Every Thursday morning I try to listen to the BBC Radio 4 programme In Our Time hosted by Melvyn Bragg. It is repeated later in the evening and also is available as a podcast here so I seldom miss its erudite discussion.
The topic yesterday was Free Will and there were 3 philosophers contributing:
Simon Blackburn, Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge
Helen Beebee, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Birmingham
Galen Strawson, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading
Melvyn Bragg writes a newsletter after the programme. One nugget from the many:
There were "some wonderful quotations. Simon Blackburn quoted from Schopenhauer, who suggested that imagining we have free will is exactly as if water spoke to itself: I can make waves (yes! in the sea during a storm), I can rush downhill (yes! in the river bed), I can plunge down foaming and gushing (yes! in the waterfall), I can rise freely as a stream of water into the air (yes! in the fountain), I can, finally, boil away and disappear (yes! at a certain temperature); but I am doing none of these things now, and am of my own accord remaining quiet and clear water in the reflecting pond."
"Einstein wrote: If the moon, in the act of completing its eternal way around the earth, were gifted with self-consciousness, it would feel thoroughly convinced that it was travelling its way of its own accord on the strength of a resolution taken once and for all. Darwin wrote of the great delusion of free will."
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Photos by John A:
[1] Top - Canisp from Elfin (north-west Scotland) in December 2005
[2] Bottom - North Harris (Outer Hebrides) taken at the weekend
1 comment:
It sounds like your BBC radio has good programming. Here all the radios play either Rock and or rap, country music or Christian music, without forgetting “talk Radio” which is usually super conservative chatters that insults one’s intelligence. NPR has some good programs and classical music – but today Congress decided that they did not want to fund it any longer. Typical.
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