Good Philosophical Conversation

Greetings Citizen Philosophers,

The latest Thinking Out Loud podcast has been released on iTunes. The session was recorded on Wednesday, May 7th, and the topic was:

"What makes for a good philosophical conbversation?"

Thank you, Billie Lagerwerff, David Rood, Deborah Martin, John Tytus, Steve Stokes, Steve Whiteman, and Uriah J. Fields, for your participation. We had a lively discussion. For those of you who missed out, here are some of the questions we wrestled with:

What makes a subject matter, philosophical? What makes a conversation style, philosophical? What is required for effective conversation of any kind? Is a cooperative style better than a confrontational style in philosophical discussions? What does it take to understand another's point of view? What is the objective of a good philosophical conversation? Is the search for meaning an essential part of any philosophical conversation? What fosters philosophical thinking in others? What stifles it? Are all philosophical questions timeless and universal? Are all timeless and universal questions philosophical? Must the philosophical topic lie outside the bounds of other established disciplines? Is a conversation about philosophical conversation, a philosophical conversation? Must the philosophical question be answerable? Must it be amenable to examination? What methods of examination are philosophical? How does one measure the success of a philosophical conversation? Who benefits from the conversation? What are the benefits? Are the benefits strictly intellectual? What does it take to benefit from a philosophical conversation? Can one find philosophical insight in any conversation? Can one find philosophical insight in entertainment? How can we find philosophical insight in any present moment?

I want to extend a special thanks to Steve Stokes for his work as our cyber host. Steve succeeded in connecting all four cyber guests, reaching way into the cyber hinterland to retrieve Debbie who was initially nowhere to be found, and on more than one occasion successfully resuscitated connections with David after they mysteriously went dead. On top of working all the connections, Steve monitored the cyber queue and kept me informed on who among our cyber guests was next in line to speak. Needless to say, all this made my job a lot easier. Thank you, Steve.

To subscribe to the podcast with your podcast software (such as iTunes or iPodder) copy and past the following link into your software:

www.citizenphilosopher.com/rss/tol_podcasts.xml

If you have iTunes, you can find us listed in the Apple Music Store directory under Podcasts/Society & Culture/Philosophy, or just do a search in iTunes on Thinking Out Loud People. The direct iTunes link is:

phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=214321935

If you don't have iTunes or other podcast software and just want to download the mp3 file directly, use this link:

Listen to the broadcast (mp3)

You are invited to add your thoughts by clicking on the "comments" link at the lower right hand corner of this post.

The next Thinking Out Loud will be Wednesday, June 4th, at 7:00 pm. No topic has yet been chosen.

If you have any other new topics to suggest or old topics you want to recycle, let me know.

Cheers,

Steve