Sadler's Lectures

This lecture discusses key ideas from the ancient philosopher and biographer Plutarch's short work On Moral Virtue This episode focuses specifically on his discussion of what he takes to be mistaken conceptions of the virtues found in the works of the philosophers Menedemus, Ariston, Zeno, and Chysippus, so that he can contrast his own middle-Platonist perspective against them. There are two main...

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 he actual "repugnant conclusion" that his extended argument leads to, which is that it would be better to have a population that is very large but in which people's lives would have a very low quality of life, or a...

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 his further development of the overall argument in that chapter, looking at how population growth over time could in multiple ways lower the quality of life or the overall happiness for members of a given populatio...

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 popu...

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 initi...

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 digita...

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 differ...

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...

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 "...

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"...

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 an...

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 orig...

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 di...

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...

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...

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 hypothe...

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/s...

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 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...

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...

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 o...

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...

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...

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...

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 m...