68 min listen
George Hammond: Who Are We?
George Hammond: Who Are We?
ratings:
Length:
73 minutes
Released:
Mar 12, 2024
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
Who are we? Good question. But difficult to answer definitively. Still, it is a question that is philosophically fruitful to ask, because the flip side of the question (who aren’t we?) has several clear answers that narrow the search for an answer to the main question.
One example: It might be emotionally hard to accept, but it seems highly unlikely that we are the center of the universe, even though we all experience the totality of our lives through one perspective—our own—which has clearly made it very easy for almost all of us to fall for this illusion.
That is one reason Monday Night Philosophy returns to the Commonwealth Club (this time on a Tuesday) to re-ask these age-old questions, to analyze the most popular of their age-old answers, and to present the logic that points to a different answer to the ancient question: Who are we?
This rational perspective also makes it perfectly understandable why we experience the emotions we do, why we dream, why we’ve told ourselves these stories, how we try to egg ourselves on with them, why we have scared ourselves silly with them, and even how they explain away for us our otherwise embarrassing attraction to cruelty.
MLF ORGANIZER: George Hammond
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
One example: It might be emotionally hard to accept, but it seems highly unlikely that we are the center of the universe, even though we all experience the totality of our lives through one perspective—our own—which has clearly made it very easy for almost all of us to fall for this illusion.
That is one reason Monday Night Philosophy returns to the Commonwealth Club (this time on a Tuesday) to re-ask these age-old questions, to analyze the most popular of their age-old answers, and to present the logic that points to a different answer to the ancient question: Who are we?
This rational perspective also makes it perfectly understandable why we experience the emotions we do, why we dream, why we’ve told ourselves these stories, how we try to egg ourselves on with them, why we have scared ourselves silly with them, and even how they explain away for us our otherwise embarrassing attraction to cruelty.
MLF ORGANIZER: George Hammond
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Released:
Mar 12, 2024
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
Jill Abramson: The New York Times and the Fight for Facts: The news media is facing unprecedented crises: plummeting public trust and unrelenting attacks from the president of the United States. How do the “merchants of truth” navigate this new world? by Commonwealth Club of California Podcast