Foucault:
A recommendation - Michel Foucault is regarded as a significant French philosopher, radical historian, political activist, and a gadfly to Noam Chomsky.
There is an instructor in the Bay Area who is an expert on the works of Foucault. His name is Josef Chytry and he teaches at UC Berkeley Extension and California College of the Arts in Oakland.
I've taken his classes on Foucault, Nietzsche, and Hegel. He is a profound spokesperson for these thinkers and his lectues have changed my perspective on how I view the world and the 'origins' of my thought.
He has also written an book entitled "The Aesthetic State- A Quest in Modern German Thought".
Here is his home page:
http://staff.haas.berkeley.edu/chytry/
He is a scholarly treasure for the Bay Area and deserves more recognition. I think your show would benefit from his appearance.
Anyway, please continue wth your program. Its the best!
Thomas Iwatsubo

我真的很想听你们谈谈说谎的句子，以及你们认为哪些回应对这个问题最有用。
Michael Glawson

Dear Ken and John,
I?ve been listening to your shows quit some time now and every time I feel a little bit more enlightened.
I?ve got a pretty strange question for you, I?ve been asking this quite a lot to many different scientists, philosophers and even religious thinkers. But it seems not many people have thought about it? Maybe it?s a completely new way of thinking I?m proposing here, or maybe I?m completely wrong in my assumptions. I will leave that conclusion to you.
宗教和哲学的主要谜题之一是三位一体。不知为何，这种神奇的三位一体可以在我们的亚伯拉罕宗教中找到，但也可以在达摩宗教中找到。引起我注意的是西方哲学思想中关于三位一体与某种力量有关的讨论，特别是涉及到所谓的圣灵的问题时。我记得一位哲学家，米歇尔·瑟韦特和其他人，声称他们认为这是一种力量。
在东方思想中，有很多关于所谓生命力量的讨论。其中一个引起我注意的是《道》第42节，它说道产生了一、二、三，它继续说，为了平衡生命力量，我们可以创造和谐。
My question:
当我们定义力时(在物理学中)，力是使物体移动和/或加速的东西，即使物体运动。当我查阅生命的定义时，我?M说生命有两种截然不同的运动:一种是让生命自给自足(被描述为新陈代谢)，另一种是让生命自我繁殖。第三种力量通常被生物科学描述为对刺激的反应。当我问自己为什么我要吃或者为什么动物要吃的时候，答案很简单:当我们不吃的时候，我们就会挨饿。同样可以为繁衍悲伤;我做爱是因为我?性唤起，这一点我们在所有动物身上都能看到。
When we can assume that al animal life, including insects, fish, birds, us and other mammals are all being compelled to eat and to have sex by hunger and lust, can we not assume that all life forms have these impulses. Even though a tree doesn?t seem to be very hungry or excited, it does the same two things we and all other life forms do to keep evolution going. Another force that makes life move is fear.
Why is it that we do not identify Hunger, Lust & Fear as life forces? Hunger and Lust could, in my opinion, be easily seen as Yin/Yang, because hunger is pain and lust is pleasure, both are originally the result of either not eating or eating. Later on in life?s evolution the lust part has (in my view on purpose) spread to the sexual act, which is, again in my view, the original Will to Live.
If I?m right this means that life is an evolving consciousness with the inherent will to live, making us humans a reaction or strategy to survive something more catastrophic than minute environmental changes, like a meteor impact or the calamity of the end-perm extinction. The big turnaround or change we can see if we take hunger, lust and fear into account is the creation of the mammal, 210 million years ago (relatively recent in life?s history). The main difference between original life forms like fish, lizards etc and maamals is the curious fact that newly born mammals are not able to feed their hunger without ?the other? while all other life forms, even though there is some parenting involved, are at least able from the outset to physically move from A to B to feed themselves. Only mammals and birds cannot. When we take a look at what we call ?intelligent? animals it always are birds or mammals who are so called intelligent. The fact is that we humans only have mutual emotional relations with each other, other mammals and some birds. We somehow know instinctively that when we name our pet lizard it wont respond to our calling him. The only thing that connects mammals with birds is that they are in need of ?the other? to be fed from birth before we become independent.
Another, somewhat more humanistic argument for hunger, lust and fear as life forces, are our social, global problems; Hunger, war (fear), treatment of women (lust) and the environment (lust) Also, maybe a bit to soon, when we define Hunger, Lust and Fear as the life forces we define Good and Evil as in: what is suffering? Hunger and fear are inherent to suffering and if they are accepted as the life forces, thereby our original pain and pleasure, it?s easy to explain what evil is and what good is (the absence of evil?)
I can go on and on about this but maybe I?m going overboard? Could you answer the question of the life forces for me?
Sincerely,
Martijn van Galen Last

How about Ex-Nihilo Creation AND THE VERY ACT OF PIONEERING as a form of Philosophy? Surely the need to PIONEER various things that become standard items is important for Philosophical research and discussion.
Amateur Philosopher in Supported Housing UK

注:我很喜欢这个节目，希望我可以下载到Juice，这样我就可以立即点击，而不是用ITunes攻击它。
再接再厉。斯坦福这样做是为人类服务。

What happened to complexity theory?

来一场关于假设的表演怎么样?If assumptions are
not explicitly expressed or are denied by the speaker
are we justified in presuming, even so, that
假设已经做出了?And if so, what is the
evidence?
Is our notion of assumption just based upon a presumption that thought has a logical form and that any statement is a kind of conclusion and so must have premises? Would we be justified in presuming a logical form for most thought?
It seems that we presume any speaker has a fund of
propositional beliefs that have some kind of
(?) relation to the content of their statement.
(you might bring in Searle's "backround" here) Could the relation be considered a sort of causal relation? If not, what kind of relation is it? If we were to describe the process of thought and speech in terms other than biological---neurons and so on--would it necessarily
include assumptions? What explanatory power does
the presumption of assumptions give us?
If we see assumptions in ourselves are we justified in seeing them in others? (ok, this strays into"how do we know there are other minds" territory--but any
positing of mind does so)
Is a conclusion just a sort of assumption---a leap of faith from premises? ; an assumption that premises do lead to the conclusion--? Can we say why a conclusion can be so compelling to us? Why should we necessarily assume that anything necessarily follows from anything else? Assumptions can be wrong---cannot then our assumptions about assumptions be wrong?
Finally, do we not all daily worship at the church of the presumptuous assumption?

我得出的结论是，哲学是一种追求——它是对无法回答的问题的追求(和热爱)。
Demonstrably answerable questions that have not yet been answered are of some interest, but once their answerabliliy is ascertained, they are, typically, left for others to pursue.
显然无法回答的问题也会引起一些兴趣，但在这些问题被证明无法回答之后，这种兴趣不会持续太久。它们通常被认为缺乏问题概念所必需的东西，比如意义。
It is those questions that resist answers, and that also resist a demonstration on their answerability, that are most fervently pursued, even loved. The wisdom of philosophy lies in this.

I will second Thomas Iwatsubo's suggestion: a show about Michel Foucault would be interesting. I don't know Josef Chytry (although he sounds like someone worth listening to on this topic), but another local Foucault expert is Patricia Parker of Stanford University's English Department. She taught courses on Foucault's work for years, and I always wondered why. That makes it sound as though I think she shouldn't have done so, but I don't mean it that way. And I could *guess* why, but I'd rather hear her explain it.
如果你想要一个包含福柯和乔姆斯基的更广泛的话题，它可能是权力，尤其是把权力看作是由特别强大或特权的个人和自私自利的合作者组成的小社区(乔姆斯基似乎是这样认为的)行使的东西，还是看作独立于(或形成于)人类“主体”的社会和文化力量更有用或更真实。就人类是社会动物而言，权力是一种通过实际的人偶然产生的力量。
我们是应该认为有权力的人*使用*他们的权力(因此*应该*妥善和明智地使用它)，还是权力实际上在利用人，将他们构成我们简单和轻率地称之为“个人”?托尔斯泰在《战争与和平》中问的这个问题是否与拿破仑和“伟人”的历史理论有关?乔姆斯基的观点是否鼓励了“忠诚”的民众，致力于更大的社会利益，并希望社会能变得更好?还是试图延续天真和误解?福柯的权力观是我们对自己的理解向前迈进了一步，还是导致了面对不公正的绝望和冷漠?

我很想听朱迪思·巴特勒上你的节目。撇开学科政治不谈(因为在这个项目中，这些问题应该很容易被放在前台)，我认为她可以成为一个非常有趣、积极的政治哲学问题的参与者。而且开车也很短…

There's been more than one episode of PT dealing with sports in some way or other - its philosophical or aesthetic dimension. How about an episode treating martial arts and Western philosophy?
Quite a bit has been written about the philosophical side of martial arts, usually a straightforward account of how Buddhism and Taoism inform the traditions; but it seems to me that more questions can be asked of the subject:
-Do the martial arts traditions have something to say about broader issues, like just war and politics? (After all, war is a tool of the state.) Is there a univocal answer among martial artists? (I'd say no.)
-武术是什么?它与拳击、摔跤或棍棒格斗有什么区别(如果有的话)?
-Given the rise in popularity of MMA (mixed martial arts) matches, has there been a decline in the traditions?
-李小龙认为身体表达一种世界观;你的战斗风格反映了你看待事物的方式。有没有很多关于非语言交流/语言的研究，有没有一种方法来做哲学——用一个人的拳头?
-Lee's favorite Western thinker was Spinoza. How can Western philosophy contribute to martial arts today?
You can probably find questions more amenable to the show than these. These are just my two cents' worth for a fine program; hopefully they're interesting to you too. Keep up the good work!

Another thought: how about something on psychoanalysis and philosophy?

Interesting question about the martial arts.
What differentiates the martial arts from western forms of boxing, wrestling, etc. is that true martial arts incorporates mind, body, and spirit into one combined energy that is free from thought, feelings, and time. Normally one?s mind, body, and spirit are each focused on different things for different reasons. In Zen, there is no time, there is no thought? the martial artist reacts without thought, without mind and lives only in the present. Thinking of a tactic or calculating a move should the opponent do this or that is in itself distracting and counterproductive. The true martial artist becomes one energy with the universe.
I recently read two books that give a very interesting perspective on this subject:
?Karate-do, Traditional Training for All Styles? by Kevin L. Seiler and Donald J. Seiler; and ?Everything,? by Robert T. Wood.

Dear Ken and John,
I was NOT referring to Creationism rather how real created change comes about that is standard setting!

Is this podcast available in mp3? (like a lot of people, I listen to podcasts mostly on my mp3 player.)