Philosophy vs. Improv

Skye teaches and Columbia and the City University of New York, and she recently published How to Be Authentic: Simone de Beauvoir and the Quest for Fulfillment. She joins Mark and Bill to talk about what authenticity might mean for an existentialist, how it relates to truth, responsibility, and picking a theme for your birthday party. For more on this ladder of authenticity, i.e. Beauvoir’s take on ways of lacking, see PEL’s episodes on her Ethics of Ambiguity. The art was snatched off naturalsciences.org, author unknown. Why is it a picture of a snake? Well, I’d called this episode “Authentic Snake Oil,” but Skye didn’t like that much. I was not implying her book is snake oil! As a side note: Is something snake oil as in inauthentic if it in fact oil from a snake and advertised as such? It is authentic but in being so is clearly not “snake oil” in the colloquial sense despite its literal identity as such. In any case, to repeat, Skye’s book is neither snaky nor oily Audio editing by Tyler Hislop; check out his new Pixel Box Media podcast. Hear more PvI. Support the podcast! You’ll get all of our post-game discussions, exclusive bonus content, and help ensure that season two of this podcast happens!

We talk about observations and how they relate to theories and other types of preconception. Is there such a thing as pure observation?  For our pen-pen-ultimate episode here of season one, I must say that these were some of my favorite scenes we’ve ever done. We tour a submarine and plan a party. There is no Chumbawamba in either case. Improv guy Chris starred in the Improvised Star Trek podcast (and stage show) and has been a recurrent guest and now an editor on Hello From the Magic Tavern (hear his first appearance as Baron Ragoon on #51). Image by Zavier, age 6.  Audio editing by Tyler Hislop; check out his new Pixel Box Media podcast. Hear more PvI. Support the podcast! You’ll get all of our post-game discussions, exclusive bonus content, and help ensure that season two of this podcast happens!

Barry teaches at Vassar and hosts a documentary-style philosophy podcast called Hi-Phi Nation, and his most recent season had a four-episode run on David Lewis, America’s foremost philosopher of possible worlds (also covered by PEL), after Dr. Strange, of course. So we talk about that notion, in the philosophy of metaphysics and language, and also in the literal physics sense that Hollywood has so much fun with lately. And WE have fun with it in a couple of variations on a classic diner scene. Cheese salad, anyone? Image by Batiste, apparently, from paintingvalley.com. Audio editing by Tyler Hislop. Hear more PvI. Support the podcast! You’ll get all of our post-game discussions, exclusive bonus content, and help ensure that season two of this podcast happens!

Bill is a sad but steadfast street sweeper. Mark has secret character traits. Filmmaker Jack C. Newell is our inaugural non-philosopher, non-improviser guest, and his film knowledge leads to us talking about ethics in terms of film tropes plus some meta-historical-reenactment. Learn more about Jack’s (non-garbage!) work at jackcnewell.com. Image by The Children of Arendal. The whale has eaten some trash! Audio editing by Tyler Hislop. Hear more PvI. Support the podcast! You’ll get all of our post-game discussions, exclusive bonus content, and help ensure that season two of this podcast happens!

Prof in the house! Babette teaches at Fordham and recently edited the collection “Reading David Hume’s ‘On The Standard of Taste,’” which Mark made use of for The Partially Examined Life’s treatment of that essay in #289. So this can serve either as a follow-up to that discussion or as a fresh cogitation on the idea of an art critic. Can such people’s superior tastes be defined objectively according to their sensory, discriminatory capabilities? Like, we should listen to them when it comes to judgments about art because they can detect things about artworks that most of us can’t, whether due to their extensive experience studying such works or their particularly acute senses? This is more philosophically beefy than our typical PvI ep, so let me spell out some of the points made: Are there objective, detectable features of things in the world that make them beautiful? Not exactly, because of the logical is-ought distinction, which goes for ethics just as for art. We could all agree that something occurrence will hurt a lot of people, or that some object is perfectly symmetrical. Various philosophers have argued that hurting = bad by definition, or that symmetrical = beautiful by definition, but Hume (and subsequently Kant) disagree. For Hume, in both cases these are matters of human feelings. It’s sufficient that correctly functioning people will feel that hurting is (normally) bad and that symmetrical things are (generally, in the absence of other blemishes) prettier than lopsided ones. So a good art critic can’t just be someone who is a great detector of fine details, but has to actually feel pleasure at the right things, and defining which are the “right” things is difficult when the whole point of designating some people as good critics is that they’re the ones who know better than the rest of us which ones are right! Plus, as Babette points out, for art, while there might be some eternal principles like symmetry that always please people throughout the ages, our artistic sensibilities change with the age, so that particularly when it comes to humor, what smart people found funny 100 years ago is not going to be identical to what humor connoisseurs find funny now. Clearly, though, not finding this podcast to be a hoot indicates some sort of cognitive and/or affective disorder. Relating this more directly to improv: As a beginning improviser, you might want to look for particular rules to follow that will guarantee humor, but of course there are no such things.  Babette was then game to participate in some scenes involving incorporating pop culture topics into university curricula and a post-mortem (fictional) musical about David Hume by Meat Loaf scribe Jim Steinman; for my inspiration on the latter, I will refer folks to my three-time guest Tim Quirk’s essay about Bat out of Hell. (Prediction: among my musician acquaintances, Tim may be the first to appear on PvI if and when I start dipping in that well, and if he’s amenable, of course.) One of the passing references that Babette dropped that I was not familiar with is the “Hottentot Venus” as a potential model of beauty. As Bill points out, one of the elements of changing tastes is dialectical, meaning that the next fashion is seen as an answer or antidote to the previous one, as tastes swing back and forth. Babette also refers to Nigel Warburton as being the direct descendent of the man who censored Hume and thus unintentionally commissioned this essay (i.e. it was created to replace something that was suppressed). My Internet searching is not able to confirm the historical accuracy of Babette’s claim about putting baby chicks in a mattress and then erotically crushing them. But it’s fucking wild that she threw that in, so don’t give up on this before our second improv scene is complete! The image for this episode was swiped from this article, and I hope that painting is actually by a child. Now, since the fingers are not drawn, you can’t actually see that the figure in the picture is giving the finger to the critical spectator, but as perspicacious critic I can see and enjoy that this is clearly the case. What, are you blind or something? Get more PvI at philosophyimprov.com. This is a pledge drive of sorts to support season two! Join patreon.com/philosophyimprov, or there’s no guarantee that PvI will exist after this summer! Here are some benefits/points about this: Patreon charges by episode, so if we don’t put out any, you’re not paying a monthly charge. However, you can also maximize your pledge per month, in case we go back to posting more often. All content is (for now) available for pledges at any level. Showing your support is more important than the sheer income we receive (though that of course does matter to how much we can afford to produce). This means you get the post-game chatting for all our our past episodes plus a few bonus recordings for free just by signing up. I’ll be posting at least two audio readings from my new book Philosophy for Teens over the next two weeks just for supporters. As with all bonus footage, we won’t charge supporters anything (beyond your per-episode pledge) for them (i.e. they don’t count as episodes). The more people that sign up, the more bonus stuff we’ll post, and the more episodes of the show we can afford to produce.

Contemplate the difference between signs, symbols, and symptoms. Did our improv scene get Zoom-bombed, or is that just real life intruding? THINK OF THE CHILDREN (eating Doritos)! What flavor of chip is Bill trying to teach today? Why is Brooke sad? Brooke is of course an improviser and has also been on TV and works for Jackbox Games. Follow her @brookebreit, For more information about this whole signs vs. symbols thing, listen to The Partially Examined Life #290. Image by Ryan, age 4, from this page. Audio editing by Tyler Hislop. Hear more PvI. Support the podcast to get bonus stuff and good karma! In this week’s post-game available only to supporters, we we hear more about Brooke’s acting and video game work and talk more chips n’ childrearing.

…which, as I was saying, is right in the middle of a sentence or scene! Sheesh! How should our personal and family histories shape our behavior, both in real life and in improv scenes? Do these histories, these stories we tell ourselves, nail us down as people? Are we all old before our time? Are those your real parents? Hang on to your poser wallet! Image by Julia as found here. Audio editing by Tyler Hislop. Hear more PvI. Support the podcast to get bonus stuff and good karma!

Panpsycast host Jack, the Liverpudliest Liverpudlian of all, brings his promiscuous philosophy of mind to the show, wherein mind is here, there, and everywhere. But what does that mean? Skits about renting a flat for nefarious purposes and designing software for Nozick’s experience machine reveal all! But the question remains… So what? You have to care! Hear Jack on his own podcast talking about various philosophies of mind including panpsychism. Hear PEL cover the “hard problem of consciousness” with one of Jack’s co-hosts. Listen to the Pretty Much Pop on The Matrix. Watch the Deep Thoughts that Bill refers to.  Get Jack’s book Talking About the Mind. Hear more PvI. Support the podcast to get bonus stuff and good karma! Sponsor: Get 15% off premium earbuds at BuyRaycon.com/pvi.

Today’s episode is about questioning: how one might question, what sets the parameters for a proper answer, and how to give those answers in an informative and/or dramatically effective way. Watch out for dream pigs! Also, how to get into the VIP room at Stuckey’s. Perhaps a pair of paralegals can help. In the post-game, included JUST THIS ONCE for public enjoyment, we reflect on improv in the real world and some potential spin-off improv podcasts from our episode. The image is from the Children’s Drawing Archive. Audio editing by Tyler Hislop. Hear more PvI. Support the podcast to get bonus stuff and good karma! Sponsor: Get 15% off premium earbuds at BuyRaycon.com/pvi.

We are joined by the young purveyor of the Reductio podcast, who wrote his dissertation on normality, which was such a normie thing to do. Can “abnormality” be morally neutral, or is that term cursed? We talk disability studies. You down with OTPs? Repeat after mes! How many towels do you need? Listen to Andrew explain his dissertation uninterrupted. Here’s that offensive theme from Tropic Thunder. Image by Emily, cribbed from this article. Audio editing by Tyler Hislop. Hear more PvI. Support the podcast to get bonus stuff and good karma!