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BBC Radio 4

A History of Ideas

Paul Broks looks at the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and the problem of "other minds". How do I know you are not a zombie who behaves like a human but actually has no consciousness? Even if you are conscious, how can I tell that what I experience as red, you do not experience as blue? I know what's going on in my own mind, but I can never have direct access to what's going on in yours. 

Such questions have troubled philosophers for centuries, but Wittgenstein thought that most of these tough problems were caused by nothing more than a "bewitchment by language". He didn't claim to be able to solve them; rather, he invented a method which he thought of as a kind of philosophical therapy that would cause the problems to melt away. The aim, he said, was to "show the way out of the fly bottle". In the case of the "other minds" problem, he imagined trying to invent a "private language" to describe one's own private mental states, and then showed (he thought) that such an idea was incoherent. 

Is the fly out of the fly bottle? Paul Broks suspects not, and psychologist Nicholas Humphrey argues that philosophy took a disastrous turn in the 20th century when it started focusing on language. Humphrey argues that the privacy of our individual minds is a stark and unpalatable fact about human existence which has driven much of our culture. 

Presenter: Paul Broks
Producer: Jolyon Jenkins.

Neuropsychologist Paul Broks on Wittgenstein

If a tree falls in a forest and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound?

That's the kind of head-scratching question that's popularly believed to occupy the time and brains of philosophers. It relates to the ideas of immaterialism proposed by Bishop George Berkeley who asserted that the only things that exist are minds and ideas in those minds. He said that matter didn't really exist and that, in any case, it was unnecessary to complicate things with such a concept. For Berkeley, "to be perceived is to be".

But what happens to "things" when they are not being perceived? Did Bishop Berkeley really believe that his bed disappeared when he gets up in the morning and left the room? The answer is no, because there is the over-arching mind of God and God is always perceiving all things even when we are not. When Berkeley leaves the room God is still perceiving the bed so it doesn't pop out of existence.

To try and get to grips with this Clare Carlisle talks to Dr John Callanan, a lecturer in philosophy from Kings College London and hears a neat limerick on the subject by Robert Knox. She also talks to the filmmaker Carol Morley whose documentary, Dreams of a Life, explored the story of a 38 year old woman, Joyce Vincent, whose body was found in her flat amongst half wrapped Christmas presents, the tv switched on. She had been dead for 3 years and nobody had noticed she wasn't there.

The reader is Peter Marinker.

Producer: Natalie Steed.

Philosopher Clare Carlisle on Reality and Perception

Science is based on fact, right? Cold, unchanging, unarguable facts. Perhaps not, says physicist Tara Shears. 

Tara is more inclined to follow the principles of the Anglo-Austrian philosopher, Karl Popper. He believed that human knowledge progresses through 'falsification'. A theory or idea shouldn't be described as scientific unless it could, in principle, be proven false. 

Raised in a Vienna in thrall to Marxism and Freudianism, Popper bristled against these 'sciences' which could adapt and survive to prevailing political and social conditions. They could not be proven false and so they were not science. The ideas of Einstein, by contrast, could be tested scientifically and might one day be proven false.

An interesting principle certainly, but potentially demoralising for a scientist who could see her life's work dissolve in front of her eyes. Tara joins her colleagues at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva to ponder the implications of Popper's work. She also meets Popper's former student, John Worrall and string theoretician David Tong.

This is part of a week of programmes asking how we can know anything at all.

Physicist Tara Shears on Falsification

Barrister Harry Potter asks whether we can believe the evidence of our own eyes. It's a vital question for the justice system today and Harry traces it back to the work of 18th century Philosopher David Hume. Hume, a key figure in the Scottish Enlightenment, wrote about miracles, arguing they were most likely the product of wishful thinking and faulty perception. His arguments are still important for barristers, judges and juries still reliant on eye witness testimony to decide guilt or innocence. 

To find out how our eyes deceive us, Harry meets professor Amina Menon, expert in eye witness evidence at Royal Holloway, University of London. And Harry visits professor of philosophy Peter Millican at Oxford University to ask whether Hume's methods can help us overcome our inbuilt biases.

Producer: Melvin Rickarby.

Lawyer Harry Potter on Eyewitness Testimony

A history of ideas. Presented by Melvyn Bragg but told in many voices. 

Each week Melvyn is joined by four guests with different backgrounds to discuss a really big question. This week he's asking 'How can I know anything at all?'

Helping him answer it are physicist Tara Shears, lawyer Harry Potter, philosopher Clare Carlisle and neuropsychologist Paul Broks. 

For the rest of the week Tara, Harry, Clare and Paul will take us further into the history of this idea with programmes of their own. Between them they will examine: David Hume's debunking of miracles; Wittgenstein's attempt to prove that other people have minds; Karl Popper's idea of falsification, which underpins the scientific method; and George Berkeley's approach to a famous philosophical problem - If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

Producer: Melvin Rickarby.

How Can I Know Anything at All?

How should we love our children? Can we build on the feelings we experience when we see them for the first time, raise them by instinct and personal principles or should we consult the childcare gurus of the internet and the bookshelves?

Lisa Appignanesi, the novelist, biographer and author of 'All About Love' suggests that we should turn to the first childcare expert of them all, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The father of the Romantic movement was one of the first philosophers to consider the importance of the initial bond between mother and child, strongly opposing the fashionable habit of farming newborn babies out to wet nurses.

Rousseau failed to follow his own advice, abandoning his five children to the Paris orphanage, but his writing belatedly raised our children to a status worthy of philosophical debate.

Lisa is joined in her ruminations by psychoanalyst, Adam Phillips, Rousseau expert Christopher Brooke and her own son and grandson.

This is part of a week of progammes asking, 'What is love?'.

Writer Lisa Appignanesi on the Love of Children

What is love? Psychotherapist Mark Vernon looks at Freud's ideas on the Greek god Eros, which he saw as a kind of life force running through us, shaping our desires and passions

Freud is often thought of as reducing everything to sex, but in his view, for humans even sex isn't even really about sex. Although he started off thinking that sex was about biological release of pressure - like a steam engine - he quickly realised, from working with patients, that it was more about fantasy and imagination. 

Humans want far more from sex than just reproduction or physical stimulation. Freud used the Greek god Eros as a metaphor for the unconscious forces that motivate us. He thought of Eros as a something like a force field of love, going beyond the simple one-to-one sexual attraction to a broader desire to get more out of life. Eventually he saw Eros as a desire for unification with the whole of humanity that is built into the dynamic of life itself - the yearning that wants to pass life on in children, the passion for creativity and discovery,

Presenter: Mark Vernon
Producer: Jolyon Jenkins.

Psychotherapist Mark Vernon on Freud

Giles Fraser discusses gene theory versus altruism with playwright Tom Stoppard whose play The Hard Problem explores the extent to which our genes dictate human acts of love and kindness, and Armand Leroi, the evolutionary biologist who says we are merely programmed to carry out altruistic acts.

Producer: Maggie Ayre.

Theologian Giles Fraser on Altruism

In 416BC the Greek playwright Aristophanes went to a drinking party. The guests included many famous Athenians, including Socrates, and all of them delivered a speech about love. Aristophanes' speech, says presenter Edith Hall, is 'quite simply the most charming account of why humans need a love partner, another half, in world literature.'
In the beginning, he says, humans had two bodies - four legs, four arms. These early humans wheeled around the planet doing cartwheels and were blissfully happy. Then they offended the gods who split them in two. This explains why we are always looking for our other half. 
This speech appears in Plato's Symposium. Edith's programme also features matchmaker Mary Balfour who shares some of her own experience about the search for love; while Edith explains her belief that the absence of love begins with the primal separation of mother and child.

Classicist Edith Hall on Aristophanes in Plato

A history of ideas. Presented by Melvyn Bragg but told in many voices.

Each week Melvyn is joined by four guests with different backgrounds to discuss a really big question. This week he's asking 'What is Love?'.

Helping him answer it are theologian Giles Fraser, writer Lisa Appignanesi, classicist Edith Hall and psychotherapist Mark Vernon.

For the rest of the week Giles, Lisa, Edith and Mark will take us further into the history of ideas about love with programmes of their own. Between them they will examine Freud's ideas on erotic love, Jesus and altruism, the first guidance on how to be a loving parent, by Rousseau and Aristophanes' speech which explains how love was born.

Producer: Melvin Rickarby.

What Is Love?

Historian Justin Champion on Early Modern Comet Theory

Those who watched in awe as the space craft Philae bounced its way onto a comet last November should hold a candle for William Whiston. Back in 1696 this British theologian, mathematician and acolyte of Isaac Newton published a book called 'A new theory of the earth'. In it he argued that comets were responsible for the origins of the earth and life upon it. This was what Philae was tasked to help us find out when it dotted down on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

Not only does this feel like a coup for early modern farsightedness it also reminds us that much of early science was not built in opposition to Christianity but in order to justify it. Whiston's investigation of the natural world (like those of his peers) was designed to show how the biblical account of creation was true.

Historian Justin Champion on William Whiston's Comet Theory

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