Success

07/16/24 • 58 min

3 Listeners

Cooked, slayed, delivered, ate. In episode 108 of Overthink, Ellie and David break down what it means to succeed, and why this sneaky word pervades our society today - in everything from the ambitions of classic American stage figures, to the refined effortlessness in Zhuangzi’s tales, to the corporate world of buzzwords. Your hosts discuss party planning, tenure tracks, inspirational quotes, haters, why science seems so successful, and the pitfalls of thinking we’ve got it all figured out. Plus, in the Patreon bonus, they reflect on the interpersonal tensions of sharing successes, and making the best of our mishaps.

Check out the episode's extended cut here!
Works Discussed
Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity
Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory
William Desmond, “Philosophy and Failure”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, What is Success?
Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman
Hilary Putnam, Mathematics, Matter and Method
Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation
Tim Wu, “In Praise of Mediocrity”
Zhuangzi, “The Secret of Caring for Life”

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Previous Episode

Organisms

In episode 107 of Overthink, David and Ellie take up a philosophical perspective on biology’s squirmiest concept: the organism. From Kant’s distinction between organisms and mechanisms, to Deleuze and Guattari’s infamous call for ‘bodies without organs,’ they uncover and question the ontological and metaphorical baggage behind the concept. Their exploration takes them from the bottom of Sea of Naples to the heights of Romantic Idealism, passing through the tensions of contemporary genetics. Plus, in the Patreon bonus, they discuss the unexpected relations between organisms, politics, and reason through the thought of Lukács and Canguilhem.
Check out the episode's extended cut here!
Works Discussed
Georges Canguillhem, Knowledge of Life
Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition
Deleuze & Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus
Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment
Georg Lukács, The Destruction of Reason
Jennifer Mensch, Kant’s Organicism: Epigenesis and the Development of Critical Philosophy
Friedrich Schelling, First Outline of a System of the Philosophy of Nature
Lewis Thomas, The Medusa and the Snail
D. M. Walsh, Organisms, Agency, and Evolution

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Next Episode

Predictive Brain with Andy Clark

Phantom phone buzzes? Painless mosquito bites? Toy masks flipped inside-out? It might be your brain bringing order to its complex world. In episode 109 of Overthink, Ellie and David interview cognitive philosopher Andy Clark, whose cutting edge work on perception builds off theories of computation to offer an intriguing new model of mind and experience. He explains why the predictive processing model promises a healthier relation to neurodiversity, and they all explore its real-world applications across placebos, road safety, chronic pain, anxiety, and even the accidental success of ‘positive thinking.’ Plus, in the bonus, Ellie and David discuss depression, plasticity, qualia, zombies, and what phenomenologists can bring to the cognitive table.
Check out the episode's extended cut here!
Works Discussed:
Thomas Bayes, An Essay Towards Solving a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances
Anjali Bhat, et al., "Immunoceptive inference: why are psychiatric disorders and immune responses intertwined?"
Andy Clark, The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality
Sarah Garfinkel, et al., "Knowing your own heart: distinguishing interoceptive accuracy from interoceptive awareness"
Hermann von Helmholtz, Treatise on Physiological Optics
David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature
Alva Nöe, Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness
Anil Seth, Being You
This Might Hurt (2019)

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