Driving

Overthink

Ellie Anderson, Ph.D. and David Peña-Guzmán, Ph.D.

Philosophy, Society & Culture, Education

4.7 • 549 Ratings

🗓️ 17 December 2024

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Have you ever wanted to go on a road trip with the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan? After listening to this episode, you certainly won’t! In episode 119 of Overthink, Ellie and David talk about the experience of driving and the moral and social dilemmas involved with it. How does driving alter our relationship with time and space? What is the “long distance truck driver problem”, and what does it have to do with animal consciousness? And how should we respond to the rise in self-driving cars? Buckle in and get ready for this ride into the philosophy of driving. Plus, in the bonus they dive deeper into the ethics of self-driving cars, exploring the repercussions hacking could have on self-driving cars. What moral philosophy should be programmed into the self-driving vehicles of the future? And who gets to decide?

Check out the episode's extended cut here!

Works Discussed:
David Armstrong, A Materialist Theory of The Mind
Kenneth Jackson, The Crabgrass Frontier
Stamatis Karnouskos, “Self-Driving Car Acceptance and the Rule of Ethics”
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception
Catherine Millot, Life with Lacan
Lynne Pearce, Drivetime
William Ratoff, “Self-driving Cars and the Right to Drive”
Mark Rowlands, Animal Rights: Moral Theory and Practice
Paul Virilio, Speed and Politics: An Essay on Dromology
Jamieson Webster, “Riding in Cars with Jacques Lacan”
Andreas Wolkenstein, “What has the Trolley Dilemma ever done for us (and what will it do in the future)? On some recent debates about the ethics of self- driving cars”

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Overthink.
0:16.2	The podcast where two philosophers relate big ideas to everyday life.
0:20.7	I'm David Peena Guzman.
0:22.4	And I'm Ellie Anderson.
0:24.3	Ellie, I want to begin by telling you an amazing story about the French psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan.
0:30.9	Okay.
0:31.8	Lacan was obsessed with cars, with driving, and with speed.
0:36.7	He'd had this fixation with going as fast as he possibly could whenever he was driving a car.
0:42.3	Sounds like me when I was 17.
0:44.2	It sounds like you still because I've been a car with you in Los Angeles.
0:49.6	But Lacan, on top of driving really fast, also was obsessed with never stopping at a red light.
0:56.4	Oh, okay.
0:57.0	Okay.
0:57.3	Yeah, that's a bridge too far.
0:59.3	Yeah, it's like overactive death drive, anybody.
1:02.3	And this became an issue with all of his acquaintances, with his friends, and with his family members, of course.
1:08.3	Now, this tea is coming straight to you from an article that was
1:12.1	published in the New York Review of Books by Jameson Webster, entitled, Riding in Cars with Jacques
1:18.6	Lacan, where the author talks about how anybody who knew Lacan would talk about this as an issue.
1:28.9	It was a problem.
1:29.7	So, for example, his patient and also lover, you know, breaking all ethical codes here.
1:35.0	Okay, so we got the running red lights.
	...

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