Episode 19: Fun, Pain, and Ontology (with Eric Kaplan)

Does all of reality exceed what we believe about it? Even the reality of fun? How about the reality of pain? Eric Linus Kaplan is an author (Does Santa Exist?), a TV writer (Big Bang Theory, Futurama), and an all-around philosophical dude (Buddhist monk, UC Berkeley philosophy doctoral student). Eric joins philosophy professors Richard Brown and Pete Mandik, co-hosts of the SpaceTimeMind podcast, for a discussion of ontology.

Episode Notes and Links

Does all of reality exceed what we believe about it? Even the reality of fun? How about the reality of pain? Eric Linus Kaplan is an author (Does Santa Exist?), a TV writer (Big Bang Theory, Futurama), and an all-around philosophical dude (Buddhist monk, UC Berkeley philosophy doctoral student). Eric joins philosophy professors Richard Brown and Pete Mandik, co-hosts of the SpaceTimeMind podcast, for a discussion of ontology, clowns, parties, tattoos, dentists, and experimental philosophy.

(Audio for this episode is drawn from the last part of the video chat viewable here: @YouTube.)

Eric’s choose your own adventure video for his book Does Santa Exist?: http://youtu.be/fZixtwdqGR8Eric's IMDB page: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0438235/Eric's blog: http://ericlinuskaplan.wordpress.comRichard Brown’s Philosophy TV Christmas monolog: “Santa, agnosticism, and Christmas” http://www.philostv.com/on-christmas-5/Eric Steinhart’s “The Simplicity of Santa” in which it is proved that Santa is an unextended thinking substance http://ericsteinhart.com/santa.htmlRecent Blog posts by Hillary Putnam on Experts and Meaning: The Question: http://putnamphil.blogspot.com/2014/11/a-question-about-experts-meaning-in.html The Answer: http://putnamphil.blogspot.com/2014/11/meaning-and-experts-answer-to-question.htmlClark Glymour "A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste"Stephen Stich "Deconstructing the Mind (Chapter 1)"