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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.Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):
➤ Annual philosophy lectures • Ancient Greek philosophy as way of life: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Stoics, Epicureans, Skeptics, Plotinus • Normativity, reasons, expressivism • Logic’s normative role, revisability • World-construction, a priori scrutability, Carnap–Quine • Mind, phenomenal knowledge, externalism, content, knowledge argumentThis podcast presents recordings from the John Locke Lectures, a long-running, annual lecture series in philosophy. Across the episodes, the content is organized as multi-part sequences in which a single lecturer develops a sustained argument over several talks, often moving from introductory framing to increasingly specialized problems and concluding syntheses.
A major theme is how philosophers analyze reasons, normativity, and rational requirements. The lectures examine what it is for something to count as a reason, how normative claims might fit into a broader metaphysical picture, and what motivates different metaethical and metasemantic positions, including forms of expressivism. Related discussions raise epistemological questions about how we can know normative truths and what “normative structures” might amount to.
Another recurring focus is the relationship between logic, rationality, and revisability. The podcast explores whether and how logical principles can be rationally revised, what normative role logic plays in thought and inquiry, and how disputes about revising logic connect to broader issues in epistemology and metaphysics. These topics intersect with questions about conceptual change and with classic debates in analytic philosophy about the foundations of knowledge.
Several episodes develop an approach to “constructing the world” that connects questions about a priori reasoning and “scrutability” with disputes in twentieth-century philosophy (including contrasts associated with Carnap and Quine). This strand extends into harder cases where attempts at systematic construction meet challenges posed by mathematics, ontology, intentionality, and normativity.
The podcast also includes intensive work in philosophy of mind and epistemology, especially on phenomenal consciousness, the knowledge argument, and the tension between externalism about mental content and the idea that we have privileged access to our own thoughts. These lectures use thought experiments and careful distinctions about content, self-locating belief, and acquaintance to assess what subjects can know about their experiences.
Finally, the series reaches back to ancient philosophy to treat Greek and later Platonist traditions not only as theoretical systems but as philosophies of life, emphasizing reason as an authority for practical attitudes and conduct across schools such as Aristotelianism, Stoicism, Epicureanism, Skepticism, and late Platonism.