John Locke Lectures in Philosophy

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The John Locke Lectures are among the world's most distinguished lecture series in philosophy. The series began in 1950 and are given once a year.

Oxford University


    • Jul 6, 2011 LATEST EPISODE
    • infrequent NEW EPISODES
    • 1h AVG DURATION
    • 27 EPISODES


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    Latest episodes from John Locke Lectures in Philosophy

    2011 Lecture 4: Platonism as a Way of Life

    Play Episode Listen Later Jul 6, 2011 65:57


    Fourth and final lecture in the 2011 John Locke lecture series. Philosophy is a demanding intellectual discipline, with many facets: logic, epistemology, philosophy of nature and science, metaphysics, ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of art, rhetoric, philosophy of language and mind. But a long tradition of ancient Greek philosophers, beginning with Socrates, made their philosophies also complete ways of life. For them reason, perfected by philosophy-not religion, not cultural traditions and practices-constitutes the only legitimate authority for determining how one ought to live. They also thought philosophically informed reason should be the basis for all our practical attitudes, all our decisions, and in fact the whole of our lives. In these lectures we examine the development of this pagan tradition in philosophy, from its establishment by Socrates, through Plato and Aristotle, the Stoics, Epicurus, the Pyrrhonian Skeptics, and Plotinus and late ancient Platonism.

    2011 Lecture 3: The Stoic Way of Life

    Play Episode Listen Later Jul 6, 2011 61:04


    Third lecture in the 2011 John Locke Lecture Series. Philosophy is a demanding intellectual discipline, with many facets: logic, epistemology, philosophy of nature and science, metaphysics, ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of art, rhetoric, philosophy of language and mind. But a long tradition of ancient Greek philosophers, beginning with Socrates, made their philosophies also complete ways of life. For them reason, perfected by philosophy-not religion, not cultural traditions and practices-constitutes the only legitimate authority for determining how one ought to live. They also thought philosophically informed reason should be the basis for all our practical attitudes, all our decisions, and in fact the whole of our lives. In these lectures we examine the development of this pagan tradition in philosophy, from its establishment by Socrates, through Plato and Aristotle, the Stoics, Epicurus, the Pyrrhonian Skeptics, and Plotinus and late ancient Platonism.

    2011 Lecture 2: Aristotle's Philosophy as Two Ways of Life

    Play Episode Listen Later Jul 6, 2011 60:01


    Second lecture in the 2011 John Locke Lecture Series. Philosophy is a demanding intellectual discipline, with many facets: logic, epistemology, philosophy of nature and science, metaphysics, ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of art, rhetoric, philosophy of language and mind. But a long tradition of ancient Greek philosophers, beginning with Socrates, made their philosophies also complete ways of life. For them reason, perfected by philosophy-not religion, not cultural traditions and practices-constitutes the only legitimate authority for determining how one ought to live. They also thought philosophically informed reason should be the basis for all our practical attitudes, all our decisions, and in fact the whole of our lives. In these lectures we examine the development of this pagan tradition in philosophy, from its establishment by Socrates, through Plato and Aristotle, the Stoics, Epicurus, the Pyrrhonian Skeptics, and Plotinus and late ancient Platonism.

    2011 Lecture 1: Philosophy in Antiquity as a Way of Life

    Play Episode Listen Later Jul 6, 2011 59:28


    Part of the 2011 John Locke Lecture Series; this year presented by Professor John Cooper, Princeton University, on 'Ancient Greek Philosophies as a Way of Life'. Philosophy is a demanding intellectual discipline, with many facets: logic, epistemology, philosophy of nature and science, metaphysics, ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of art, rhetoric, philosophy of language and mind. But a long tradition of ancient Greek philosophers, beginning with Socrates, made their philosophies also complete ways of life. For them reason, perfected by philosophy-not religion, not cultural traditions and practices-constitutes the only legitimate authority for determining how one ought to live. They also thought philosophically informed reason should be the basis for all our practical attitudes, all our decisions, and in fact the whole of our lives. In these lectures we examine the development of this pagan tradition in philosophy, from its establishment by Socrates, through Plato and Aristotle, the Stoics, Epicurus, the Pyrrhonian Skeptics, and Plotinus and late ancient Platonism.

    2009 Lecture 5: Normative Structures

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 20, 2010 59:51


    Fifth and final lecture in the 2009 John Locke lectures entitled Being Realistic about Reasons.

    2009 Lecture 4: Epistemological Problems

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 20, 2010 59:31


    Fourth lecture in the 2009 John Locke Lecture series entitled Being Realistic about Reasons.

    2009 Lecture 3: Motivation and the Appeal of Expressivism

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 20, 2010 59:29


    Third lecture in the 2009 John Locke lecture series entitled Being Realistic about Reasons.

    2009 Lecture 2: Normativity and Metaphysics

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 20, 2010 52:15


    Second lecture in the 2009 John Locke lectures entitled Being Realistic about Reasons.

    2009 Lecture 1: Being Realistic about Reasons Introduction

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 20, 2010 55:12


    First lecture of the 2009 John Locke Lectures entitled 'Being Realistic about Reasons.

    2010 Lecture 6: Whither the Aufbau?

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 15, 2010 69:16


    Sixth and final lecture in the John Locke lecture series entitled Constructing the World.

    2010 Lecture 5: Hard Cases: Mathematics, Normativity, Ontology, Intentionality

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 15, 2010 64:33


    Fifth lecture in the 2010 John Locke lecture series entitled Constructing the World.

    2010 Lecture 4: Revisability and Conceptual Change: Carnap vs. Quine

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 15, 2010 62:58


    Fourth lecture in the 2010 John Locke lecture series entitled Constructing the World.

    2010 Lecture 3: The Case for A Priori Scrutability

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 15, 2010 63:56


    Third lecture in the 2010 John Locke lecture series entitled Constructing the World.

    2010 Lecture 2: The Cosmoscope Argument

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 15, 2010 63:43


    Second lecture in the 2010 John Locke lecture series entitled 'Constructing the World'.

    2010 Lecture 1: A Scrutable World

    Play Episode Listen Later Dec 15, 2010 66:25


    First Lecture in the 2010 John Locke Lecture series entitled Constructing the World.

    2008 Lecture 6: The Revisability Puzzle Revisited.

    Play Episode Listen Later Jul 24, 2008 56:25


    This is the sixth lecture in the 2008 John Locke Lecture series entitled 'Logic, Normativity, and Rational Revisability'.

    2008 Lecture 5: Epistemology without Metaphysics

    Play Episode Listen Later Jul 24, 2008 57:06


    This is the fifth lecture in the 2008 John Locke Lecture series entitled 'Logic, Normativity, and Rational Revisability'.

    2008 Lecture 4: Is that Really Revising Logic?

    Play Episode Listen Later Jul 24, 2008 57:39


    This is the fourth lecture in the 2008 John Locke Lecture series entitled 'Logic, Normativity, and Rational Revisability'.

    2008 Lecture 3: A Case for the Rational Revisability of Logic.

    Play Episode Listen Later Jul 24, 2008 60:41


    This is the third lecture in the 2008 John Locke Lecture series entitled 'Logic, Normativity, and Rational Revisability'.

    2008 Lecture 2: What is the Normative Role of Logic?

    Play Episode Listen Later Jul 24, 2008 69:37


    This is the second lecture in the 2008 John Locke Lecture series entitled 'Logic, Normativity, and Rational Revisability'.

    2008 Lecture 1: A Puzzle about Rational Revisability

    Play Episode Listen Later Jul 24, 2008 63:01


    This is the first lecture in the 2008 John Locke Lecture series entitled 'Logic, Normativity, and Rational Revisability'.

    2007 Lecture 6: Knowing what we are thinking

    Play Episode Listen Later Jul 10, 2008 61:11


    The sixth lecture will try to resolve a familiar tension between externalism about mental content and the assumption that we have some kind of privileged knowledge of the contents of our own thoughts. I will look at the "slow switching" scenarios, and consider what they show about the role of propositional content in characterizing mental states.

    2007 Lecture 5: Acquaintance and essence

    Play Episode Listen Later Jul 10, 2008 60:00


    Russell held that we must be acquainted with the constituents of the contents of our thoughts, and remnants of this doctrine persist in the work of a number of more recent philosophers. Our knowledge of our own phenomenal experience is supposed to be a paradigm of acquaintance, but acquaintance is sometimes explained in a way that implies that it involves knowledge of the essential nature of a thing or property.

    2007 Lecture 4: Phenomenal and epistemic indistinguishability

    Play Episode Listen Later Jul 10, 2008 55:00


    The fourth lecture will begin with a variation on the thought experiment about Mary that is the focus of the knowledge argument, using it to develop the analogy between self-locating knowledge and knowledge of phenomenal experience. The success of the analogy will turn on the rejection of an assumption that is intuitively plausible, but that I will argue should be rejected.

    2007 Lecture 3: Locating ourselves in the world

    Play Episode Listen Later Jul 10, 2008 62:00


    One strategy for responding to the knowledge argument exploits an analogy between knowledge of phenomenal experience and essentially indexical or self-locating knowledge. I think this is a promising analogy, but I will argue that before we apply it, we need to get clearer about the contents of self-locating belief and knowledge.

    2007 Lecture 2: Epistemic possibilities and the knowledge argument

    Play Episode Listen Later Jul 10, 2008 62:00


    The second lecture will begin with Frank Jackson's knowledge argument. The argument and the responses to it turn on assumptions about the nature of the contents of belief and the objects of knowledge. I will argue that one cannot escape the anti-materialist conclusion of the knowledge argument by adopting a fine-grained conception of content.

    2007 Lecture 1: Starting in the middle

    Play Episode Listen Later Jun 26, 2008 55:00


    Our topic is a subject's knowledge of his own phenomenal experience and of the content of his thought, but I will approach the topic from the outside, treating the subject as an object in the world. The first lecture will characterize, in a general way, this externalist strategy, and look at some familiar examples of it in the recent philosophical tradition.

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