Posted on Saturday, October 27, 2018

080: Ep76 – Evil, Suffering, God, & Ethics

Philosophy Bakes Bread radio show & podcast

In this 76th episode of Philosophy Bakes Bread Eric Thomas Weber and Anthony Cashio interview Jack Symes, host of The Panpsycast philosophy podcast, on the theme “Evil, Suffering, God, and Ethics.”

Jack graduated from the University of Liverpool in philosophy (BA and MA) and went on as a postgraduate in Teaching Studies at the University of Birmingham. Jack is currently teaching philosophy at King Edward VI High School for Girls. Jack also hosts the weekly Panpsycast philosophy Podcast. The Panpsycast describes itself as an “’informal and informative’ philosophy podcast that supports teachers, students and academics in philosophy, which also aims to awaken fellow free-thinkers worldwide and inspire a new generation of philosophers.” The show has over 70,000 subscribers!

Listen for our “You Tell Me!” questions and for some jokes in one of our concluding segments, called “Philosophunnies.” Reach out to us on Facebook @PhilosophyBakesBread and on Twitter @PhilosophyBB; email us at philosophybakesbread@gmail.com; or call and record a voicemail that we play on the show, at 859.257.1849. Philosophy Bakes Bread is a production of the Society of Philosophers in America (SOPHIA). Check us out online at PhilosophyBakesBread.com and check out SOPHIA at PhilosophersInAmerica.com.

(1 hr 8 mins)

Click here for a list of all the episodes of Philosophy Bakes Bread.

Subscribe to the podcast!

We’re on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher, and even now on YouTube, and we’ve got a regular RSS feed too!

Notes

The Panpsycast podcast.
“Cosmological argument,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
“Heraclitus,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy..
“Parmenides,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy..
Rober Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Peter Singer and utilitarianism.
The Abrahamic God, refers to the God of Abraham, of the traditions of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. See Rabbi Marc Gellman and Monsignor Thomas Hartman, “Abrahamic Faiths All Worship the Same God,” The Chicago Tribune, June 6, 2003.
The OOO God: Ominopotent (all powerful), Omniscient (all knowing), and Omnibenevolent (all good).
Stephen Law’s blog, philosopher of religion.
Kenneth Hill, population expert.
The Problem of Evil or the Problem of Suffering, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
“Theodicies,” the technical term for responses to the problem of evil.
Young Jack Symes photo. Why? Because the photo is adorable and suffering is a heavy topic 😉
Telos, which refers to purpose.
Sudio headphones.
Albert Camus, “The Myth of Sisyphus.”
“William James,” in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, a psychologist and philosopher and one of the founders of the tradition known as American Pragmatism. From The Varieties of Religious Experience, Jack quotes James, who wrote that “Good-humor is a philosophic state of mind; it seems to say to Nature that we take her no more seriously than she takes us. I maintain that one should always talk of philosophy with a smile.”
Charles Pidgen on the “is/ought” dichotomy in Philosophy Now.
“Jeremy Bentham,” in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Christian Miller, on The Character Gap.

You Tell Me!

For our future “You Tell Me!” segments, Jack asked the following question in this episode:

“Why is a good God significantly more reasonable than an evil God?”

Let us know what you think! Via Twitter, Facebook, Email, or by commenting here below.

Posted on Friday, March 16, 2018

‘It’s Over Debbie’ – Euthanasia

One-Sheet for SOPHIA Conversations

John Lachs facilitating a SOPHIA symposium in Oxford, MS.

John Lachs of Vanderbilt University

This piece was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1988 and inspired a firestorm of responses. Dr. John Lachs proposed this as a one-sheet document for a conversation that he and Executive Director Weber organized in Oxford, MS, in 2008 on “Ethics at the End of Life.” This one-sheet document was hugely successful for spurring inspired yet civil conversation about values at the end of life, as well as whether there should be freedom in end-of-life decision-making, what sort, and what kinds of policies make sense for end-of-life circumstances. The JAMA withheld the name of the author this piece by request.

Printable PDF.

The document is available on the JAMA Web site as an image file. For a printable, searchable (OCR’d) version, click here, on the Adobe PDF logo on right, or on the image here below:

Posted on Friday, February 16, 2018

063: Ep59 – Finding Peace

Philosophy Bakes Bread radio show & podcast

In this fifty-ninth episode of the Philosophy Bakes Bread radio show and podcast, we interview Dr. Annie Davis Weber yet again, this time on the subject of “Finding Peace” with Buddhism. This episode is different and special, as the very first wholly live episode, recorded while on the air live on WRFL Lexington, 88.1 FM in Lexington, Kentucky. The episode aired and was recorded on December 18th, 2017, our final episode for 2017, the first official season of the show.

Photo courtesy of Maxlkt, creative commons license.

Dr. Annie Davis Weber earned her doctorate in Higher Education Leadership and Policy at Vanderbilt University and is the Assistant Provost for Strategic Planning and Institutional Effectiveness at the University of Kentucky. In this episode, she is representing only her own point of view. This episode is a follow-up of sorts on Ep0.1 from the “pilot season,” titled “Acceptance and Happiness with Stoicism.” We talk about Annie’s experience learning about and growing from some challenges that arose at the start of Eric and Annie’s daughter’s life, when Helen suffered a stroke and other medical difficulties. Annie learned a great deal from Buddhism and joined Anthony and Eric in this episode to talk about her experience and the insights that she found most valuable from the Buddhist tradition. We also celebrate the end of our first official season of Philosophy Bakes Bread.

(1 hr 8 mins)

Click here for a list of all the episodes of Philosophy Bakes Bread.

Notes

This episode was the second time Annie appeared on the show. The first time was in Episode 25, on “Assessing Assessment.”
This episode features shout-outs to: Daniel Wayne Rinn, TheLetterWriter, Karl Aho, Helena Tubridy, Samuel Douglas, Amy Glover, & Kaylen Addison.
More information about Buddhism’s 4 noble truths and about the 8-fold path.
Steve Hagen, Buddhism Plain and Simple (Rutland, VT: Tuttle Publishing, 2011).
Pema Chodron, Start Where You Are (Boston: Shambhala, 1994).
PBS documentary, The Buddha [YouTube], narrated by Richard Gere.
At the end of the episode, we reminisce about our favorite episodes of the first seasons, 2017. A record of the most downloaded episodes and some of our favorites is available with links in this post.

You Tell Me!

For our future “You Tell Me!” segments, Annie posed the following question in this episode:

“What are you grateful for?”

Let us know what you think! Via Twitter, Facebook, Email, or by commenting here below.

Posted on Friday, February 24, 2017

011: Ep7 – How to Live the Deepest Human Life

Philosophy Bakes Bread radio show & podcast

This seventh episode of the Philosophy Bakes Bread radio show and podcast features an interview with Dr. Scott Samuelson of Kirkwood Community College, on how to live the deepest human life.

Dr. Samuelson is the author of The Deepest Human Life and he is presently developing his next book, titled Seven Ways of Looking at Pointless Suffering. Listen for our “You Tell Me!” questions and for some jokes in one of our concluding segments, called “Philosophunnies.” Reach out to us on Facebook @PhilosophyBakesBread and on Twitter @PhilosophyBB; email us at philosophybakesbread@gmail.com; or call and record a voicemail that we play on the show, at 859.257.1849. Philosophy Bakes Bread is a production of the Society of Philosophers in America (SOPHIA). Check us out online at PhilosophyBakesBread.com and check out SOPHIA at PhilosophersInAmerica.com.

(1 hr 8 mins)

Click here for a list of all the episodes of Philosophy Bakes Bread.

Subscribe to the podcast!

We’re on iTunes and Google Play, and we’ve got a regular RSS feed too!

Notes

Encyclopedia Britannica entry on St. Thomas of Aquinas’s “Five Ways” to prove the existence of God.
In this episode, we mention Episode 1 of Philosophy Bakes Bread with Anthony Cashio, on “The Molemen and Plato’s Cave Today.”
We also referenced Episode 5 of the show, on “Stoic Pragmatism” with John Lachs.
You may have noticed the use of a word for a man’s body part. Here’s an article on words you can and cannot say on the radio – yes, it was allowed.

You Tell Me!

For our future “You Tell Me!” segments, Dr. Samuelson proposed the following questions in this episode, for which we invite your feedback: “Is war a good and healthy metaphor for thinking about our relation to suffering, or is the war metaphor harmful? If the latter, what might a better metaphor be?” What do you think?

Let us know! Twitter, Facebook, Email, or by commenting here below!

Transcript Available

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Posted on Monday, October 31, 2016

‘What Ifs’ and No Regrets

Civil American, Volume 1, Article 1 (October 31, 2016), https://goo.gl/IEMKOJ.

Shane Courtland

Dr. Courtland is SOPHIA’s Communications Officer and is the Managing Director of the Center for Free Enterprise at West Virginia University. Previously, he was an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, where he was also the Director of the Center for Ethics and Public Policy. He is the author of Hobbesian Applied Ethics and Public Policy (Routledge Press, forthcoming), as well as of a number of articles. His work has been recognized with the Ehlers Prize for the best philosophy paper of the year and the 2016 Chancellor’s Award for Outstanding Public Service at the University of Minnesota Duluth. Dr. Courtland has been a exemplary public philosopher, with engagements including on hospital ethics committees and in public interviews and lectures, such as on KUMD and KBJR.

| By Shane Courtland |

One often hears the expression “You should live your life without regrets” in the same situations that one hears expressions such as “carpe diem” and “YOLO.” The basic idea is that you should live your life to the fullest. One day, if you are lucky to be living, you will be able to look back on your life. When you do so, you do not want to feel that it was wasted merely because you were too timid and afraid to embrace it. Have courage, these slogans implore – reach the fullest potential of a happy and fulfilling life.

In what follows, I want to articulate a different way to understand this expression.This understanding is inspired, in part, by a passage in Epictetus’s The Enchiridion. In passage #25, he writes:

“Is anyone preferred before you at an entertainment, or in a compliment, or in being admitted to a consultation? If these things are good, you ought to be glad that he has gotten them; and if they are evil, don’t be grieved that you have not gotten them. And remember that you cannot, without using the same means [which others do] to acquire things not in our own control, expect to be thought worthy of an equal share of them. For how can he who does not frequent the door of any [great] man, does not attend him, does not praise him, have an equal share with him who does? You are unjust, then, and insatiable, if you are unwilling to pay the price for which these things are sold, and would have them for nothing. For how much is lettuce sold? Fifty cents, for instance. If another, then, paying fifty cents, takes the lettuce, and you, not paying it, go without them, don’t imagine that he has gained any advantage over you. For as he has the lettuce, so you have the fifty cents which you did not give. So, in the present case, you have not been invited to such a person’s entertainment, because you have not paid him the price for which a supper is sold. It is sold for praise; it is sold for attendance. Give him then the value, if it is for your advantage. But if you would, at the same time, not pay the one and yet receive the other, you are insatiable, and a blockhead. Have you nothing, then, instead of the supper? Yes, indeed, you have: the not praising him, whom you don’t like to praise; the not bearing with his behavior at coming in.”

The basic idea, as far as I can tell, is that Epictetus is reminding us that everything in life has opportunity costs. In order to get something of value, one always forgoes something. The man who gets to go to the party paid for it by having to sell his praise. Epictetus then tells the reader, “But if you would, at the same time, not pay the one and yet receive the other, you are insatiable, and a blockhead.”

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