Shows
Conference of the Birds PodcastConference of the Birds, 7-26-24THIS WEEK's BIRDS: Nadaswaram music (Carnatic) from Namagiripettai Krishnan; Yusuf Lateef (vintage); Japanese jazz from Toshiyuki Miyama & the New Herd; new music from composer and vocalist Ruiqi Wang; new piano & electronics from Eve Egoyan & Mauricio Pauly; solo piano from Matthew Shipp & Marilyn Crispell; new music from Satoko Fujii Tokyo Trio; Ikui Doki and Sofia Jernberg in collaboration; Silvia Bolognesi w. Dudu Kouate & Griffin Rodriguez; samba from Gilson Nascimento, MBP from Elza Soares; Teresa Cristina; Wanda Sá; Manuel Valera New Cuban Express Big Band; Cuban salson from Linda Leida; and, as ever, much, much more!
Catch the BIRDS live o...2024-08-052h 47
Mortality Matters: Meaning & Death#12 – Are Near-Death Experiences Evidence of an Afterlife? Fischer on the significance of near-death experience.Send us a Text Message.Would it be a letdown if you discovered that your near-death experience of an Afterlife turned out to just be a dream? That what you took to be an Afterlife isn't real and that the experience was something like a hallucination? You might be surprised to learn that Fischer argues that the unreality of the Afterlife in no way diminishes the significance of near-death experiences for those who are sincere about them. He argues that near-death experiences can provide us with emotional understanding (which is quite different from cognitive understanding) that is...2023-04-2430 minMortality Matters: Meaning & Death#11 – Are Near-Death Experiences Evidence of an Afterlife? Fischer against near-death experiences.Send us a Text Message.Are near-death experiences evidence of an afterlife? What are we such that an afterlife could be possible for beings like us at all? In this episode, I discuss Fischer's criticisms of the evidentiary role near-death experiences have for belief in an afterlife. While he doesn't deny that they are experienced, Fischer likens near-death experiences to dreams and would only constitute evidence of an afterlife if there were something supernatural about the mind, namely, that the mind could exist without the body. Instead, he favors a naturalistic explanation of mental phenomena in which...2023-04-1042 minMortality Matters: Meaning & Death#10 – Would heaven be worse than oblivion? Fischer on the afterlife.Send us a Text Message.In this episode, I focus on the second half of Fischer's response to Williams' pessimistic criticisms of immortality in which he concentrates on supernatural conceptions of the afterlife. I first consider whether the afterlife is even possible for beings like us. Notably, any who believe that there is an afterlife (whether that be good or bad) must also think that death is a transition of some sort, typically a separation of soul from body, and that the transmigration into heaven or hell preserves the personal identity of the one who dies. Neither...2023-03-2856 minMortality Matters: Meaning & Death#9 – Must immortality be boring? Fischer on why immortality wouldn't be so bad.Send us a Text Message.Would immortality be a curse of eternal boredom, were it even possible? If so, then you might think that we're better off as mortals and that death is a blessing of a kind that prevents us from being depleted of whatever makes life worth living, as it will eventually run out. Fischer rejects this line of thinking, arguing instead that not only is death unnecessary for life to be meaningful but that immortality would be no worse or much different from mortality. Specifically, he argues against Williams' pessimistic views about immortality and...2023-03-2053 minMortality Matters: Meaning & Death#8 – Is immortality even worth wanting? Fischer on whether immortals would be recognizable.Send us a Text Message.You might think that death is part of our nature or that mortality is essential to our nature as human beings. If so, then immortal beings would be radically different than us, so different in fact that they would not be recognizable as beings like us. So if you were offered a Faustian bargain to trade your humanity for the promise and reality of immortality, it wouldn't be worthwhile. In this episode, I discuss Fischer's defense that immortality is worthwhile against a battery of objections: that the lives of immortals w...2023-03-1447 minMortality Matters: Meaning & Death#7 – What does it mean to be immortal? Fischer on the nature of immortality.Send us a Text Message.In this episode, I discuss what Fischer means by 'immortality.' At this point in his book, he has taken himself to have established that death does harm the one who dies, even if the details about when or how it is harmful aren't fully worked out. It is natural then to consider an objection: if all else being equal it is always bad to die, it would then be best to live forever, yet living forever is bad for this immortal, so death must at some point not be so bad...2023-03-0639 minMortality Matters: Meaning & Death#6 – How should we feel about death? Fischer on the symmetry of our post-mortem & pre-natal condition.Send us a Text Message.In this episode, I consider how we should feel about our own death given how we tend to be indifferent about when we came into existence. Lucretius takes this indifference as a reason to likewise feel indifferent about our own deaths, as our future post-mortem condition is a mirror image of our past pre-natal condition. This is called the "Symmetry Argument," of which Fischer identifies two formulations that turn out to be problematic. I reformulate both versions multiple times then respond to what I regard as the best formulation in terms of...2023-02-2752 minMortality Matters: Meaning & Death#5 – When is death harmful? Fischer on the timing of mortal harm.Send us a Text Message.In this episode, from the first part of chapter 4 of John Martin Fischer's book, "Death, Immortality, and Meaning in Life," I cover and evaluate multiple responses to two Epicurean arguments that death cannot harm the one who dies: the Timing Argument, that there is no time at which death is harmful, and the No Subject Argument, that there is no one who can be harmed by death. I follow Ben Bradley in organizing the range of theories on the timing of mortal harm as responses to The Timing Argument, and evaluate them...2023-02-2345 minMortality Matters: Meaning & Death#4 – Must harms be experienced to be harmful? Fischer on unexperienced harm.Send us a Text Message.In this episode, I evaluate Fischer's argument that being betrayed secretly by one's friends and family would be harmful even if one were to never directly or indirectly experience anything from it. I consider two lives, one with a secret betrayal and another without it, though otherwise qualitatively identical. Fischer doesn't specify exactly why secret betrayals are harmful other than that they would set our interests back, so our intuitions that they are may be based in a confusion between direct and indirect effects of it. I agree with Fischer that a...2023-02-0628 minMortality Matters: Meaning & Death#3 – Can death be harmful? Fischer against Epicureanism.Send us a Text Message.In this episode, I consider some initial objections against Fischer's view that death can harm the one who dies: that death cannot be experienced as a harm, that it has no time at which it is harmful, and that we have no more reason to fear an early death than we have do regret a late birth. Absent a successful defense to each of these challenges, Fischer would have to concede the argument to Epicurus and his followers, who contend that death is harmless. Lastly, I consider the indifference objection to Epicureanism...2023-01-2420 minMortality Matters: Meaning & Death#2 – What is death? Fischer on death.Send us a Text Message.In this episode, I discuss what death is, arguing that it is the cessation of one's existence and not necessarily one's life, I discuss the difference between death, dying and the condition of being a corpse, whether death must be permanent, whether one can have an exit from life without dying, and what implications gappy existence has for a proper definition of death.2023-01-1659 minMortality Matters: Meaning & Death#1 – What is the meaning of life? Fischer on meaning in life.Send us a Text Message.In this episode, I discuss the relationship between meaning in life and goodness, arguing that meaning just is goodness, I discuss variants of Nozick's Experience Machine, and the proper perspective by which to evaluate whether our lives are meaningful.2023-01-1048 min
The Catholic Culture PodcastHighlights: Garrigou-Lagrange, Dana Gioia, Tolkien's metaphysics, and moreThis episode contains clips of highlights from episodes 38-41 and 44 of the Catholic Culture Podcast. 38 - Garrigou-Lagrange, The Sacred Monster of Thomism - Matthew Minerd https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/episode-38-sacred-monster-matthew-k-minerd/ 39 - Composing Liturgical Music That's Noble, Accessible...and Sacred - Paul Jernberg https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/episode-39-composing-liturgical-music-thats-noble-accessible-and-sacred-paul-jernberg/ 40 - Tolkien and Aquinas - Jonathan McIntosh https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/episode-40-tolkien-and-aquinas-jonathan-s-mcintosh/ 41 - The Neo-Colonial West Is Forcing Abortion on Africa - Obianuju Ekeocha https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/episode-41-neo-colonial-west-is-forcing-abortion-on-africa-obianuju-ekeocha/ 44 - Catholics Need Poetry. But...2021-07-301h 30
In Your EmbraceEpisode 68: All in All9 June 2021 | Second Wednesday after Pentecost | Eugene, Ore.
In this week’s episode, I share what I learned from last week’s Sacred Liturgy Conference on the theme of “Incarnation in the Eucharist!” We also follow the latest developments in Valinor as Fëanor forges the Silmarils, Melkor foments rebellion, and the bliss of the Blessed Ones seems to be coming to an end…
Opening music: “Salve Regina,” composed by Paul Jernberg, sung by the Brookline Consort, 2018. All rights reserved.
---
Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/in-your-embrace/message2021-06-1049 min