Philosophy Playdate

This week, our hosts ransack the bookshelf of the prototypical edgy teenager to answer ‘What makes a good leader?’. Steve and Christabel start off strong with the classics: Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince, Thomas Hobbes’ The Leviathan and Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. They take a quick detour into Ludvig Wittgenstein’s theory of games, stopping briefly to consider whether a llama might rightly identify themselves as a unicorn. Later, the duo dive into Maria Kli’s research into the political philosophy of modernity, and consider the truism that a philosopher’s politics often tells you more about their own view of human nature than about how to rule over people. With this in mind, Christabel introduces some philosophers who seem to have held more optimistic views of humanity. Among these are Mencius, the second sage of Confucianism, Zengzi, a disciple of Confucius, and the Neo-Confucians, who held that true kings create the social conditions for their citizens to cultivate their virtues and to better their moral dispositions. Steve offers helpful comparisons against the leadership styles of some of his favourite football managers. Christabel then introduces the controversial Confucius scholarship of Loubna El Amine and the ideal type theory of Max Weber, stopping off to consult some Platonic theory of statecraft along the way. Email us the impossible questions children ask you at philosophyplaydate@gmail.com Find Steve at https://drstevecross.squarespace.com Philosophy Playdate theme by Piers Cane

Steve and Christabel set off to bravely go where no one has gone before to answer this week’s question: ‘Who looks after outer space?’ but due to the Kessler effect, they spend most of the episode bumping around in low-Earth orbit. However, this portion of (barely) outer space proves to be more philosophically provocative than the duo might have bargained for. Discussion begins with space ethicist Nikki Coleman, who compares being trapped onEarth by an atmospheric layer of Elon Musk’s space debris to the existential threat of climate change. This turns conversation to space law, and specifically Setsuko Aoki’s interpretation of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which designates space as ‘the common heritage of humanity’. With heritage on their minds, Steve and Christabel turn to the brave new world of space archaeology, and three of its leading lights; Alice Gorman, Beth Laura O’Leary and Lisa Westwood. Gorman’s advocacy for lunar conservation launches our hosts out of Earth’s atmosphere andplants them right onto the dusty and flag-strewn surface of our nearest celestial body. Christabel gets disproportionately angry at the thought of losing her view of the Moon due toindustrial mineral extraction, possibly forgetting about the existence of clouds. However, it isn’t long before they both plummet back to Earth, landing first in the Wild West (where Steve introduces us to Sheriff Bentham, protector of the innocent) before returning back to London to consider the real-life trolley problem of diverting the Nazi V-weapons. They apply what they’ve learned to the problem of deflecting asteroids, taking particular noteof the ethical analysis provided by Mazlan Othman, Malaysia’s first astrophysicist anddirector of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs. Christabel ends on a plea for listeners to write in with all and any space-related questions that they’ve ever been asked by a child. Email us the impossible (and extra-terrestrial) questions children ask you at philosophyplaydate@gmail.com Find Steve at https://drstevecross.squarespace.com Philosophy Playdate theme by Piers Cane

This week, Steve and Christabel take irony, malapropisms and poetry to task in their quest to find the meaning of meaning. To begin, they survey a couple of naïve theories; the reference theory, and John Locke’s idea theory of meaning. Steve takes this opportunity to remind us of the first rules of philosophy; do NOT die, and don’t let young upstarts relabel your theory as naïve. Christabel draws on Ludwig Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell and William Lycan (though she doesn’t get much further than the first sentence of the first chapter of Lycan’s contemporary introduction to the philosophy of language – it’s admittedly a very good sentence). The discussion settles upon Paul Grice and his conversational maxims. Christabel explains that for Grice, the purposes of conversation are very important. She then fulfils what she deems to be the purpose of every conversation, and launches into a tangent about David Lewis’ theory of possible worlds. Steve flouts Saul Kripke’s law of the necessity of identity, and considers a parallel world in which David Lewis and Lois Lane switch places. He then pursues his own conversational purpose, reopening an old argument he’d had with his English teacher over Phillip Larkin’s ‘This Be The Verse’. Steve and Christabel establish two things: the first being that the official podcast position is strongly pro-multiverse, and the second being a conversational maxim of their own. Steve decrees that we are allowed to be linguistic pedants if (and only if) it serves comedic purposes. Christabel grudgingly agrees, on the condition that she is still allowed to point outthe kind of semantic ambiguity that typifies corporate pharmaceutical messaging. But will the duo accomplish the pragmatic ambitions of this week’s conversation, or will they fade away into Bolivian? Listen to find out! Email us the impossible questions children ask you at philosophyplaydate@gmail.com Find Steve at https://drstevecross.squarespace.com Philosophy Playdate theme by Piers Cane

Usually when Steve’s daughter asks why she has to wear a bike helmet whilst he doesn’t (tut tut), Steve responds “Because your head is important, and mine is not.” However, over the course of this episode, Steve’s head is filled with political theory that will help him to explain why liberal democracies tend to extend rights associated with self-governance to adults whilst refusing to let children exercise the same sovereignty over their own lives. Christabel leads us over John Stewart Mill’s (wife’s) rickety bridge thought experiment and helps Steve avoid the fate of Joseph Raz’s man in a pit example. Steve talks us through his favourite DnD-informed strategies for escaping pits, and makes an inappropriate Silence of The Lambs reference. Christabel only dials up the horror when she brings up Robert Nozick’s libertarianism and the school of thought known as child liberationism. However, antipaternalism isn’t dismissed outright, and the arguments of Roger Griffin andRonald Dworkin are presented as reasons for thinking that adults should be allowed to act unwisely if their doing so doesn’t cause harm to others. But as Thomas Douglas points out, this doesn’t commit us to thinking that the same is true of children who lack the capacity for autonomous decision-making. Christabel leaps at the opportunity to cover Kat Jennings’ account of what exactly this capacity consists in, and under which circumstances it must be respected. Special thanks to Kat Jennings for their absolutely invaluable assistance in the research for this episode. Email us the impossible questions children ask you at philosophyplaydate@gmail.com Find Steve at https://drstevecross.squarespace.com Philosophy Playdate theme by Piers Cane

Content note: extensive discussion of death, mortality and loss.This week’s episode is an existential crisis courtesy of Steve's daughter, who asks “When will I die?”. This triggers a brief discussion of the chic continental philosophers you might expect to find theorising about mortality (most likely while wearing berets and smoking Gitanes outside a Parisian café). Steve and Christabel take us from Pascal’s divertissement, to Heidegger’s emphasis on finitude, to Jean Paul Sartre’s nausea. However, rather than succumbing to a dark night of the soul, Christabel turns to what she knows best, which is (as faithful listeners will know) a worm-based metaphysics of time. This is the kind of philosophy practiced by philosophers whose invites to hip gatherings on the continent always seem to get lost in the mail. As a result, the duo turn from contemplation of the cool and angsty philosophers to the practical question of how your philosophy of time should affect your view of death. Steve is delighted to have presentism between his crosshairs again, as Christabel compares presentist, eternalist and growing block-theoretic conceptions of the end. Natalja Deng’s assessment of Robin Le Poidevin’s claim that eternalists shouldn’t feel existential dread is examined, as is Daniel Story’s reassurance that worm theorists shouldn’t ever worry that their time is growing short. Steve chastises contemporary philosophers Harry S. Silverstein and Thomas Nagel for their critique of Epicurus, arguing that these modern thinkers should pick on someone who’s still around to defend themselves. Christabel replies that Epicurus is still kicking about somewhere in the spacetime manifold, it’s just that he can’t respond (and probably has more pleasurable things to be doing, anyway).Find our merch at https://drstevecross.squarespace.com/podcastEmail us the impossible questions children ask you at philosophyplaydate@gmail.comFind Steve at https://drstevecross.squarespace.comPhilosophy Playdate theme by Piers Cane

To answer this week’s question, “Am I too perfect?” Steve and Christabel begin with a brief survey of a selection of religious conceptions of human perfection. This takes them from the contemplation of fitra in Sufi Islam, to the concepts of ātman and puruṣa in the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika and Sāṅkhya traditions of Hinduism. They weigh in on the Pelagian-Augustinian debate on whether spontaneously conceived babies are on the hook for Adam’s crimes against apples – or St Augustine of Hippo’s crimes against pears – according to the Christian doctrine of original sin (noting that IVF babies might have found the perfect theological loophole).Discussion then turns to the question as to whether perfection is even a logically coherent concept. Divine perfection seems problematic, given that it seems to entail that God could create a rock so heavy that no being could lift it, and then immediately do so. Christabel explores the process theist’s rejection of the classical, monopolar view of God as existing within Boethian eternity. She begins to expound upon the idea that time is a wheel, and that according to this dogma, though good times pass away, so do the bad. It’s considered that mutability is our tragedy, but also our hope; that the worst of times - like the best - are always passing away. Steve simply replies: “I know”. Email us the impossible questions children ask you at philosophyplaydate@gmail.comFind Steve at https://drstevecross.squarespace.com/Philosophy Playdate theme by Piers Cane

This week Christabel is on a mission to convince us that navy blue is the objectively best colour. In her efforts to do this, she enlists the help of Immanuel Kant, and his distinction between things that are capital B Beautiful, and the merely agreeable. Kant relegates wine to the latter category, and Steve argues that the same is true of Queen (but makes a reasonable exception for Freddie Mercury). Christabel takes issue with both, drawing on Shen-Yi Liao’s characterisation of nostalgic food as art to argue that we have good reasons for widening our understanding of what counts as both Beautiful and high art. We are then introduced to Samantha Matherne’s Kant scholarship, to which Christabel appeals in order to make the claim that if we squint at the Critique of Judgement in the right light, Kant might give us what we need to make the argument that individual shades and tones, when appreciated in a sufficiently abstract way, might be taken to count as the kinds of things about which proper aesthetic judgements can be made. We are invited to conclude that there may be a universally correct answer to this week’s question “What’s the best favourite colour to have?” (and that the answer is navy blue).Email us the impossible questions children ask you at philosophyplaydate@gmail.comFind Steve at https://drstevecross.squarespace.com/Philosophy Playdate theme by Piers Cane