Philosophy Insights

American Philosophy Collection Vol. 1.This collection of articles in early 20th Century American philosophy focuses on the topics of realism, experience, and ideas, with particular attention to the pragmatic naturalism of John Dewey. In tracks 1-5, Dewey responds to critics of his famous article “The Postulate of Immediate Empiricism” (available in Short Nonfiction Collection Vol.034) . Tracks 6-12 constitute a series of pointed debates between Dewey and E. B. McGilvary on the topics of time, ideas, and reality. Tracks 13-16 include stand-alone articles on related topics, including Dewey’s influential critique of “The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology.” Authors include: John Dewey, B. H. Bode, Frederick J. E. Woodbridge, J. A. Leighton, Evander Bradley McGilvary, John E. Boodin, and Sterling P. Lamprecht.Featured on Philosophy Insights.Public-domain recording courtesy of LibriVox (librivox.org).This episode includes AI-generated content.

Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion by David Hume.In Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, philosopher David Hume examines whether belief in God can be rational. The work takes the form of a debate between three characters: Cleanthes, who argues that the existence and nature of God can be empirically verified; Demea, who argues that God is completely beyond human knowledge; and Philo, a philosophical skeptic widely thought to represent Hume's own beliefs. Much of the debate centers around Cleanthes' presentation of the analogical argument from design. According to this argument, the complexity and beauty of the universe can only be explained by inferring an intelligent designer, in the same way that one would infer a designer if one came across an intricately complicated machine. Philo presents several objections to this argument, with rejoinders by Cleanthes and occasional interjections by Demea.Featured on Philosophy Insights.Public-domain recording courtesy of LibriVox (librivox.org).This episode includes AI-generated content.

Reflections on War and Death by Sigmund Freud.Anyone, as Freud tells us in Reflections on War and Death , forced to react against his own impulses may be described as a hypocrite, whether he is conscious of it or not. One might even venture to assert—it is still Freud's argument—that our contemporary civilisation favours this sort of hypocrisy and that there are more civilised hypocrites than truly cultured persons, and it is even a question whether a certain amount of hypocrisy is not indispensable to maintain civilisation.Featured on Philosophy Insights.Public-domain recording courtesy of LibriVox (librivox.org).This episode includes AI-generated content.

Critique of Practical Reason by Immanuel Kant.The Critique of Practical Reason ( Kritik der praktischen Vernunft ) is the second of Immanuel Kant's three critiques, first published in 1788. It follows on from his Critique of Pure Reason and deals with his moral philosophy. The second Critique exercised a decisive influence over the subsequent development of the field of ethics and moral philosophy, becoming the principle reference point for ethical systems that focus on the rightness or wrongness of actions themselves, as opposed to the rightness or wrongness of the consequences of those actions. Subsequently termed “deontological ethics”, Kant’s ethical system also laid the groundwork of moral absolutism, the belief that there are absolute standards against which moral questions can be judged, and that certain actions are right or wrong, devoid of the context of the act.Featured on Philosophy Insights.Public-domain recording courtesy of LibriVox (librivox.org).This episode includes AI-generated content.

Six Metaphysical Meditations by René Descartes.These are six meditations by the French philosopher Rene Descartes, best known for his conclusion "Cogito, ergro sum" "I Think, therefore I exist". They are called meditations because he clearly describes his deep reasoning on each topic. Each topic has objections made by Thomas Hobbs and Descartes' responses. The six topics are Of Things Doubtful Of the Nature of Mans Mind, and that ’tis easier Proved to Be then our Body Of God, and that there Is a God Of Truth and Falsehood Of the Essence of Things Material, and herein again of God, and that He does Exist.Featured on Philosophy Insights.Public-domain recording courtesy of LibriVox (librivox.org).This episode includes AI-generated content.

Our Knowledge of the External World As a Field for Scientific Method in Philosophy by Bertrand Russell.Featured on Philosophy Insights.This episode includes AI-generated content.

Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy by George Santayana.Before the beginning of World War II, during the time of the Modernist movement in philosophy, George Santayana wrote these five descriptive essays. He examined John Locke’s sensationalism, British Idealism, the “Theory of Relativity”, Freud’s psychology, and Julien Benda’s preachment on the relations between God and the world.Featured on Philosophy Insights.Public-domain recording courtesy of LibriVox (librivox.org).This episode includes AI-generated content.

Concept of Nature by Alfred North Whitehead.In The Concept of Nature , Alfred North Whitehead discusses the interrelatedness of time, space, and human perception. The idea of objects as 'occasions of experience', arguments against body-mind duality and the search for an all-encompassing 'philosophy of nature' are examined, with specific reference to contemporary (Einstein, with whose theory of relativity he has some complaints) and ancient (Plato, Aristotle) approaches.Featured on Philosophy Insights.Public-domain recording courtesy of LibriVox (librivox.org).This episode includes AI-generated content.

Philosophy of Logical Atomism by Bertrand Russell.'The Philosophy of Logical Atomism' is a series of lectures by Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) that touches on numerous topics, including the nature of propositions, the relations of propositions to facts and of different types of words to the varieties of things, what kinds of facts there are, existence, monism and pluralism, and aspects of philosophical logic and of reference. Guiding the lectures, at least according to Russell's headnote to his lectures, is Russell's intent to fully flesh out ideas he learned from his former pupil, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951).Featured on Philosophy Insights.Public-domain recording courtesy of LibriVox (librivox.org).This episode includes AI-generated content.

Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy by Bertrand Russell.Bertrand Russell wrote 'Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy' while imprisoned for protesting Britain's involvement in World War I. Russell summarizes the significance of the momentous work of mathematicians in the late nineteenth-century. He further describes his own philosophy of mathematics, Logicism (the view that all mathematical truths are logical truths), and his earlier, influential work solving the paradoxes that plagued mathematical foundations, which crystallized after ten years of dogged effort into the co-authored (with Alfred North Whitehead), three-volume 'Principia Mathematica'. Russell emphasizes the importance of a doctrine of types, the truth of Logicism, and the clarity brought to the philosophy of mathematics by the method of logical analysis.Featured on Philosophy Insights.Public-domain recording courtesy of LibriVox (librivox.org).This episode includes AI-generated content.