Adventures Among Ideas

Jan 30 2025 48 ep. 37 mins 2
Adventures Among Ideas Podcast artwork

This podcast by David Dennen, PhD explores ideas in philosophy, cultural history, and literary theory. The point is view is generally Romanticist, pragmatist, and behaviorist, but other traditions are explored as well. Episodes are usually monologues, occasionally dialogues.

  Education  Society & Culture
RSS feed Share
Copy RSS


Subscribe on Podcast Addict


Film Criticism in Theory and Practice with CJ Sheu

Jan 30 2025 96 mins  
I talk with film reviewer and literary critic CJ Sheu (許景順) about how he got into film reviewing, his favorite critics, the differences between academic and journalistic criticism, the relation between literature and film, and more.

The Gamer's Dilemma: The Ethics of Sex and Violence in Videogames

Jan 30 2025 114 mins  
Is it immoral to depict or commit violence in video games? What about sexual violence? Daniel Tarpy and I discuss the gamer's dilemma and the nature of games.

Video Games Are Not Art. But They Are Important.

Jan 30 2025 18 mins  
Why video games are not art but are still culturally valuable. Compares the aesthetic attitude to the ludic attitude.

Conversation with Johannes Jaeger on Agency, Algorithms, Art, and Bullshit

Jun 26 2024 93 mins  
Daniel Tarpy and I talk with Johannes "Yogi" Jaeger about a wide range of topics, including: why philosophy should be important to biology, how our ideas affect the world we live in, the differences between living systems and algorithm-based systems, Michael Levin's "Technological Approach to Mind Everywhere," and the importance of art.

Emergence & Consciousness Reconsidered

Jun 26 2024 40 mins  
Further thoughts on emergence and consciousness. Written version: https://daviddennen.medium.com/emergence-and-consciousness-reconsidered-7a5c19d5759b

Is Consciousness Emergent?

Jun 26 2024 103 mins  
I and Daniel Tarpy try to figure out what emergence means. Is it novelty? Is it the unpredictable? Is it rare? Is it everywhere? What sorts of things are emergent? How do we know when something is emergent? In part 2 we try to explain in what sense we think consciousness is emergent. Along the way we discuss dualism, panpsychism, physicalism, idealism, and pragmatism.

Qualitative Binding: How Art Is Made Whole

Jun 26 2024 59 mins  
On the concept of "qualitative binding" in art with reference to John Dewey, John Middleton Murry, Susanne Langer, Vincent van Gogh, and Richard Wright.

Exploring Fundamental Reality with Daniel Tarpy and Tyler Piteo-Tarpy

Feb 18 2024 103 mins  
In this conversation I, Daniel Tarpy, and Tyler Piteo-Tarpy discuss several ways of thinking about fundamental reality, including idealism, materialism/physicalism, pantheism and panentheism, pragmatism/relationalism, and triunalism. The conversation is exploratory; hopefully we’ll revisit certain topics in more depth in the future.

Discussing Free Will & Determinism: On Sapolsky, Harris, Dennett, and Others

Feb 18 2024 100 mins  
Do we have free will? Does it matter? Daniel Tarpy joins me to discuss the free will debate. We discuss some classic and recent ideas about free will and determinism, including those of Robert Sapolsky, Kevin Mitchell, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, John Dewey, C. A. Campbell, and Roderick Chisolm.

Is Frank Jackson's Knowledge Argument about Knowledge?

Oct 26 2023 28 mins  
I argue that the problem with Frank Jackson's Knowledge Argument (or Mary's Room Argument) against physicalism is that it's not about knowledge.