178 | Jody Azzouni on What Is and Isn't Real

178 | Jody Azzouni on What Is and Isn't Real

Are numbers real? What does that even mean? You can't kick a number. But you can talk about numbers in useful ways, and we use numbers to talk about the real world. There's surely a kind of reality there. On the other hand, Luke Skywalker isn't a real person, but we talk about him all the time. Maybe we can talk about unreal things in useful ways. Jody Azzouni is one of the leading contemporary advocates of nominalism, the view that abstract objects are not "things," they are merely labels we use in talking about things. A deeply philosophical issue, but one that has implications for how we think about physics and the laws of nature.

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Jody Azzouni received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the City University of New York. He is currently a professor of philosophy at Tufts University. In addition to his philosophical work, he is an active writer of fiction and poetry.


Avsnitt(423)

351 | Peter Singer on Maximizing Good for All Sentient Creatures

351 | Peter Singer on Maximizing Good for All Sentient Creatures

Peter Singer has been an influential philosopher for a number of decades. He was a significant early voice in animal rights, has been a leading thinker of utilitarianism, and helped inspire the effect...

20 Apr 1h 15min

350 | J. Eric Oliver on the Self and How to Know It

350 | J. Eric Oliver on the Self and How to Know It

We are more familiar with ourselves than with anything else in the universe, but we generally don't come very close to really understanding what our "self" is. That's not too surprising, as selves are...

13 Apr 1h 21min

AMA | April 2026

AMA | April 2026

Welcome to the April 2026 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Patre...

5 Apr 3h 46min

349 | Daniel Harlow on What Quantum Gravity Teaches Us About Quantum Mechanics

349 | Daniel Harlow on What Quantum Gravity Teaches Us About Quantum Mechanics

There is something special about gravity. After decades of effort, there is still no convergence on the right way to reconcile Einstein's theory of general relativity with the framework of quantum mec...

30 Mars 1h 25min

348 | Jessica Riskin on Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Life as Creative Agency

348 | Jessica Riskin on Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Life as Creative Agency

"Lamarkism" is a term often attached to a seemingly discredited idea in evolutionary biology: that one organism could acquire characteristics (e.g., becoming stronger through exercise) that would then...

23 Mars 1h 15min

347 | Andrew Guthrie Ferguson on How Your Data Will Be Used Against You

347 | Andrew Guthrie Ferguson on How Your Data Will Be Used Against You

In the 18th century, philosopher Jeremy Bentham suggested the Panopticon as a model of a prison where inmates could be constantly observed by just a single prison guard. Although his original idea was...

16 Mars 1h 8min

346 | Erica Cartmill on How Human and Animal Minds Think and Play

346 | Erica Cartmill on How Human and Animal Minds Think and Play

Intelligence is a many splendored thing, especially when it comes to comparisons between species. Chimpanzees are better than humans at some numerical tasks, but less good at understanding what number...

9 Mars 1h 28min

AMA | March 2026

AMA | March 2026

Welcome to the March 2026 Ask Me Anything episode of Mindscape! These monthly excursions are funded by Patreon supporters (who are also the ones asking the questions). We take questions asked by Patre...

2 Mars 3h 53min

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