Site • RSS • Apple PodcastsDescription (podcaster-provided):
Doing Philosophy is a podcast for original philosophy. Its episodes are philosophical essays, but then in the medium of sound. They contain interviews with leading names in the field, such as Huw Price, Crispin Wright, and Sanford Goldberg. Doing Philosophy is created and hosted by Tom Kaspers, who recently obtained his Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of St Andrews. If you like this format, and you want your own work to be featured on this podcast, please do get in touch. For more information, go to https://tomkaspers.com or send an email to [email protected].Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):
➤ original philosophy essays and interviews • truth theories: correspondence, pragmatism, deflationism, pluralism • epistemic rationality: personal vs shared inquiry • testimony, peer disagreement, philosophical progress • intellectual tastes and naturalism critiqueThis podcast presents original philosophy in an audio-essay format, often structured around sustained arguments developed by the host and tested through interviews with prominent contemporary philosophers. Across the episodes, the focus is on core issues in epistemology and metaphysics of inquiry, especially the concepts of truth and rationality and how philosophers should understand their own method.
A central theme is the nature of truth and the competing roles it is asked to play. The discussions contrast pragmatist approaches that emphasize the function and use of truth in our practices with more traditional correspondence-based views that treat truth as a matter of matching the facts. Alongside this, the podcast explores whether “truth” is a single property applying uniformly across domains or whether it is plural—varying in kind depending on subject matter—and how pluralist and deflationary approaches might be reconciled with correspondence intuitions. These treatments are both historical and forward-looking, engaging influential positions while also proposing syntheses among leading theories.
Another major throughline concerns rationality and disagreement. The podcast develops a distinction between “personal” inquiry, where an individual’s commitments, tastes, or fundamental convictions partly structure what counts as rational, and “shared” inquiry, where rational assessment aims to be grounded only in publicly shareable evidence. This framework is used to examine how testimony works, why peers can reasonably disagree, and what standards of justification apply in different kinds of inquiry.
Building on this, the podcast offers an account of philosophy itself as a predominantly personal form of inquiry rather than an extension of the sciences. On this picture, doing philosophy involves constructing a stable equilibrium among ideas anchored in intellectual sensibilities, while still allowing for rational belief in the face of persistent peer disagreement. At the same time, it addresses how philosophical progress might be intelligible even when consensus is elusive.
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4. The Personal Nature of Philosophy with Sanford Goldberg and Crispin Wright 2024-Mar-07 48 minutes |
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3. Rationality, Personal and Shared with Sanford Goldberg 2024-Mar-06 36 minutes |
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2. Truth, Part Two. The Plurality of Truth with Crispin Wright 2024-Feb-22 46 minutes |
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1. Truth, Part One. Pragmatism and Correspondence with Huw Price 2024-Feb-22 44 minutes |