PREMIUM-Ep. 290: Susanne Langer on Our Symbol-Making Nature (Part Two)
The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast
Mark Linsenmayer
4.6 • 2.3K Ratings
🗓️ 4 April 2022
⏱️ 12 minutes
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Summary
Continuing on Philosophy in a New Key (1942), ch. 1-5. Is symbolism the software running on the hardware of our senses, or are symbols baked even into that hardware? We talk pictures vs. symbols, types of symbol-pictures, and what it means for experience to be symbolic.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast Part 1 episodes are designed to be self-contained, |
| 0:12.8 | fully satisfying experiences in themselves. |
| 0:15.6 | But for hardcore philosophy fans, we record for another hour or so to release behind |
| 0:19.9 | our various paywalls to folks that pitch in to help us make this show. |
| 0:24.1 | What you're about to hear is a preview of one of these Part 2 episodes, we hope you |
| 0:27.7 | enjoy it. |
| 0:28.7 | This is the Partially Examined Life Episode 290 Part 2. |
| 0:32.5 | We've been discussing Suzanne Langer's philosophy in a new key from 1942. |
| 0:36.8 | I thought of a way of starting a soft ear to respond to my own point at the end of Part |
| 0:41.2 | 1 from Cousera about instinct. |
| 0:44.2 | If you're coupling your theory of us as symbolic beings with a critique of instinct, that's |
| 0:49.7 | a way of saying that we are run more by software than by hardware, right? |
| 0:54.3 | If you think that human behavior is all run by a very narrow set of instincts, then that |
| 1:02.1 | sounds like we're just programmed. |
| 1:04.6 | The hardware is constructed, so we'll react in certain ways. |
| 1:09.7 | But adding symbolism in there and saying that it's just fundamental, that it's not a |
| 1:14.7 | later thing that is built out of after we have basic perception and after we have thinking |
| 1:20.4 | and then certain rarefied creatures can symbolize. |
| 1:24.4 | No, a symbolization for us at least is in there right at our first moments of taking |
| 1:29.3 | in sensory information. |
| 1:31.5 | That's a way of potentially freeing us when we're talking about human motivations from |
| 1:36.6 | saying that it's all hardwired. |
... |
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