a Friend and Philosopher 24:12 Australian Philosophy 28:53 Lewisian Themes 34:30 Modal Realism 52:43 Kripke and Lewis on Possible Worlds 58:07 Making Use of Possible Worlds 01:23:29 Humean Supervenience 01:38:19 Set Theory and Mereology 01:45:19 Final Thoughts Robinson’s Website: ⁠http://robinsonerhardt.com⁠ Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between.

Frances Egan is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers, where she works on the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of psychology, and the foundations of cognitive science. Recently she has been researching computational models of cognition and how they relate to representation. Robinson and Frankie talk about the foundations of cognitive science and the nature of mental representations before discussing psychological explanation, different ways of conceiving the mind’s boundaries, and how it interfaces with the rest of the body and environment. Frankie’s Website: https://frances-egan.org/index.html Mental Representation: https://plato.stanford.edu/ENTRIES/mental-representation/ OUTLINE 00:00 In This Episode… 01:21 Introduction 07:10 Frankie and the Philosophy of Mind 11:04 The Foundations of Cognitive Science 13:20 What are Mental Representations? 26:49 Eliminativism and Representations 32:33 A Deflationary Account 40:51 Naturalism and Cognitive Science 55:39 Psychological Explanation 01:03:02 The Extended Mind and Embodied Cognition  01:21:14 The New Mechanists Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between. 

Ernest Lepore is a Board of Governors Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers. Though Ernie is best known for his work in the philosophy of language, he has also published on philosophical logic, metaphysics, and the philosophy of mind. Though Robinson and Ernie largely discuss the former, their conversation begins with a bevy of wonderful stories from the profession, as Ernie worked and studied with many of the greatest thinkers—and characters—of twentieth century philosophy, including Ed Gettier, Jerry Fodor, Donald Davidson, Michael Dummett, and W.V.O. Quine. They then turn to some quite general problems in the philosophy language, discussion the relationship between language and thought, meta-linguistic negotiation, and conventions before going through the main arc of his book on slurs jointly authored with Una Stojnic of Princeton University. Though Ernie is the author of too many books and articles to list within the confines of this description, a recent book mentioned many times in the conversation is Imagination and Convention: Distinguishing Grammar and Inference in Language (Oxford University Press, 2015), which Ernie cowrote with Mathew Stone, chair of the Department of Computer Science at Rutgers. OUTLINE 00:00 IN THIS EPISODE 00:38 Introduction 05:33 Ernie’s Interest in the Philosophy of Language 14:17 Working with Ed Gettier, Jerry Fodor, Donald Davidson, and Michael Dummett 30:44 Language, Thought, and Convention 44:44 What is Meta-Linguistic Negotiation? 51:53 What is a Slur? 01:04:10 Philosophical Accounts of Slurs 01:13:50 Pejorative Content Accounts of Slurs 01:21:38 Non-Content Accounts of Slurs 01:30:52 A New Theory of Slurs Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between. 

Chris Potts is Professor and Chair of the Department of Linguistics at Stanford University, and also Professor by courtesy in the Department of Computer Science at the same. Chris has worked on a wide variety of topics in linguistics throughout his career, but has published on conventional implicature—check out his book, Logic of Conventional Implicatures (Oxford, 2003)—large language models, and compositional reasoning, among many other subjects. Robinson and Chris begin by discussing the relationship between linguistics and philosophy before turning to topics in semantics and pragmatics—references, the principle of compositionality, swearing, and more. After some thoughts on Chomsky’s legacy in linguistics, they talk about the impact of ChatGPT on the classroom and whether large language models are capable of understanding. 00:00 In This Episode… 01:13 Introduction 04:16 Chris and Linguistics 12:34 Linguistics and Philosophy 22:43 Proper Names and Reference 27:00 The Principle of Compositionality 41:59 Adjectives, Innateness, and Chomsky 57:36 Quantifiers 01:01:36 Swearing and Linguistics 01:04:42 ChatGPT in the Linguistics Classroom 01:12:00 Does ChatGPT Understand? Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between. 

Barry Loewer is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers. Before that he did his PhD in philosophy at Stanford (!). Barry works largely in the philosophy of physics, the philosophy of science, and metaphysics, and is a good friend of and frequent collaborator with another denizen of the Robinson’s Podcast universe, David Albert. It is their joint work on the “Mentaculus,” something approximating a “probability map of the universe,” that occupies much of the discussion in this episode. Robinson and Barry also talk about statistical mechanics and his upcoming book, What Breathes Fire into the Equations (Oxford University Press, to be released fall 2023 or early 2024), which is about laws, chances, and fundamental ontology. Check out Barry’s book on David: Essays on David Albert’s Time and Chance. Background on Counterfactuals: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/counterfactuals/ Background on Statistical Mechanics: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/statphys-statmech/ OUTLINE 00:00 In This Episode… 00:29 Introduction 06:21 Barry‘s Road to the Philosophy of Physics 28:37 Fire in the Equations 43:16 Conditional Probability 54:11 Non-Humean and Humean Accounts of Laws 01:06:44 Probability Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between. 

Jonathan Wolff is Alfred Landecker Professor of Values and Public Policy at the University of Oxford. He works in numerous areas of political philosophy. Some topics he has researched include equality and poverty, and he has worked in applied areas like Covid policy and gambling. In this episode, Jonathan and Robinson begin with a discussion of the nature of political philosophy before turning to some modern historical perspectives on the state, starting with Hobbes and traveling up through Marx and Rawls. They then turn to his current work in partnership with Avner de-Shalit on cities and equality. Some of Jonathan’s books include Disadvantage (Oxford, 2007), An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Oxford, 1996, and soon to be in its fourth edition), and Why Read Marx Today? (Oxford, 2002).  Jonathan’s Website: https://jonathanwolff.wordpress.com OUTLINE: 00:00 In This Episode… 00:35 Introduction 04:17 Jonathan’s Start in Political Philosophy 08:46 What is Political Philosophy? 18:24 Methodology in Political Science and Political Philosophy 22:42 Hobbes and the State of Nature 45:34 Rousseau on Government 51:12 John Stuart Mill on Liberty 1:01:25 Covid Policy and Moral Philosophy 1:08:49 Marx and the State 1:19:07 Rawls and Justice 1:33:07 Political Philosophy and the City Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between. 

Anubav Vasudevan is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Chicago, where he works in formal epistemology and the history of logic, though he has published in a number of other areas. Anubav and Robinson talk about his time at Columbia University studying with the mathematician, probability theorist, and philosopher Haim Gaifman before discussing some of Anubav’s thoughts on mathematics, physics, logic, and how they relate to philosophy. In the second half of the conversation they move on to some of Anubav’s work in the history of logic, touching on Leibniz and the Peripatetic school. Background on Classical Logic: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-classical/ OUTLINE: 00:00 In This Episode… 00:50 Introduction 06:30 Mathematics and Philosophy with Haim Gaifman 23:44 From Physics to Philosophy 34:49 Philosophy and Scientific Inquiry 49:37 Why Formal Philosophy 57:05 What is Logic? 01:05:56 Monism and Pluralism in Logic 01:21:52 The Historical Roles of Logic in Philosophy 01:26:18 Peripatetic Logic 01:41:23 Leibniz and Logic Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between. 

Pamela Hieronymi is Professor of Philosophy at UCLA. Before that, she did her undergraduate studies at Princeton and received her PhD from Harvard. Her work extends in a variety of directions, but some areas she works in include moral psychology, the philosophy of mind, ethics, and the philosophy of action. In this episode, she and Robinson discuss free will and moral responsibility, the topic of an upcoming book entitled Minds that Matter. Pamela begins by introducing moral psychology and the role of analytic philosophy in the debate over free will. Then she and Robinson discuss the extent to which we control our actions and thoughts, and how all of this relates to the question of moral responsibility. Pamela’s most recent book is Freedom, Resentment, and the Metaphysics of Morals (Princeton University Press, 2020). Pamela’s Website: https://hieronymi.humspace.ucla.edu OUTLINE: 00:00 In This Episode… 00:35 Introduction 04:40 - What is Moral Psychology? 06:30 - Agency and Analytic Philosophy 17:57 - Free Will, Moral Responsibility, and Determinism 21:57 - Control Over Thought and Environment 32:46 - Some Shortcomings of Other Accounts 35:50 - Kant and the Two-Standpoints View of Free Will 49:22 - Do We Control Our Beliefs? 54:33 -  Free Will and Moral Responsibility 1:11:16 - How Should We Act? Robinson’s Website: ⁠http://robinsonerhardt.com⁠ Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between.