Episodes
Monday Jun 13, 2022
LAO TZU 50
Monday Jun 13, 2022
Monday Jun 13, 2022
In this podcast, discuss Chapter 63 of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching. The main theme is how the sage negotiates life through wu wei, or non-doing. In astonishingly few words, Lao Tzu imparts a very detailed account of wu-wei. [Free. 37 minutes.]
Tuesday Dec 07, 2021
LAO TZU 42
Tuesday Dec 07, 2021
Tuesday Dec 07, 2021
In this podcast, we consider Chapter 55 of Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching in which the cognitive innocence and perceptual freshness of the child is evaluated and lauded. [Free. 17 minutes.]
Sunday May 26, 2019
DESIRE, ACTION, TIME [YES & NO 5]
Sunday May 26, 2019
Sunday May 26, 2019
In this podcast, I continue to explore the matter of human desire. I relate it to our embeddedness in time, to suffering and to our motivations to act. [Free. 26 minutes.]
Saturday Feb 16, 2019
DESIRING TRUTH [YES & NO 4]
Saturday Feb 16, 2019
Saturday Feb 16, 2019
This podcast is a commentary on the poem Desiring Truth from Songs of No and Yes. The poem outlines the enormous philosophical difficulties encountered in the quest for the truth about truth and contrasts them with the ease with which we employ our ordinary, common sense, adequationist notion of truth very effectively in everyday life. In the commentary, I draw on Patanjali's account of truth and knowledge in the Yoga Sutra, finding nothing problematic in our ordinary truth telling whilst suggesting that our various encounters with the ineffable, samadhi, have a valuable but unstateable truth content. I also note Patanjali's method of uncompromising truthfulness as an approach to the ineffable as encountered in the microcosm in the practice of self-study. [Free. 28 minutes.]
Monday Apr 10, 2017
CONSCIOUSNESS [THOUGHT LABORATORY PREAMBLE]
Monday Apr 10, 2017
Monday Apr 10, 2017
This podcast is an entirely extempore survey of 'the hard problem of consciousness' which was undertaken as a preliminary to a proposed series on this matter. It is by no means exhaustive and rather rough but I offer it to patrons in the hope of wetting their appetite. [Patrons only. 46 minutes.]
Wednesday Feb 22, 2017
THE BLUE PILL OR THE RED PILL? PART THREE: METAPHYSICS
Wednesday Feb 22, 2017
Wednesday Feb 22, 2017
In this podcast, we outline some of the resonances of The Matrix with metaphysics which we take to be the philosophical effort to characterise the being of beings as a whole. We particularly focus on Plato's myth of the cave and Descartes' radical doubt, regarding both of these as utilising the metaphor of human being as camera obscura and the real-apparent and subject-object distinctions. This is not as obscure as it sounds! [Free. 35 minutes.]
Saturday Jan 07, 2017
FOLLOWING YOUR OWN WYRD
Saturday Jan 07, 2017
Saturday Jan 07, 2017
Alan Watts recommended 'following your own wyrd' as a strategy for living. In this podcast we enquire into this matter. [Free. 35minutes.]
Saturday Apr 16, 2016
ON THE BODY [PART SIX]: THE SENSES AND PROCESS
Saturday Apr 16, 2016
Saturday Apr 16, 2016
This is a meander which attempts to elucidate the senses and perception. We start off by saying why it is preferable to consider the senses as though processes rather than structures are primordial, as indeed our life-world and lived experience suggest. [The philosophical tradition largely considers the senses through a structural metaphor which understands the human being as like a camera and this is briefly taken issue with.] The path of thought winds its way towards the intimation that the entanglement of the processes of nature, psyche, culture and consciousness which is human life allows the universe, potentially, to see itself. [Free. 59 minutes.]