Unmaking Sense

Episode 1.28: There is no definitive final theory that encapsulates everything.

We need to embrace pluralism and accept difference as positive, and that requires us to abandon belief in a final absolute external solution as well as the notion that disagreements always mean one side is right and the other wrong.

Episode 1.27: Avoiding complacent happiness by engaging with others who think and live differently.

How can we avoid the risk of becoming self-satisfied with a lifestyle that is unsatisfactory or even destructive? Engaging with dissent, embracing difference; encouraging variety.

Episode 1.26: Three kinds of happiness.

Monovalent happiness finds it in single bonds with things such as possessions; bivalent happiness finds it in relationships such as that between who we want to be and who we become; trivalent happiness looks for the triple relationship between bivalent happiness and the needs and natures of the world and others as we meet in open, vulnerable authenticity.

Episode 1.25: The open texture of meaning; the importance of vulnerability and incompleteness.

Why questions are more interesting and important than answers because they open up new lines of enquiry and allow new possibilities to enter the world. How this works in human communication and bonding, and why a closed, complete conception of truth and meaning doesn’t work.

Episode 1.24: The Tinder Effect; that small decisions can have large consequences.

Important things like consciousness need not arise from complicated underlying structures. Just being able to say yes or no may be enough. Lessons from machine-learning and AI.

Episode 1.23: We contribute best to the world by being ourselves, not being what it wants us to be.

We come under all kinds of pressure and influences that draw us away from being ourselves, and while there are times when we need that corrective, we also are best for ourselves and make the biggest contribution to the world when we are the unique individuals we are most cut out to be, becoming someone new every day by living the present.

Episode 1.22: The destructive consequences of being in two minds.

Living the present, staying in the moment. The tennis phenomenon of Raducanu winning the US Open. Better do one thing than dream all things. Possible worlds again.

Episode 1.21: Positive and Negative responses to adversity.

Beating ourselves up when we suffer adversity is a chosen but unhelpful response that serves no useful purpose. We need not allow ourselves to be defined by the past; we can choose to view it differently and positively.

Episode 1.20: There are New Things under the Sun. Lev Shestov and breaking with the past.

We are not obliged to be consistent with the past because we are not determined by it. We can change. The past only constrains us if we allow it to, if we believe it can and should. Otherwise almost anything is possible.

Episode 1.19: Three models of the self: the onion; the peach; the river.

The difference between solving problems in order to leave everything the same, and the much deeper approach of asking which problems will bring about radical change. Models of the self for three different answers.