Insert Philosophy Here: Recent Episodes
Insert Philosophy Here
The world needs more philosophy.
More to the point, we all need to engage with the world with a more philosophical attitude.
My name is Douglas Giles, I am a philosopher by trade and temperament. I understand that philosophy is an active search for concepts on which we can build a better life. Long fascinated by ideas, I am motivated by an earnest desire to bring philosophy out of its insular ivory tower and into everyday life where it can be put to good uses.
As a university philosophy professor for more than 20 years, I have introduced thousands of students in multiple countries to the value of philosophy in their lives. From my teaching experience, I have learned what works for students, leading me to write a textbook, How We Are and How We Got Here: A Practical History of Western Philosophy.
My scholarly research has built on my PhD work in social philosophy at the University of Essex. Because I apply a phenomenological approach to the lived experiences and actions of individuals, groups, and social and political institutions, my research helps us better understand social injustices and how people respond to them. My work also explores the intersection of philosophy and culture and the construction and maintenance of personal identities and social meanings.
I greatly value and facilitate discussion that digs deeper into holistic and meaningful ideas that deal with causes not symptoms. I started writing content for the Internet in 1994 and now produces my own Web site, InsertPhilosophyHere.com, podcasts, and video channels. Because I value the individual person, I encourage people to seek openness and authenticity in themselves and others.
Also, I have been a radio disc jockey since 1997 and since 2003 have managed the Internet radio station WorldFusionRadio.com. In 2018, I moved to Prague with my spouse, a professional editor.
For the last seven years, I’ve had quite a few people here in Europe ask me to explain Trump and his MAGA sycophants. Their incredulous questions are understandable. What’s in MAGA minds? How could they believe such things? Why are they so full of hate?
I reference two books in this episode: The Rise of Victimhood Culture and Rethinking Misrecognition and Struggles for Recognition.
Spoiler Alert: I will divulge as little as possible about the specifics of the movie as I talk about the real-life implications of its philosophical ideas, but, obviously, some content of the movie will leak out.
Yes, Barbie is a surprisingly philosophical movie. I had low expectations for Barbie. I’ve never been a fan of corporations or dolls, and especially corporate dolls that objectify women. My expectations were very mistaken.
Much will be said and written about the latest set of indictments handed down against former President Trump. I will leave it to the legal analysts to dissect the minutiae and details of the indictment. I'm a philosopher. So, I want to talk about what is behind all of this, what's really going on with all of this? What are the fundamental principles that underlie these actions, both politically and socially.
Dr. Eve Poole is my honoured guest to talk about her latest book Robot Souls. Two of the biggest design problems in Artificial Intelligence are how to build robots that behave in line with human values and how to stop them ever going rogue. One under-explored solution to these alignment and control problems might be to examine how these are already addressed in the design of humans.
Robot Souls is a book as much about us humans as it is about robots and AI. We have created artificial intelligence rather than artificial humans, and that is a potential problem we need to address and consider how our creations and ourselves can be more human.
A subject that has been in the news quite a lot lately as a political issue is diversity, equity, and inclusion, (DEI) and this is a topic that's dear to my heart as a philosophy professor. We need DEI programs, and I am very concerned about the efforts to try to reverse DEI initiatives in higher education. Plus, I am also aware of how part of that backlash from the right-wing to DEI initiatives is a response to excesses and abuses from people who are wanting, or at least on the surface wanting to increase DEI. I'll talk about both sides of this political issue.
Siloization – ˈsī-lō-ə-ˈzā-shən : the process of isolating a group apart from others especially in ways that hinder communication and cooperation. How technology is enhancing an age old human habit, the difference between one-way and two-way communication, and how social media plays into these issues.
This year has seen a number of important and contentious elections: Sweden, Italy, United States, Brazil, and Israel, among others. By its nature, politics is agonistic--a process of contention among people--but today it is an antagonistic process in which politicians actively exhort the public to misrecognize and even hate other politicians.
Some people believe that philosophy is disconnected from the world. This is ignorance but it is understandable given the tradition of rationalism and analytic philosophy. But philosophy is at its best when it addresses issues that confront people in their everyday lives. The school of philosophy that is appropriately named "pragmatism" does that, It is a philosophy that connects with real life, does work in it, and has cash value.
The United States likes to think of itself as a democracy. Is it? What is democracy and what are its strengths and weaknesses? This week, I delve into these questions.
Plato was the first systematic Western philosopher. This episode explains his ideas on human perception, what knowledge is, and how we can know things, including his theory of Forms.
When I teach my Introduction to Philosophy courses, I do so chronologically because philosophy is best understood as a long evolution. Those students often ask me, "why didn't those philosophers centuries ago understand that we are all individuals with different perceptions?" I tell them to be patient, we have to wait until the early 1800s to see philosophers who came to that realization.
On where one belongs, where one can go, and how living abroad changes your perspective on everything.
Available Here: https://amzn.to/3qWV6H6
We are all so used to the terms "left," "right," "liberal," and "conservative" that we hear and use them without a second thought as to their meaning. Politics is the debate over how government and society should be structured and how social institutions should function and to what ends. The political conflict over these issues is often described in terms of the "Left" versus the "Right," but there is a definite lack of adequate examination of what Left and Right mean. In this book, Douglas Giles clarifies the meaning of the terms "Left" and "Right" and the left-right political spectrum in a way that helps us better understand political and social conflicts. Politics is complex, and many political conflicts have considerable effects on our lives. We deserve and need a deeper understanding of politics and political action, and we can help accomplish this by being clearer about what the terms "Left" and "Right" signify. #politics #philosophy #election
Our education system is still dominated by a model developed over 180 years ago that relegates students to products of the system. This factory model of education is counterproductive and harming society. The solution has been out there for a long time and I discuss it, including the ideas of Jane Addams, John Dewey, and Paulo Freire.
“Postmodernist” is the name given to a loosely connected group of thinkers united in their opposition to modernity and its assumptions of the supremacy of reason and continual human progress. Postmodernist philosophers dismantle modernity's illusions to free us to see what really is true and how we really are.
A brief introduction, but more than most philosophy professors will give you. Arendt had important insights into totalitarianism and the human condition.
The mystique and the reality, and advice about the most important part of being a traveler.
I ask these questions in July Fourth, a day when the United States commemorates its independence. A Philosophical Look at Being American.
Good business leaders know that a commitment to sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR) requires a strong foundation, one upon which a company can build and expand its commitment to every aspect of the organization.
A straight-forward, unsensationalized discussion of Kant's Categorical Imperative, discussing his argument in detail. Video version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvdUp1Z-Luc
It has long been taught that there was a 'dark age" in Europe devoid of intellectual activity. This myth is debunked by the reality that medieval philosophy was alive and well.
That things change was a problem for Greek philosophers. Aristotle had a theory for how we can understand change. His solution to the problem of change affected Western thinking for many centuries.
A philosophical exploration of the hows and whys of conspiracy theories. Extended text discussion at https://insertphilosophyhere.com/conspiracy-theories/.
I created Insert Philosophy Here to insert philosophy into anything and everything. That includes popular culture. This week I take on the TV show, The Curse of Oak Island, questioning its approach, defending it from critics, but also calling out its unnecessary sensationalism.
Fourth part of my series on recognition. I talked about the positives of recognition in earlier parts. In this episodes, I talk about how recognition can be exploited to enact villainous acts.
An overview of what we are talking about when we are talking about political philosophy, with an eye toward the emergence of political philosophy in the early modern period: Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau.
Third part of my series on recognition. In this episode, I trace the history of the philosophy of recognition, focusing on Jean-Jacques Rousseau, G.W.F. Hegel, and Axel Honneth.
Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein had two distinct philosophies. I focus on his second one because in it, he abandoned his first one.
Covers two topics: why philosophy is best taught chronologically and why we still study Ancient Greek philosophy. Most Introduction to Philosophy textbooks present philosophy topically--a collection of separate topics. I argue that philosophy is best taught as the progressive history of philosophers responding to events and building on previous ideas. That process for teaching Western philosophy begins with the Ancient Greeks.
Part 2 in a series of talks about the concept of recognition. Why do injustices continue to happen? We say it is because of prejudice but what is prejudice? It is difficult to fight something that we cannot define and one of the important tasks in philosophy is understanding what is behind social phenomena like prejudice.
First in a multi-part discussion of the concept of recognition that is central to social cohesion and structures. In this part, I discuss the seeming contradiction of countries' attitudes toward refugees from war, attitudes that can be explained by recognition theory.
First in a series of talks on general topics in philosophy. Many people have attempted to explain what philosophy is. Some have said philosophy is thinking about thinking, reflecting on experience, a pursuit of truth. Philosophy is all of those things, but it is also something much more. Here is my definition.
First in a series of episodes, "A Philosophical View on Current Events," I discuss the philosophy of just war theory.
The first topic of this podcast is--Why this podcast? What is the point of it and why Insert Philosophy Here?