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(418)

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

345 | Adam Elga on Being Rational in a Very Large Universe

345 | Adam Elga on Being Rational in a Very Large Universe

Behaving rationally involves facing up to conditions of uncertainty; we never navigate the world with perfect confidence. Sometimes we are uncertain about the way the world is, but we can also be unce...

23 Feb 1h 34min

344 | Adam Gurri on Liberal Democracy and How to Fight For It

344 | Adam Gurri on Liberal Democracy and How to Fight For It

It's possible to look at the course of history over the past few centuries and discern a movement toward increasing democracy, freedom, and individual rights -- "liberalism," in the political-philosop...

16 Feb 1h 21min

343 | Tom Griffiths on The Laws of Thought

343 | Tom Griffiths on The Laws of Thought

For all that human beings spend a lot of their time thinking, it's far from obvious what that process actually entails. Part of it amounts to classical logical reasoning. But an even bigger part invol...

9 Feb 1h 19min

AMA | Feb 2026

AMA | Feb 2026

Welcome to the February 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 Pa...

2 Feb 3h 10min

342 | Rachell Powell on Evolutionary Convergence, Morality, and Mind

342 | Rachell Powell on Evolutionary Convergence, Morality, and Mind

Evolution with natural selection involves an intricate mix of the random and the driven. Mutations are essentially random, while selection pressures work to prefer certain outcomes over others. There ...

26 Jan 1h 37min

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