Archive for April 2016
My First Float
Last Saturday, I had my first experience in a float tank, sometimes also referred to as a sensory deprivation chamber. I had been curious about them since I first learned about them in the 1970s, especially after seeing the 1980 William Hurt movie, Altered States. Recently, a couple of commercial float ventures have opened in…
Read MoreThinking and Feeling, Critically
We are deep into the political season. Looking at the Trump phenomenon, an article by Phil Torres in Salon bemoans the “anti-intellectualism that runs through the roots of American culture.” Torres notes that, “[T]he most dangerous consequence of Fox News is that it discourages that most important form of rigorous curiosity called critical thinking.” Critical thinking,…
Read MoreEpisode 245 :: Doug Smith :: Was the Buddha an Anti-Realist?
Doug Smith Doug Smith joins us to speak about his paper from the Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, Was the Buddha an Anti-Realist? We see the debate all the time, particularly online. Did Buddha believe this, or did Buddha believe that? In particular, the gravity well seems to deepen when it comes…
Read MoreSkepticism, Atheism, and the Good Life
Where do we find the good life? The ancient Greeks, our earliest philosophical forebears in the West, thought the highest aim of reason was to answer just this kind of question. Nowadays we often think of reason as allied to the twin aims of (1) scientific skepticism, that is, following the results of consensus science as…
Read MoreEpisode 244 :: Ethan Nichtern :: The Road Home: A Contemporary Exploration of the Buddhist Path
Ethan Nichtern Ethan Nichtern joins us to speak about his recent book, The Road Home: A Contemporary Exploration of the Buddhist Path. Hi, everyone. Before we get started with today’s episode, I want to remind the listeners that we’ve started a new podcast which may also interest you. It’s called Present Moment: Mindfulness Practice and…
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