Sadler's Lectures

This lecture discusses key ideas from American philosopher Derick Parfit's book Reasons And Persons, specifically the chapter titled "The Repugnant Conclusion". Specifically it examines the effects that population growth could be conceived or experienced to have upon the individual happiness or quality of life of the population either in the present or the future. In many cases increasing the population will lead to a lowering of the individual happiness or quality of life of members of that population To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO - or at BuyMeACoffee - www.buymeacoffee.com/A4quYdWoM You can find over 4500 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Get Derek Parfit's Reasons And Persons here - https://amzn.to/4etfqcw

This lecture discusses key ideas John Searle's article "Minds, Brains, & Programs", first published in The Behavioral And Brain Sciences In 1980, considered to be an important contribution to theorizing about the possibility and nature of artificial intelligence, not least by introducing his famous "Chinese Room" thought experiment. Specifically it examines his discussion near the end of his initial contribution, which sets out his speculations about why people think that computers running programs can actually think or understand, when according to him they cannot. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO - or at BuyMeACoffee - www.buymeacoffee.com/A4quYdWoM You can find over 4500 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Get John Searle, Minds, Brains, & Programs here - https://home.csulb.edu/~cwallis/382/readings/482/searle.minds.brains.programs.bbs.1980.pdf

This lecture discusses key ideas John Searle's article "Minds, Brains, & Programs", first published in The Behavioral And Brain Sciences In 1980, considered to be an important contribution to theorizing about the possibility and nature of artificial intelligence, not least by introducing his famous "Chinese Room" thought experiment. Specifically it examines his discussion bearing on whether digital computers running programs are able to think, understand, and so on solely in virtue of being a computer with the right sort of program, which Searle answers in the negative. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO - or at BuyMeACoffee - www.buymeacoffee.com/A4quYdWoM You can find over 4500 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Get John Searle, Minds, Brains, & Programs here - https://home.csulb.edu/~cwallis/382/readings/482/searle.minds.brains.programs.bbs.1980.pdf

This lecture discusses key ideas John Searle's article "Minds, Brains, & Programs", first published in The Behavioral And Brain Sciences In 1980, considered to be an important contribution to theorizing about the possibility and nature of artificial intelligence, not least by introducing his famous "Chinese Room" thought experiment. Specifically it examines Searle's responses to a number of different replies variously defending the claims that Strong AI could understand stories. These include: the robot reply, the brain simulator reply, the combination reply, the other minds reply, and the many mansions reply. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO - or at BuyMeACoffee - www.buymeacoffee.com/A4quYdWoM You can find over 4500 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Get John Searle, Minds, Brains, & Programs here - https://home.csulb.edu/~cwallis/382/readings/482/searle.minds.brains.programs.bbs.1980.pdf

This lecture discusses key ideas John Searle's article "Minds, Brains, & Programs", first published in The Behavioral And Brain Sciences In 1980, considered to be an important contribution to theorizing about the possibility and nature of artificial intelligence, not least by introducing his famous "Chinese Room" thought experiment. Specifically it examines his response to one of the replies made by proponents of strong AI claims, which he calls the "systems reply', and which he considers to be rather implausible. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO - or at BuyMeACoffee - www.buymeacoffee.com/A4quYdWoM You can find over 4500 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Get John Searle, Minds, Brains, & Programs here - https://home.csulb.edu/~cwallis/382/readings/482/searle.minds.brains.programs.bbs.1980.pdf

This lecture discusses key ideas John Searle's article "Minds, Brains, & Programs", first published in The Behavioral And Brain Sciences In 1980, considered to be an important contribution to theorizing about the possibility and nature of artificial intelligence, not least by introducing his famous "Chinese Room" thought experiment. Specifically it examines the clarifications about the notion of "understanding" Searle thinks are needed to make at that point in the article, given that strong AI claims are made about a computer being able to "understand" stories. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO - or at BuyMeACoffee - www.buymeacoffee.com/A4quYdWoM You can find over 4500 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Get John Searle, Minds, Brains, & Programs here - https://home.csulb.edu/~cwallis/382/readings/482/searle.minds.brains.programs.bbs.1980.pdf

This lecture discusses key ideas John Searle's article "Minds, Brains, & Programs", first published in The Behavioral And Brain Sciences In 1980, considered to be an important contribution to theorizing about the possibility and nature of artificial intelligence, not least by introducing his famous "Chinese Room" thought experiment. Specifically it examines the actual framing of the "Chinese room" as Searle sets it out, and the conclusions that he draws for it about strong AI claims that digital computers can "understand". To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO - or at BuyMeACoffee - www.buymeacoffee.com/A4quYdWoM You can find over 4500 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Get John Searle, Minds, Brains, & Programs here - https://home.csulb.edu/~cwallis/382/readings/482/searle.minds.brains.programs.bbs.1980.pdf

This lecture discusses key ideas John Searle's article "Minds, Brains, & Programs", first published in The Behavioral And Brain Sciences In 1980, considered to be an important contribution to theorizing about the possibility and nature of artificial intelligence, not least by introducing his famous "Chinese Room" thought experiment. Specifically it examines the distinction he makes between weak and strong claims about AI, and then on clarifying the claims made by proponents of strong AI models of various sorts, particularly about properly programmed digital computers being able to "understand" stories and satisfactorily answer questions about them. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO - or at BuyMeACoffee - www.buymeacoffee.com/A4quYdWoM You can find over 4500 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Get John Searle, Minds, Brains, & Programs here - https://home.csulb.edu/~cwallis/382/readings/482/searle.minds.brains.programs.bbs.1980.pdf

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th century philosopher, mathematician, and computer scientist, Alan Turing's article "Computing Machinery And Intelligence", published in 1950 in the journal Mind. This is an important early work on artificial intelligence, which proposes what later has come to be called the "Turing Test". Specifically it examines his dicussion at the end, motivated originally by what he calls "Lady Lovelace's Objection", namely that a machine cannot actually take the information it has and come up with something novel or original, or put another way, it cannot do anything it has not been programmed to do. Turing is interested in whether a digital computer could be developed that would be able to "learn" in some sense, and he postulates the creation of a child computer which then would go through a process of education, and considers what would be involved in this To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO - or at BuyMeACoffee - www.buymeacoffee.com/A4quYdWoM You can find over 4500 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Get Alan Turing's "Computing Machinery And Intelligence" here - https://courses.cs.umbc.edu/471/papers/turing.pdf

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th century philosopher, mathematician, and computer scientist, Alan Turing's article "Computing Machinery And Intelligence", published in 1950 in the journal Mind. This is an important early work on artificial intelligence, which proposes what later has come to be called the "Turing Test". Specifically it examines what he calls "arguments from various disabilities, which he describes as follows: "These arguments take the form, "I grant you that you can make machines do all the things you have mentioned but you will never be able to make one to do X." Numerous features X are suggested in this connexion I offer a selection: Be kind, resourceful, beautiful, friendly, have initiative, have a sense of humour, tell right from wrong, make mistakes, fall in love, enjoy strawberries and cream, make some one fall in love with it, learn from experience, use words properly, be the subject of its own thought, have as much diversity of behaviour as a man, do something really new. " To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO - or at BuyMeACoffee - www.buymeacoffee.com/A4quYdWoM You can find over 4500 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Get Alan Turing's "Computing Machinery And Intelligence" here - https://courses.cs.umbc.edu/471/papers/turing.pdf

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th century philosopher, mathematician, and computer scientist, Alan Turing's article "Computing Machinery And Intelligence", published in 1950 in the journal Mind. This is an important early work on artificial intelligence, which proposes what later has come to be called the "Turing Test". Specifically it examines Turing's framing of a set of objections and arguments, which he calls "opinions opposed to my own". These include: The Theological Objection The "Heads in the Sand" Objection The Mathematical Objection The Argument from Consciousness Arguments from Various Disabilities Lady Lovelace's Objection Argument from Continuity in the Nervous System The Argument from Informality of Behaviour The Argument from Extrasensory Perception To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO - or at BuyMeACoffee - www.buymeacoffee.com/A4quYdWoM You can find over 4500 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Get Alan Turing's "Computing Machinery And Intelligence" here - https://courses.cs.umbc.edu/471/papers/turing.pdf

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th century philosopher, mathematician, and computer scientist, Alan Turing's article "Computing Machinery And Intelligence", published in 1950 in the journal Mind. This is an important early work on artificial intelligence, which proposes what later has come to be called the "Turing Test". Specifically it examines the "imitation game" as Turning develops it as a sort of pragmatic test substituting in place of what he considers to be largely nonsensical questions about whether a machine or a digital computer can "think". To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO - or at BuyMeACoffee - www.buymeacoffee.com/A4quYdWoM You can find over 4500 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Get Alan Turing's "Computing Machinery And Intelligence" here - https://courses.cs.umbc.edu/471/papers/turing.pdf

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th century philosopher Peter Singer's book, The Life You Can Save, chapter 1. Specifically it examines his argument for why each of us who are not in extreme poverty ought to devote a portion of our resources in order to prevent the death of at least one child living in extreme poverty. It looks at how he constructs the argument, beginning with a hypothetical case of a drowning child, which practically everyone would say they would save, a real child in China who was left to die by passerbys, and then the plight of children dying of preventable causes in extreme poverty To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO - or at BuyMeACoffee - www.buymeacoffee.com/A4quYdWoM You can find over 4500 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Purchase Peter Singer, The Life You Can Save - https://amzn.to/4a4L11E

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th century philosopher Peter Singer's book, The Life You Can Save, chapter 1. Specifically it examines his discussion of what extreme poverty consist in, whether or not we can do anything about it as individuals, and the relatively better-off condition of poverty in affluent societies. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO - or at BuyMeACoffee - www.buymeacoffee.com/A4quYdWoM You can find over 4500 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Purchase Peter Singer, The Life You Can Save - https://amzn.to/4a4L11E

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 18th century philosopher, essayist, and historian, David Hume's work A Treatise of Human Nature Specifically it examines his final portion of the discussion, where he turns back to considering the notion we have of personal identity and an identifiable "self" that runs throughout a person's entire life. Hume considers this a fiction and inquires as to how this fictitious idea comes to be in our minds. A significant part of his answer has to do with the main ways in which ideas are associated: resemblance, contiguity, and causality. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO - or at BuyMeACoffee - www.buymeacoffee.com/A4quYdWoM You can find over 4500 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Purchase David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature - amzn.to/2V0QWxC

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 18th century philosopher, essayist, and historian, David Hume's work A Treatise of Human Nature Specifically it examines what our conception of identity is for various objects over time, which Hume thinks is actually a fiction created by our own mind out of our perceptions, associating them in relation to each other in terms of resemblance, contiguity, and causation. With various objects we may focus on the proportion of changing parts to a whole, the reference of those parts to some common end or purpose, or on the sympathy of parts in mutual cause and effect. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO - or at BuyMeACoffee - www.buymeacoffee.com/A4quYdWoM You can find over 4500 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Purchase David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature - amzn.to/2V0QWxC

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 18th century philosopher, essayist, and historian, David Hume's work A Treatise of Human Nature Specifically it examines his argument that there is no such thing as a human self in a metaphysical sense of a substance or soul that remains the same throughout changes. Instead, what we have or are is a bundle or collection of perceptions in the mind. While we can form an idea of the self, this is essentially a fiction. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO - or at BuyMeACoffee - www.buymeacoffee.com/A4quYdWoM You can find over 4500 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Purchase David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature - amzn.to/2V0QWxC

This lecture discusses the 20th century Analytic philosopher, Thomas Nagel's essay "What Is It Like To Be A Bat", and focuses upon the "speculative proposal" Nagel ends the article with, namely that of developing a more objective "phenomenology" which would perhaps allow greater clarity and precision to be given to descriptions of the experiences of "what it is like to be a . . . " To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler or Buy Me A Coffee - https://buymeacoffee.com/a4quydwom If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO You can find over 4,000 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Get Nagel's What Is It Like to Be a Bat? - https://amzn.to/3P8ihhk

This lecture discusses the 20th century Analytic philosopher, Thomas Nagel's essay "What Is It Like To Be A Bat", and focuses upon one of the key points Nagel makes in his criticisms of reductionist projects aimed at explaining mind entirely in physical terms, namely that in order to make the deceptively clear "is" or "are" involved in those putative identifications make sense, what is required is some sort of coherent and robust theoretical scheme explaining how the mental can be reduced to the physical. At the present time, that simply isn't available to us, so those sorts of identifications amount to hand-waving. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler or Buy Me A Coffee - https://buymeacoffee.com/a4quydwom If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO You can find over 4,000 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Get Nagel's What Is It Like to Be a Bat? - https://amzn.to/3P8ihhk

This lecture discusses the 20th century Analytic philosopher, Thomas Nagel's essay "What Is It Like To Be A Bat", and focuses upon Nagel's analysis of one way that a person who acknowledges that we cannot imagine or conceptualize the subjective experience of a bat might try to get around that, by appealing to more objective concepts and facts about the organs, body, and brain of the bat. He notes that this doesn't yield us the subjective experience and we are not even sure how to correlate the subjective and objective characters of matters like this, including how the human mind is supposed to be connected with or reducible to the human brain. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler or Buy Me A Coffee - https://buymeacoffee.com/a4quydwom If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO You can find over 4,000 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Get Nagel's What Is It Like to Be a Bat? - https://amzn.to/3P8ihhk

This lecture discusses the 20th century Analytic philosopher, Thomas Nagel's essay "What Is It Like To Be A Bat", and focuses upon he portion of his article in which he begins to explore what subjective experience of other species would be and whether we have the capacity to imagine or understand what it is like to be to be that animal. He selects bats in particular since they are mammals but have a very different sensorium from us, in that they rely upon echolocation and have weak eyesight. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler or Buy Me A Coffee - https://buymeacoffee.com/a4quydwom If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO You can find over 4,000 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Get Nagel's What Is It Like to Be a Bat? - https://amzn.to/3P8ihhk

This lecture discusses the 20th century Analytic philosopher, Thomas Nagel's essay "What Is It Like To Be A Bat", and focuses upon the first part of the article, in which Nagel raises a number of general problems for adopting a physicalist reductionist analysis of mind to resolve the mind-body problem by explaining conscious experience in terms of something non-mental, e.g. the brain. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler or Buy Me A Coffee - https://buymeacoffee.com/a4quydwom If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO You can find over 4,000 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Get Nagel's What Is It Like to Be a Bat? - https://amzn.to/3P8ihhk

This lecture discusses key ideas from the modern philosopher Thomas Hobbes' work De Corpore, specifically ch 11. "Of Identity and Difference", part 7 In this section, Hobbes explores questions and problems of what makes a thing remain the same thing throughout its changes over time or in composition. He considers several different philosophical approaches to the issue, one which focuses on the matter, another which focuses on the form, and a third which focuses on the accidents of the presumed substance in question. He references Plutarch's famous Ship of Theseus problem in the course of his discussion. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO - or at BuyMeACoffee - www.buymeacoffee.com/A4quYdWoM You can find over 3500 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Purchase Thomas Hobbes' De Corpore - https://amzn.to/4e4LUZj

This video focuses on chapter 6 of Stanislaw Lem's Summa Technologiae, specifically the section “Personality and Information”, which discusses thought experiments that bear on turning a person into information and reconstituting that person somewhere else or at a different point in time. Specifically it examines on a somewhat different kind of thought-experiment, involving freezing a person, taking all of their atoms out of them while keeping records of their configurations, and then reconstituting and thawing them. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO - or at BuyMeACoffee - www.buymeacoffee.com/A4quYdWoM You can find over 4500 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Purchase Stanislaw Lem's Summa Technologiae - https://amzn.to/4v0FxNz

This video focuses on chapter 6 of Stanislaw Lem's Summa Technologiae, specifically the section “Personality and Information”, which discusses thought experiments that bear on turning a person into information and reconstituting that person somewhere else or at a different point in time. Specifically it examines one feature of these types of situations that is morally problematic, namely that it seems like the process has to in some way or another kill the original person who is telegraphed or transported. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO - or at BuyMeACoffee - www.buymeacoffee.com/A4quYdWoM You can find over 4500 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Purchase Stanislaw Lem's Summa Technologiae - https://amzn.to/4v0FxNz

This video focuses on chapter 6 of Stanislaw Lem's Summa Technologiae, specifically the section “Personality and Information”, which discusses thought experiments that bear on turning a person into information and reconstituting that person somewhere else or at a different point in time. Specifically it examines the paradoxes and problems that arise when we start thinking through the implications of telegraphing (or in Star Trek, transporting) people by transmitting atomic-level information about them to a different place and then reconstituting them (or something that is a copy of them) there. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO - or at BuyMeACoffee - www.buymeacoffee.com/A4quYdWoM You can find over 4500 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Purchase Stanislaw Lem's Summa Technologiae - https://amzn.to/4v0FxNz

This lecture discusses the William Clifford's 1877 essay "The Ethics Of Belief", in which he makes and argued for the central claim "it is wrong always, everywhere, and for any one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." It focuses on the third section of his essay, titled "The Limits Of Inference" in which Clifford discusses conditions for having well-founded beliefs of matters we don't have direct experience of, for example matters of everyday life, science, or history. We inevitably rely upon the assumption that the future or present will resemble what we have experienced in the past To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO You can find over 4,000 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Get Clifford's The Ethics of Belief - https://amzn.to/41WkkYA

This lecture discusses the William Clifford's 1877 essay "The Ethics Of Belief", in which he makes and argued for the central claim "it is wrong always, everywhere, and for any one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." It focuses on portion of part 2 of the essay that is devoted to Clifford's analysis of tradition. He distinguishes between particular traditions, developing within a specific group, culture, or civilization and the "tradition of the human race". He also makes an important distinction with the latter, arguing that any "tradition" that closes off inquiry does not actually serve humanity, and that a robust, useful tradition would actually lead to framing questions and promoting inquiry. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO You can find over 4,000 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Get Clifford's The Ethics of Belief - https://amzn.to/41WkkYA

This lecture discusses the William Clifford's 1877 essay "The Ethics Of Belief", in which he makes and argued for the central claim "it is wrong always, everywhere, and for any one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." It focuses on Clifford's criteria for determining when and whether we ought to give credence to the testimony of other people, especially those who have made assertions we cannot directly verify. He identifies three key qualities we can look for in these persons, namely: veracity, knowledge, and judgement, explains what they are, and applies them to some example cases. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO You can find over 4,000 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Get Clifford's The Ethics of Belief - https://amzn.to/41WkkYA

This lecture discusses the William Clifford's 1877 essay "The Ethics Of Belief", in which he makes and argued for the central claim "it is wrong always, everywhere, and for any one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." It focuses on Clifford's contention that the beliefs people hold, even if they seem to be quite trivial, can have significant importance and consequences. His argument is that we inevitably draw upon and share the beliefs of others, not only in the present, but across generations To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO You can find over 4,000 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Get Clifford's The Ethics of Belief - https://amzn.to/41WkkYA

This lecture discusses the William Clifford's 1877 essay "The Ethics Of Belief", in which he makes and argued for the central claim "it is wrong always, everywhere, and for any one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." It focuses on the two cases that Clifford's essay uses to illustrate the ethical duty he argues that we have not to believe anything without having gathered and weighed evidence for or against the belief. One example has to do with a ship owner who takes on passengers for a voyage without knowing whether or not the ship is actually seaworthy. The other example has to do with a group of people who persecute another group for engaging in practices they consider harmful without actually finding out whether they are in fact engaged in such practices. Clifford argues that even if it turns out to be as one believes, and that the actions produce good consequences, the person who believes upon insufficient evidence does wrong thereby. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO You can find over 4,000 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Get Clifford's The Ethics of Belief - https://amzn.to/41WkkYA

This lecture discusses key ideas from the ancient Stoic philosopher Seneca's Letters, this one looking at Letter 90 It focuses specifically on Seneca's engagement with another earlier Stoic philosopher, Posidonius, who developed theories about the development of human disciplines and technology (artes), having to do with wisdom and philosophy. Posidonius postulates a golden age in which human beings lived in accordance with nature and were ruled over by the wise, and then a degeneration through greed, self-indulgence, and other vices into a lesser state in which they needed more and more technologies. Seneca argues that these were developed using human reason, but not right reason, from ingenuity rather than wisdom, and that while philosophers might have developed some of them, they did not do so as philosophers. In this letter, Seneca also outlines what the matters that wisdom and philosophy deal with are. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO - or at BuyMeACoffee - www.buymeacoffee.com/A4quYdWoM You can find over 3,500 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Purchase Seneca's Letters - amzn.to/2Myx6os

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th century philosopher and novelist William Gass' article "The Case Of The Obliging Stranger", which begins with a case that runs: "Imagine I approach a stranger on the street and say to him, "If you please, sir, I desire to perform an experiment with your aid." The stranger is obliging, and I lead him away. In a dark place conveniently by, I strike his head with the broad of an axe and cart him home. I place him, buttered and trussed, in an ample electric oven. The thermostat reads 4500 F. Thereupon I go off to play poker with friends and forget all about the obliging stranger in the stove. When I return, I realize I have overbaked my specimen, and the experiment, alas, is ruined. Something has been done wrong. Or something wrong has been done" It focuses specifically on the applicability of moral theories and principles to deciding cases, whether clear or unclear, in our moral decision-making. Gass' view is that both are less useful than ethicists and even some ordinary people make them out to be. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO - or at BuyMeACoffee - www.buymeacoffee.com/A4quYdWoM You can find over 3500 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th century philosopher and novelist William Gass' article "The Case Of The Obliging Stranger", which begins with a case that runs: "Imagine I approach a stranger on the street and say to him, "If you please, sir, I desire to perform an experiment with your aid." The stranger is obliging, and I lead him away. In a dark place conveniently by, I strike his head with the broad of an axe and cart him home. I place him, buttered and trussed, in an ample electric oven. The thermostat reads 4500 F. Thereupon I go off to play poker with friends and forget all about the obliging stranger in the stove. When I return, I realize I have overbaked my specimen, and the experiment, alas, is ruined. Something has been done wrong. Or something wrong has been done" It focuses specifically on his distinction between what he terms "clear cases" and "unclear cases". With clear cases, like that of the obliging stranger, their rightness or wrongness, goodness or badness should be clear to anyone looking at them, and we don't need moral theories in order to make those judgements. With unclear cases, we have differing ways to try to make them more clear, but surprisingly, according to Gass, moral theories turn out not to be helpful in the ways that we expect them to in those cases either. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO - or at BuyMeACoffee - www.buymeacoffee.com/A4quYdWoM You can find over 3500 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th century philosopher and novelist William Gass' article "The Case Of The Obliging Stranger", which begins with a case that runs: "Imagine I approach a stranger on the street and say to him, "If you please, sir, I desire to perform an experiment with your aid." The stranger is obliging, and I lead him away. In a dark place conveniently by, I strike his head with the broad of an axe and cart him home. I place him, buttered and trussed, in an ample electric oven. The thermostat reads 4500 F. Thereupon I go off to play poker with friends and forget all about the obliging stranger in the stove. When I return, I realize I have overbaked my specimen, and the experiment, alas, is ruined. Something has been done wrong. Or something wrong has been done" It focuses specifically on Gass' contentions that moral theories and moral philosophers who don't condemn what was done to the stranger are vicious, and that the wrong is not really clarified well by introducing moral theories and principles. He examines several different ways that people develop, articulate, and argue for their moral theories, and notes that they aren't entirely off-base or useless, but that they often get in the way with what he calls "clear cases". To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO - or at BuyMeACoffee - www.buymeacoffee.com/A4quYdWoM You can find over 3500 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler

This lecture discusses the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle' work, On Interpretation, focusing on his discussion near the end of the work bearing on what the contraries of affirmative, generally universal, proposition, actually are, since this is an issue that people often get confused over. Aristotle will resolve this partly by considering in propositions what is the case by essence (kath'heato), or accidentally (kata sumbebēkos). To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO You can find over 4,000 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Purchase Aristotle's On Interpretation - amzn.to/3nS55ud

This lecture discusses the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle' work, On Interpretation, focusing on his discussion of different ways in which something can be potential (dunamis) or possible (dunaton), terms that have multiple senses and are thus ambiguous. He distinguishes between rational and irrational possibilities, a difference which gets used by many later authors. He clarifies ways that potentiality or possibilities can be related to the actual or things in activity, and to what is necessary as well. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO You can find over 4,000 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Purchase Aristotle's On Interpretation - amzn.to/3nS55ud

This lecture discusses the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle' work, On Interpretation, focusing on his discussion of modal propositions that include or reference necessity. He notes that there is an inverse relation between necessity and impossibility, that with necessity, contraries follow upon contradictories, and that possibility follows from necessity but not the converse. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO You can find over 4,000 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Purchase Aristotle's On Interpretation - amzn.to/3nS55ud

This lecture discusses the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle' work, On Interpretation, focusing on his discussion of what the implications of modal propositions are, that is, propositions that bear upon possibility, contingency, impossibility, and necessity. He identifies propositions of these sorts that imply each other. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO You can find over 4,000 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Purchase Aristotle's On Interpretation - amzn.to/3nS55ud

William Clifford, The Ethics Of Belief - The Limits Of Inference by Lectures on classic and contemporary philosophical texts and thinkers by Gregory B. Sadler

This lecture discusses the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle' work, On Interpretation, focusing on his discussion of modal terms such as possible (dunaton), contingent (endekhomenon), impossible (adunaton), and necessary (anankhaion) as they are used in propositions, where affirmations or negations possess truth or falsity. He also discusses what real and mistaken contradictions of these types of propositions are. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO You can find over 4,000 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Purchase Aristotle's On Interpretation - amzn.to/3nS55ud

This lecture discusses the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle' work, On Interpretation, focusing on his discussion bearing on whether and when it is possible to combine multiple predicates into one predicate for a given subject in propositions. As it turns out, in some cases this is possible, but in many other cases starting with true propositions leads to a false proposition when the predicates are combined To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO You can find over 4,000 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Purchase Aristotle's On Interpretation - amzn.to/3nS55ud

This lecture discusses the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle' work, On Interpretation, focusing on his discussion of what have come to be called "modalities" such as necessity, contingency, possibility, and impossibility, with the truth values of future seemingly contingent propositions in mind, for example that a sea-battle will or will not take place tomorrow. One possible approach is to say that since propositions must be either true or false, future propositions already are true or false of necessity and that we simply don't know their truth or falsity. Another is to say that it is necessary for them to be either true or false, but that neither of these truth values are necessary to contingent propositions referring to future events that have not yet happened. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO You can find over 4,000 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Purchase Aristotle's On Interpretation - amzn.to/3nS55ud

This lecture discusses the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle' work, On Interpretation, focusing on his discussion of what he calls propositions that contain "indefinite" subjects or predicates. These can be ambiguous and create problems for interpretation that do not arise when propositions are made universal or particular by using universal terms such as "all," "every" "no", "none", or when singling out a particular or using "some". To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO You can find over 4,000 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Purchase Aristotle's On Interpretation - amzn.to/3nS55ud

This lecture discusses the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle' work, On Interpretation, focusing on his discussion of contrary and contradictory propositions, both of which are ways in which propositions are opposed to each other, with contradictories being more opposed to each other than contraries. With contrary propositions, if they are universal, one of them must be false (and it is possible for both of them to be false). With contradictory propositions, one of them must be true and the other false. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO You can find over 4,000 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Purchase Aristotle's On Interpretation - amzn.to/3nS55ud

This lecture discusses the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle' work, On Interpretation, focusing on his discussion of universal and particular propositions. Universal (katholou) propositions will generally be indicated by terms like "all", "every" or "no" applied to the subject, and refer to an entire group or class of things. Particular propositions (kath' hekaston) apply to at least one individual subject, but could also be framed to include more. Aristotle does also note that not all propositions are universal or particular, since some of them could be indefinite. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO You can find over 4,000 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Purchase Aristotle's On Interpretation - amzn.to/3nS55ud

This lecture discusses the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle' work, On Interpretation, focusing on his discussion of propositions (apophanseis), which are a common type of sentence (logos), characterized by being either true or false. Propositions are generally affirmations (kataphaseis) or denials (apophaseis), and are the main focus of the work On Interpretation. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO You can find over 4,000 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Purchase Aristotle's On Interpretation - amzn.to/3nS55ud

This lecture discusses the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle' work, On Interpretation, focusing on his discussion of nouns or names (omonata), verbs (rhemata) and sentences (logoi). Sentences are significant parts of speech, often composed of nouns and verbs, but not all of them are propositions (apophanseis), since they are not all affirmations or denials which have either truth or falsity to them. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO You can find over 4,000 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Purchase Aristotle's On Interpretation - amzn.to/3nS55ud

This is part 2 of the recording of my invited talk at Christopher Newport University, "Plato, Persons, And The Highest Good". It focuses on the question of whether the highest good in Plato is personal (as it would be e.g. for Christian Platonists) or impersonal (as it's usually taken to be). Centering the discussion on the ascent to the highest Good in the Symposium, I also discuss portions of the Republic, Phaedrus, Phaedo, Apology, and Gorgias To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO - or at BuyMeACoffee - www.buymeacoffee.com/A4quYdWoM You can find over 3500 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler

This is part 1 of the recording of my invited talk at Christopher Newport University, "Plato, Persons, And The Highest Good". It focuses on the question of whether the highest good in Plato is personal (as it would be e.g. for Christian Platonists) or impersonal (as it's usually taken to be). Centering the discussion on the ascent to the highest Good in the Symposium, I also discuss portions of the Republic, Phaedrus, Phaedo, Apology, and Gorgias To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO - or at BuyMeACoffee - www.buymeacoffee.com/A4quYdWoM You can find over 3500 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler

This lecture discusses key ideas from the 20th century pessimist philosopher and environmentalist Peter Wessel Zapffe's "The Last Messiah" It focuses specifically on the final parts of the work, where he considers and rejects several possible solutions to the problem posed by modern society for the human animal beset by a surplus of consciousness and a tendency to fall into "cosmic panic" when realizing their existential condition. He then narrates the coming of a "last messiah", who has stripped their soul naked and subjected themselves to the most profound questioning, who advocates no longer reproducing and letting the human race die out. To support my ongoing work, go to my Patreon site - www.patreon.com/sadler If you'd like to make a direct contribution, you can do so here - www.paypal.me/ReasonIO - or at BuyMeACoffee - www.buymeacoffee.com/A4quYdWoM You can find over 3500 philosophy videos in my main YouTube channel - www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler Get Zapffe's The Last Messiah - https://openairphilosophy.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/OAP_Zapffe_Last_Messiah.pdf