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Cover of Philosophy You Can Use
Philosophy You Can Use
A Contrarian’s Guide to Better Thinking
Completed · 121 episodes
Buy for ¥198.00
Audio in Chinese
Zhou Lian: Playful Without Being Slick, Interesting Without Losing Depth Liang Wendao: Philosophy as a Tool for Thought 0. Making Philosophy Useful: A Philosophical Life Is a Life of Reason 1. Logical Argument: Why Reason at All? 2. Logic, Meaning, and Experience: We Act Unreasonably Every Day 3. Creating a Climate for Philosophical Discussion: Beginning with Athenian Civil Society 4. Affirming the Antecedent and Denying the Consequent: Can “If” and “Then” Work Both Ways? 5. Taking Syllogisms Apart: How Can Complex Problems Be Simplified? 6. Twenty-Four Forms No One Remembers: Which Syllogisms Are Invalid? 7. Disjunction and the Law of Excluded Middle: Do Our Choices Cover Every Possibility? 8. Disjunction and Dilemmas: Which Statements Trap You Either Way? 9. Conditionals and Slippery Slopes: Thunder Does Not Guarantee Rain 10. Conceptual Confusion and the Straw Man: Don Quixote’s Imaginary Enemy 11. Truth, Compatibility, and Relevance: Beginning with Correlation and Moving Toward Truth 12. Argument by Analogy: How to Cultivate a Metaphor 13. The Power of Presupposition: Why Isn’t Joe Wong’s Stand-Up Funny? 14. Recognizing Presuppositions: You Can Have a Little Balance 15. Presupposition Fallacies and Circular Arguments: Quietly Leading You into a Trap 16. Inductive Reasoning: Are All Men with Glasses Jerks? 17. The Nature of Induction: Everyone Is Truman Burbank Bonus | Isn’t That Robot Kannon in Japan Just a Teaching Machine? 18. Does Objective Causation Exist? Kant, Hume, and Aristotle Argue Among the Gods 19. Mill’s Methods: Finding Reliable Causal Pairings Bonus | Love, Death & Robots 20. Abductive Reasoning: Scientific Discoveries Made by “Guessing” 21. The Doctrine of the Mean: There Must Be Two Traitors Within 22. Machiavelli the “Villain”: Adults Should Be a Little Colder 23. Robert’s Rules of Order: A Reason to Fall in Love with Meetings 24. Cognitive Psychology: Philosophers Feel Heartbreak Too 25. Evolution and Argument: Blame Our Lazy Thinking on Prehistoric Humans 26. Age and Argument: Childhood Traces in Adult Thought 27. Gender and Argument: Men Hypothesize Boldly While Women Verify Carefully? 28. What Is Rationality? Escape Is Shameful but Useful 29. Working Memory: How Does Thought’s Little Blackboard Work? 30. The Availability Heuristic: Is the First Answer You Recall the Right One? Bonus | Xu Yingjin × Boring Room: Philosophy Explains Everything, Including Stand-Up Bonus | Xu Yingjin × Midnight Talks: The Distance Between Us and Evil 31. Rhyme and Proverb Preference: If Youth Won’t Work, Must Old Age Grieve? 32. The Anchoring Effect: Hear the Good News or the Bad News First? 33. The Framing Effect: Have You Heard of Compliment Groups? 34. The Bandwagon Effect: How Do Spectators Get Lured Aboard? 35. The Knobe Effect: Hating Evil May Be Part of Our Nature 36. The Hindsight Effect: I Knew It All Along! Bonus | Philosophical Extensions of Reproductive Rights and Children’s Well-Being in Capernaum 37. Sunk Costs: After Investing So Much, Should You Give Up? 38. The Conjunction Fallacy: Can Stereotypes Be Useful? 39. The Wason Selection Task: Nothing Makes Logic More Exciting Than Talking About “996” Bonus | Chernobyl Under the Shadow of Self-Deception 40. Cultural Transmission Is Ultimately a War Between Bodily Habits 41. Psychology and Philosophy: Can Logic Alone Conquer the World? 42. IQ and EQ: Let’s Talk About Intelligence Tests 43. Philosophy of Mind: What Is Happening in Our Minds? 44. Substance Dualism: What Does “I Think, Therefore I Am” Actually Mean? 45. The Flaws of Substance Dualism: Descartes Muddying the Waters Bonus | The Zhang Yingying Case: Where Is Judicial Justice Going? 46. Psychophysical Parallelism: The Wild Conjectures of Geniuses 47. Mind–Body Identity: God in a Stink Bug Bonus | Xu Yingjin × GCORES: When Plato Meets Video Games 48. Epiphenomenalism: Consciousness as an Unimportant “By-Product” 49. Supervenient Physicalism: Could Mind Reading Exist? Bonus | The Body Buried Beneath the Schoolyard: Rebuilding Moral Society from Nothing 50. Multiple Realizability: Can Artificial Intelligence Feel Pain? 51. Behaviorism: The More You Donate, the More Compassionate You Are 52. Functionalism: Artificial Intelligence Will Replace Humanity 53. The Chinese Room: Artificial Intelligence Can Never Truly Have a Mind 54. The China Brain Argument: Avatars Exist Only in Science Fiction Bonus | I’m in Shanghai, and I Still Can’t Sort My Trash 55. The Subjectivity of Consciousness: What Is It Like to Be a Bat? 56. The Inverted Spectrum: Can You Drive If You Cannot Tell Red from Green? Bonus | The Zhang Koukou Case: Should Avenging Blood Relatives Cost You Your Life? 57. Black-and-White Mary: Is Color a Subjective Illusion? 58. The Zombie Argument: Could a Zombie World Exist? Bonus | The “Great Archival Technique” in The Longest Day in Chang’an Is Not So Reliable 59. Global Workspace Theory: Is Intuition Nonsense? 60. Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness: How Do You Feel Pain? Bonus | What Is the Logic Behind Pressuring People to Drink in China? 61. Modularity of Mind: Why Does a Chopstick Look Bent in Water? 62. Spatial Cognition Depends on the Emotional Sense of Home 63. Time Perception: Why Does a Workday Feel Longer Than a Day Off? 64. Theory of Mind: Does Truly Sharing Another’s Feelings Exist? 65. Intentionality: Being on Earth Does Not Stop Me Thinking About Mars 66. Collective Intentionality: What Do We Mean When We Say “We”? 67. Intention: Is That an Ideal or a Daydream? 68. Is Free Will Merely a Psychological Placebo? 69. Epistemology: What Can Human Beings Know? 70. Skepticism: Don’t Become a Passive Young Cynic 71. The Brain in a Vat: How Can You Know Your Existence Is Not an Illusion? 72. The Gettier Problem: Where Did “Pickled Mustard Guy” Go Wrong? 73. Correspondence Theory: Can We Still Know Facts in the Post-Truth Age? 74. Coherence Theory: How Do Pyramid Schemes Lure People Aboard? 75. Rectification of Names: What Makes a Name and Claim Proper? 76. The Gettier Problem Through Shuowen Jiezi 77. The Bank Cases: Why Does Greater Pressure Reduce Our Confidence in What We Know? 78. How Does Time Pressure Affect Knowledge Attribution? 79. Virtue Epistemology: Some Hierarchies of Contempt May Be Necessary 80. Philosophy of Language, the Boss of All Philosophical Problems 81. The Picture Theory of Language: Saying Something Wrong May Mean More Than Saying Nothing 82. Theory of Descriptions: How Did Nazi Germany Brainwash People? 83. Causal Theory of Reference: How Did Madagascar Get Its Name? 84. Positivism: I Believe Only What I See! 85. “To Be”: How Should Hamlet’s Famous Line Be Translated? 86. Realism About Universals: Which Is More Real, an Actual Chicken or an Abstract Chicken? 87. Nominalism: A Nation Is Only an Imagined Concept 88. Metalinguistic Nominalism: How Did the State of Israel Come into Being? 89. Trope Theory: I Want a Sophisticated Older Girlfriend 90. Meaning Is Use: Will AI Translation Replace Human Beings? 91. Speech Acts: An Important Code Phrase from the Second World War 92. Following Rules: What If the Boss Speaks Too Vaguely? 93. Private Language: None of You Understand This Feeling; Only I Do 94. A Madman’s Pain and an Alien’s Pain 95. Universal Grammar: Is Language an Inborn Human Gift? 96. Cognitive Linguistics: What Comes to Mind When You Hear “Opium”? 97. Quantifiers: Look, One Handsome Guy! 98. Metaphor: Sima Yi Is Such a Trout 99. Translation: How Can Humans Avoid Being Replaced by AI? 100. Thank You for Still Holding Fast to Your Original Ideals 101. In 2020, Be a Spring: Bend to Preserve the Whole 102. March 23 Livestream: How to Think Like a Philosopher During a Pandemic 103. Rumor Has It Buying Philosophy You Can Use Improves Your Odds | At Least There Are Books 104. Summer Homework Is Strange, but You Still Have to Do It Well | Summer Luck 105. How Can We Live Better in a Pandemic? Cherish Communities of Friendship | Xu Yingjin × Meng Qingyan × Hebi