Before we start, I just want to say this is a very special episode of Philosophy versus Improv

with a top flight guest, Babet Babich, Philosophy Professor. And this came out of when I was

preparing for the partially examined life episode 289 on Humes, The Standard of Taste. Babet is the

person who edited the collection called Reading David Humes on the Standard of Taste. And she provides

some really illuminating background on the conditions under which the essay was written that makes you

just re-evaluate the whole thing. So I hope in particular, PEL fans will enjoy this one. But it's

absolutely fine if you have not listened to that partially examined life episode and have no

intention to do so. I think this stands alone as well. Here we go.

This is Philosophy versus Improv where two sages try to teach each other a thing or two,

and maybe you the audience gets something out of it as well. I'm Mark Lindsay Meyer, a

philosophy worshipper who's interested in learning Improv. And I'm Bill Arnet, an Improv

contractor ready to dive into philosophy. And we have a special guest today.

Babet, please introduce yourself. I am Babet Babich and I teach philosophy at Fordham and

occasionally I also am interested in improv questions as a question. Perfect. Wonderful. So yes,

you have the distinction. I believe of being our first philosophy guest who is a professional

philosopher who is not somebody that I've had prior contact with, not someone who runs her own

podcast, but somebody that was relevant to a partially examined life episode that I had just done

that touched on human standard of taste. And you had done a nice secondary reading on that.

Just to remind the listeners, Bill comes in with an Improv lesson. I usually come in with a

philosophy lesson. We've sort of established beforehand. We're going to talk about the thing that

you were writing about, which is the role of the judge that would get at whether beauty, whatever

we're using are aesthetic faculties is subjective or objective. What sort of expertise this is,

...