love & philosophy

Send a love message Find Mac at https://macshine.github.io/publications/ Mac’s Lab : https://profiles.sydney.edu.au/mac.shine The Brain Inspired conversation Andrea mentions . Mac Shine on Systems Neuroscience, Automaticity, and the Cerebellum’s Role in Human Cognition. In discussion with Andrea Hiott. University of Sydney systems neuroscientist Mac Shine in conversation about systems neuroscience and the challenge of linking single-neuron explanations with whole-brain network accounts. Shine describes his path from evolutionary biology influences and medical training to a search for simplified, cross-scale principles in brain science, noting how terminology like “representation” or “integration” can hinder communication across disciplines. They discuss his 2014 paper “Delegation to Automaticity,” inspired by observing his son learn to walk, which argues that cerebellar architecture supports the delegation of difficult skills into automatic control, freeing resources for higher-level cognition and potentially shaping human cognitive evolution alongside bipedalism. Shine contrasts basal ganglia habit findings with cerebellar predictive control, uses driving and chess to illustrate deliberate versus automatic processes, and emphasizes embodiment, learning through struggle, and collaborative, caring lab culture. 00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro 00:27 Automaticity and Evolution Teaser 02:48 Why This Conversation Matters 05:02 What Is Systems Neuroscience 10:24 Mac’s Path Into Systems Thinking 18:42 Language Gaps Across Fields 26:15 Are We Assuming Cognition 33:35 Delegation to Automaticity Paper 37:19 Cerebellum as Automation Engine 46:09 Bipedalism and Coevolving Mind Body 47:29 Bipedalism And Cognition 50:05 Natural Selection Good Enough 52:37 Frozen Accidents And Delegation 55:06 Humans Adapt Not Excel 58:33 Repetition To Automaticity 01:00:19 Habit Versus Automatic 01:08:18 Driving And Chess Layers 01:16:18 Beyond Motor Cognition 01:21:57 Flow States And Expertise 01:27:26 Scientific Humility Ethos 01:29:16 Curiosity Over Credit 01:30:57 AI And The Value Of Being Wrong 01:33:07 Learning Through Struggle 01:37:59 Embodiment And Driving 01:40:56 Cerebellum Body Brain Coupling 01:48:14 Expertise Through Variation 01:53:31 Lab Curiosity And Next Questions 01:59:49 Care Love And Leadership 02:04:44 Closing Reflections Support the show Buy Holding Paradox: The Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness by Andrea Hiott Sign up for Making Ways newsletter and projects. Please rate and review with love. YouTube , Facebook , Instagram , Substack .

Send a love message Philosopher of science Hasok Chang (University of Cambridge) joins Andrea Hiott to trace the through-line of his work — from Inventing Temperature (2004), through Is Water H₂O? (2012), to Realism for Realistic People (2022) — and to think together about what it means to treat knowledge as something we do rather than something we merely possess . The conversation begins with why Inventing Temperature has quietly become an inspiration for neuroscientists: it shows how a felt quality (hot and cold) can become a trustworthy number (temperature) — not by discovering a pre-given fact, but through a messy, iterative, bootstrapping process of invention. From there, Chang and Hiott move through the ideas that organize his mature philosophy: epistemic iteration , operational coherence , active/activist realism , path dependence , conceptual engineering , and a pragmatist re-reading of truth that no longer leans on correspondence to an inaccessible reality. A recurring theme: Chang describes each of his books as costing him “an article of faith” — first foundationalism , then monism , then the ideal of pure science — and how each loss opened onto a more dynamic, practice-based, and pluralist picture of knowing. Hiott connects these moves to her own navigational approach to mind and NAEC , where cognition is understood as a body’s coherent, aim-directed action in the world rather than the storage of static representations. Full show notes here. Hasok Chang is the Hans Rausing Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. Trained first in physics (Caltech) and then in philosophy (Stanford), he is known for “integrated history and philosophy of science” and for what he calls complementary science — using historical and philosophical study to recover scientific questions that mainstream science has forgotten or foreclosed. His three main single-author books are Inventing Temperature (Oxford, 2004; winner of the 2006 Lakatos Award), Is Water H₂O? (Springer, 2012), and Realism for Realistic People (Cambridge, 2022). He is a founding figure of the Society for Philosophy of Science in Practice (SPSP) and the Committee for Integrated HPS. Andrea Hiott is a philosopher and cognitive scientist developing the navigational approach to mind — the view that mind is “the body’s navigational action in all spaces of life, from the geographical to the emotional to the social to the virtual.” She hosts the Love & Philosophy (Beyond Dichotomy) podcast and Substack, and her work draws on hippocampal research, 4E cognition (embodied, embedded, extended, enactive), and the ecological tradition. Her book Holding Paradox: A Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness is forthcoming. Her recurring interests — holding apparent contradictions open, “way-making,” constellation/kaleidoscopic thinking, and moving beyond either/or — frame her questions to Chang throughout. Chang’s three books at a glance Book Year Central question “Article of faith” Chang says he lost Inventing Temperature 2004 How did scientists learn to measure temperature reliably without already having a trustworthy thermometer to check against? Foundationalism — the idea that knowledge rests on some ultimate, secure foundation (fundamental laws, or raw experience) Is Water H₂O? 2012 Was the consensus that water is H₂O actually forced by the evidence — and should science ever settle on a single account? Monism — the idea that there is one world, one truth, and one job for science: to find it Realism for Realistic People 2022 What would scientific realism look like if we started from practice and everyday life rather than from correspondence to an ultimate reality? The ideal of pure science — knowledge first, application second (he moves openly into pragmatism ) Key terms & concepts (glossary) The definitions below are general but we're staying faithful to Chang’s own usage. Epistemic iteration. Chang’s name for how inquiry actually makes progress: we don’t begin from a secure foundation, but knowingly start from an imperfect position and then use the results of inquiry to correct and refine that very starting point — a self-improving loop with no bedrock underneath. In Realism for Realistic People Chang invokes Peirce’s image that inquiry “is not standing on the bedrock of fact… It is walking upon a bog, and we can only say, this ground seems to hold for the present.” The aim is not coherence as such, but the ongoing improvement of coherence. (In the conversation, Chang stresses that he first thought iteration solved only the narrow problem of validating measurement standards, then came to see it as a very general pattern of learning.) Operational coherence. Roughly, “a harmonious fitting-together of the elements and aspects of an activity, which is conducive to the successful achievement of the aims of that activity.” It is Chang’s practice-based replacement for truth as correspondence : instead of asking whether a proposition matches reality, we ask whether an activity’s parts hang together well enough to reliably achieve its aim. Crucially, coherence is always defined relative to an aim — without a stated or assumed purpose, the word “coherence” has no meaning. Epistemic activity. “A more-or-less coherent set of mental or physical operations that are intended to contribute to the production or improvement of knowledge in a particular way, in accordance with some discernible rules (though the rules may be unarticulated).” Examples: measuring, detecting, predicting, hypothesis-testing — but also mundane actions like lighting a match. System of practice. A coherent, interacting set of epistemic activities carried out with a view to achieving certain overall aims. (This is the unit Chang argues can be legitimately plural : several incommensurable systems of practice can coexist productively within one discipline.) Active knowledge / “knowing how.” Chang’s term (in Realism for Realistic People ) for knowledge that resides in ability and action rather than in propositions — knowing how to do something rather than knowing that some statement is true. He argues proposition-based epistemology simply isn’t the right tool for evaluating methods, instruments, or institutions; for that we need to look at the coherence of what we do. Active realism vs. activist realism (a terminology note). In Is Water H₂O? Chang introduced active realism : the view that realism shouldn’t be sitting back satisfied that we know a lot, but should be an attitude — even an “ideology” — committed to continually learning more and better about reality. In Realism for Realistic People he renamed it activist realism , to avoid confusion with his separate notion of active knowledge (someone might wrongly hear “active realism” as “any assured possession of active knowledge”). “Activist” better captures the ever-learning, never-shrinking commitment. (The two terms are easy to run together in conversation; Chang’s clarification here is the reference point for both.) Support the show Buy Holding Paradox: The Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness by Andrea Hiott Sign up for Making Ways newsletter and projects. Please rate and review with love. YouTube , Facebook , Instagram , Substack .

Send a love message Keya Maitra is the Lenney Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hawai'i Mānoa . Keya joins Andrea to talk about her Philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita . They discuss this text as a living philosophical conversation. They move from action without attachment and yoga as a redirection of attention, to why the Gita's dualism isn't the mind-body split we know from Descartes, to how holding tension (rather than dissolving it) opens an expanding circle of care. By the end, they're calling it a love story: not romance, but caring, vulnerability, and the way real conversation itself becomes a form of care. Andrea Hiott is a philosopher and cognitive scientist developing the navigational approach to mind — the view that mind is “the body’s navigational action in all spaces of life, from the geographical to the emotional to the social to the virtual.” She hosts the Love & Philosophy (Beyond Dichotomy) podcast and Substack, and her work draws on hippocampal research, 4E cognition (embodied, embedded, extended, enactive), and the ecological tradition. Her book Holding Paradox: A Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness is forthcoming. Her recurring interests — holding apparent contradictions open, “way-making,” constellation/kaleidoscopic thinking, and moving beyond either/or — frame her questions to Maitra throughout. How Keya came to the Gita. Growing up in a Bengali-speaking Hindu household, first encountering it in a middle-school Sanskrit class, then never in an Indian philosophy classroom—through a PhD on Hilary Putnam and philosophy of language, before finally meeting it academically while teaching Joel Kupperman's comparative philosophy course in Connecticut. Philosophy as "being one's whole self in writing." Keya draws on feminist philosopher Naomi Scheman to describe her journey as coming to be her whole self with philosophy, with the Gita quietly anchoring that path. What the Gita actually is. A 700-verse, 18-chapter conversation set on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, narrated by Sanjaya, unfolding between Arjuna and his charioteer Krishna—who is revealed to be reality itself. Why another translation? Keya's modest but pointed goal: a Gita that works in a Western philosophy classroom. Why she keeps every name for the characters (relationality matters—Arjuna as "son of Kunti" keeps his mother present) rather than flattening them the way some translations do. Action without attachment. Not indifference, not Kantian action-for-action's-sake, but how you act—without being consumed by the fruits of action (karma phala) while still holding your relationships close. Yoga as a redirection of attention. Why Keya refuses to translate yoga as "discipline," and how Krishna's call to "be a yogi" points toward union at multiple levels—self and body, self and Krishna, self and everything. Beyond dichotomy. The dualism of the Gita isn't Cartesian mind-body dualism but self-body dualism—opening room for embodied cognition, embodied relationality. And Krishna's repeated call to "go beyond dualities" of good and bad, not by transcending them but by understanding them. Prakriti and Purusha. The Samkhya framework of nature/action and consciousness/witness, and how the Gita folds them under Krishna as "lower" and "higher" nature. Equanimity ( samatvam ) as groundedness that isn't experience-lessness. Tension as potency. Reframing tension not as a negative but as possibility—and caring itself as a kind of tension we learn to hold without dissolving the paradox. The Gita's difficulties, honestly. Its problematic verses on caste, B.R. Ambedkar's scathing critique, and how the same text can hold radically different readings—including those of Gandhi (who called it his "eternal mother") and of the people who killed him. The expanding circle of care. Why going inward, on Keya's reading, doesn't make us less socially responsible—it widens responsibility, because the "self" one turns toward is not a private inner space but something that dissolves the limits between self and world. A love story. Not a romance, but love as deep caring, vulnerability, and growing together—including Krishna's own vulnerability in telling Arjuna, in the end, to "do what you think is the right thing to do." And conversation itself as an act of care. Philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita : A Contemporary Introduction (Bloomsbury, 2018) Related to the Kant thread in this episode — " Comparing the Bhagavad-Gita and Kant : A Lesson in Comparative Philosophy" F eminist Philosophy of Mind (co-edited with Jennifer McWeeny, Oxford UP, 2022) — background for the care/feminist threads About Keya: "Her intellectual journey bridges continents and traditions. Trained in both India and the United States, she holds two Ph.D.s—one in Philosophy of Language from the University of Hyderabad and another in Philosophy of Mind from the University of Connecticut. She has been a professor at the University of North Carolina Asheville, where she also served as the director of the Humanities Program and Thomas Howerton Distinguished Professor of Humanities (2018-22). Her research and teaching facilitate critical conversations across cultural and disciplinary boundaries...." Mentioned: The Bhagavad Gita: A Contemporary Introduction (Keya Maitra); Barbara Stoler Miller's translation; Joel Kupperman; Daniel Kolak / Wadsworth Philosophers Series; Hilary Putnam; Naomi Scheman; the Mahabharata ; Vyasa; Gandhi; B.R. Ambedkar; Thoreau and Walden; Samkhya philosophy; care ethics and non-ideal theory. Support the show Buy Holding Paradox: The Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness by Andrea Hiott Sign up for Making Ways newsletter and projects. Please rate and review with love. YouTube , Facebook , Instagram , Substack .

Send a love message Mark Solms began translating Freud's neuroscientific writings in the late 1980s, then gave twenty-nine years to revising the translation of Freud's psychological works. In this episode, Solms joins Andrea Hiott to talk about his new book, The Only Cure: Freud and the Neuroscience of Mental Healing — and to make a surprising case: that far from being the discredited figure many take him for, Freud built a model of the mind, from the inside, that modern neuroscience is now confirming from the outside. Together they explore multiple memory systems and the unconscious as things we repeat rather than remember; why transference is a far bigger phenomenon than its jargon suggests; the damage done by the "chemical imbalance" story of depression; the stubborn role of time in real change; and, in the end, care — the idea that psychoanalysis is ultimately a cure by love. Throughout, they return to the show's animating theme: holding paradox, and refusing the false choice between the subjective and the objective, feeling and fact. ( Please see here for all the papers to really look into the serotonin debate. It is nuanced and requires study and deep thought.) Andrea & Mark also discuss dual-aspect monism, subjective and objective perspectives, multiple memory systems, unconscious processing, state-dependent memory, and transference as the enactment of non-declarative “action policies” that therapy makes visible and revisable through repeated working-through over time. Solms links these ideas to care, politics, and mortality, ending with Freud’s “cure by love,” followed by Andrea reading Seamus Heaney’s “From The Cure at Troy.” About the guest: Mark Solms is a neuropsychologist, psychoanalyst, and world-leading pioneer of neuropsychoanalysis. He discovered the brain mechanisms of dreaming, serves as science director of the American Psychoanalytic Association, and is the translator and editor of the Revised Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. His previous book was The Hidden Spring (2021). 00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro 03:50 Freud Translator Journey 05:20 Why Call It Cure 07:00 Reframing Freud Today 11:41 Freud as Neuroscientist 19:57 Memory Systems and Unconscious 31:41 Subjective Meets Objective 39:08 Chemical Imbalance Myth 43:23 Needs Feelings and Therapy 51:03 Pills Versus Talking 52:09 Limits Of Medication 53:31 When Pills Help 54:41 What Is Transference 56:04 Infantile Amnesia 57:17 Interpreting Patterns 01:01:25 Why Therapy Takes Time 01:04:46 Cost Versus Care 01:10:59 Teddy And Polypharmacy 01:19:20 Short Termism Trap 01:23:13 Cure By Love 01:25:37 AI Therapy Limits 01:31:25 Mortality And Meaning 01:34:55 Closing Thanks 01:36:09 Heaney Poem Easter Egg KEY THEMES Freud was a neuroscientist first. Over 23 years he contributed to neuron theory, neuroanatomy, and clinical neurology. His 1891 work on aphasia reframed language as a psychological function — the seed of psychoanalysis. Because his neuroscientific writings were never translated into English, this side of Freud stayed invisible. Two perspectives on one thing. Solms argues for dual-aspect monism: the subjective and objective are two views of a single reality, not rival teams. Feelings can only be empirically observed through introspection — leave them out and you lose half the causal picture. Memory, the unconscious, and transference. Freud anticipated the modern model of multiple memory systems decades early. Unconscious memories aren't recalled as images; they're repeated as "motor policies." Transference is that repetition made visible — and naming it gives the patient the freedom to revise it ("free won't"). Against the "chemical imbalance" myth. The claim that depression is a serotonin deficiency is, for Solms, both conceptually incoherent and empirically disproven. Bad feelings are signals of unmet needs. Medication has a real but limited role — it changes your state, not who you are. Time, care, and cure by love. Real change is slow because procedural memories are "hard to learn and hard to forget." Therapy works partly as re-parenting, drawing on the mammalian capacity for care. Cure and care share the Latin root cura — and Solms ends on Freud's phrase that psychoanalysis is "a cure by love." NOTABLE MOMENTS "One doesn't cure symptomatically. One cures causally." "They're not remembered, they're repeated." "It's called not free will, it's called free won't." "Computers don't give a damn." "Reality always wins." MENTIONED & FURTHER READING The Only Cure: Freud and the Neuroscience of Mental Healing — Mark Solms The Hidden Spring (2021) — Mark Solms The Revised Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (2024) — translated/edited by Solms Holding Paradox: The Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness — Andrea Hiott Referenced thinkers & ideas: Sigmund Freud, Baruch Spinoza (dual-aspect monism), Hilary Putnam (functionalism), Edward Tolman (multiple memory systems), B. F. Skinner, Donald Hebb, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 4E cognition and enactivism, Philip Ball, and Freud's letter to Einstein. Andrea Hiott is a philosopher and cognitive scientist developing the navigational approach to mind — the view that mind is “the body’s navigational action in all spaces of life, from the geographical to the emotional to the social to the virtual.” She hosts the Love & Philosophy (Beyond Dichotomy) podcast and Substack, and her work draws on hippocampal research, 4E cognition (embodied, embedded, extended, enactive), and the ecological tradition. Her book Holding Paradox: A Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness is forthcoming. Her recurring interests — holding apparent contradictions open, “way-making,” constellation/kaleidoscopic thinking, and moving beyond either/or — frame her questions to Solms throughout. Support the show Buy Holding Paradox: The Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness by Andrea Hiott Sign up for Making Ways newsletter and projects. Please rate and review with love. YouTube , Facebook , Instagram , Substack .

Send a love message Molyneux's Question with Janet Levin and Brian Glenney Love & Philosophy — Beyond Dichotomy In 1688, an Irish scientist named William Molyneux sent John Locke a letter with a question in it. Suppose a man born blind has learned by touch to tell a cube from a sphere. Suppose he is given sight, and the two objects are set on a table in front of him. Could he tell, by looking alone, which is which? Locke said no, and put the question into the second edition of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding . Berkeley said no more emphatically. Leibniz said yes — with a hint, and a little time. And three centuries later the question is still open, only now it's being asked in operating theatres in New Delhi, in habituation studies with ten-hour-old infants, and in the way a skateboarder looks at a handrail. Janet Levin and Brian Glenney have been in conversation about this problem since Brian's dissertation defense in 2007, where Janet was on his committee. They still disagree (productively) about whether you need to move your body in order to see. This episode is that disagreement, twenty years on. Janet Levin is recently retired from the philosophy department at the University of Southern California. She works on the mind-body problem, phenomenal concepts, and what she calls the philosophy of philosophy: whether thought experiments are worth anything, and whether they can absorb empirical information and still count as philosophy. Her 2008 paper introduced the distinction between temporal and epistemic immediacy that has shaped how the Molyneux question is tested ever since. Brian Glenney teaches at Norwich University in Vermont. He wrote his dissertation on Molyneux's problem at USC in 2007 under James Van Cleve and Janet Levin, wrote the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on the question, and has since argued for a pluralist answer — that the question has many correct answers depending on who is being asked about, and how. He also works on skateboarding, urban space, and the sensory expertise he calls the skater's eye. Full show notes 00:00 — Why a navigational approach to mind keeps running into this question 02:20 — Introductions: phenomenal concepts, sensory expertise, and Bernie Sanders at the skate park 05:20 — Janet reads Locke's own statement of the question, and his answer 08:00 — Why this was supposed to be the crucial experiment for empiricism vs. rationalism 10:30 — The 1688 letter Locke never answered, and the 1693 one he did 12:00 — Molyneux, Dioptrica Nova , and the attempt to give empiricism experimental oomph 14:00 — Why Locke buried the question in a passage about perceptual learning 15:00 — Common sensibles: what touch and sight might share 17:00 — Locke's "at first sight" trick, and what it forecloses 19:30 — Passivity vs. activity: if you move your head, is it still perception? 20:40 — Leibniz's cheat code, and the birth of epistemic immediacy 22:20 — Janet's distinction: temporal immediacy vs. epistemic immediacy 24:15 — Held (2011) and the best evidence for a "no" 27:30 — Andrea's caricature: two languages, or one idea? 29:30 — Why restored vision isn't normal vision — and the paradox that follows 31:00 — Vision and touch as English and Russian; Leibniz as the bilingual child 33:30 — Janet on phenomenal concepts and why Molyneux caught her 35:40 — Did you know Adam Smith had a theory of perception? He wrote it at fifteen 37:50 — Brian finds his own ancestor in the archive: George Glennie, Aberdeen, 1796 40:15 — The moon illusion, and how Janet and Brian actually met 41:20 — The dissertation with six chapters, and the one revision that changed everything 42:30 — Maybe there isn't a single correct answer 47:15 — Project Prakash: five subjects, three days of play, and a fast yes 51:30 — Janet's counter-proposal: what if you only tweak vision? 55:20 — Bumpy pacifiers, baby chicks, and the ten-hour-old infants who disagree 58:50 — The six-month-old who recognizes its own hand 01:01:00 — Nobody frames it as empiricism vs. rationalism anymore 01:03:20 — The couch potato perceiver and the sentient statue 01:05:50 — Could virtual reality run the experiment we can't? 01:07:00 — Path dependency: every subject arrives with a history 01:11:20 — The blind Rubik's Cube puzzler, and whether expertise transfers 01:15:00 — "Give me something I care about": motivation as the missing variable 01:19:10 — Why does perception have to be passive at all? 01:22:20 — Andrea: what if it isn't yes or no? 01:26:50 — Ned Block and the border between seeing and thinking 01:29:20 — The skater's eye: knowledge in the heel rather than the head 01:33:00 — Enactivism, affordances, and the motivation Brian adds to them 01:36:30 — Janet puts a lock on the back gate 01:39:20 — Do you still care about this? Plato's cave, Reid, and the seduction of the external world Some words that come up Empiricism / rationalism — The organizing quarrel of the era. Empiricists (Locke, Berkeley, Hume) hold that knowledge is built up from sense experience. Rationalists (Leibniz) hold that some ideas are innate and amodal — not owned by any single sense. Molyneux's question was supposed to settle it experimentally. Common sensibles — Properties like shape, figure, and distance that seem accessible to more than one sense. Colour isn't one; neither is roughness. The question is whether a common sensible is genuinely shared, or whether you have to learn to correlate two separate streams. At first sight — Locke's three-word addition, and, as Brian argues, a trick: it more or less guarantees the answer is no, if perceptual learning is needed to make the correlations. Temporal immediacy vs. epistemic immediacy — Janet's distinction. Temporal means the first instant after the bandages come off, which is probably what Locke meant. Epistemic means the identification is made by perception rather than by inference or association — so you wait until the person actually has the wherewithal to see, and only then test. It reframes what a fair experiment even looks like. Perceptual learning — Changes in what you can perceive that come from experience rather than reasoning. Locke's newly sighted person sees a flat, variously coloured circle before they see a sphere. Passivity vs. activity — Locke assumed perception is passive reception, and that anything active is cognition. So: is moving your head still perceiving? Is watching an object rotate? The whole episode circles this. The perception/cognition border — The contemporary form of the same question, now central to philosophy of mind through Ned Block's work. Phenomenal concepts — Concepts of what it's like to have an experience: to see red, to feel something smooth. Janet's long-standing interest, and her route into Molyneux. Affordances / enactivism — Gibson's idea that we perceive the world in terms of what it lets us do, developed by Alva Noë and others. Brian adds a motivational layer: the skater doesn't just see that the handrail is skateable, they want to skate it. Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690; Molyneux's question added to the 1694 second edition), Book II, Ch. IX, §8. Full text at Project Gutenberg Molyneux's first letter to Locke, 7 July 1688 — the one Locke never answered. The second, in 1693, is the one that made it into the Essay . Molyneux had in the meantime dedicated his optics treatise Dioptrica Nova (1692) to Locke. Marjolein Degenaar & Gert-Jan Lokhorst, "Molyneux's Problem" , Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — the standard scholarly overview. plato.stanford.edu/entries/molyneux-problem Brian Glenney, "Molyneux's Question" , Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Brian's own entry, and the best place to start. iep.utm.edu/molyneux Michael J. Morgan, Molyneux's Question: Vision, Touch and the Philosophy of Perception (Cambridge, 1977) — the classic history. Denis Diderot's Letter on the Blind (1749) is where the two-dimensional version of the question first appears — roughly fifty years after Locke, Support the show Buy Holding Paradox: The Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness by Andrea Hiott Sign up for Making Ways newsletter and projects. Please rate and review with love. YouTube , Facebook , Instagram , Substack .

Send a love message Charlie has been gathering some of the best scientists in the world to rethink what agency is together and form new connections outside the usual academic constraints Join Andrea in NYC this week here. Today's guest is Charlie Munford, president of the Agential Biology Institute, and he has been gathering some of the best scientists and philosophers in the world together to rethink agency. Andrea and Charlie have a personal, meandering conversation that moves from family life stories to foundational questions in biology, education, evolution, and meaning. Munford recounts growing up in Mississippi, wilderness canoe trips, Yale literature and polo, organic agriculture studies in Cuba, farming and a New Orleans wild boar sausage business, and a later personal crisis that pushed him into researching chronic disease and biological agency. He argues mainstream gene-centered biology assumes blind variation, but evidence for inherited acquired changes and directional adaptation (horizontal gene transfer, planaria pattern memory, small-RNA inheritance in worms and mammals, maternal grooming effects, genetic assimilation) suggests a missing causal layer and universal cellular learning. They discuss natural selection, Darwin and Lamarck, Barbara McClintock, a Karl Popper “active Darwinism” lecture, ABI’s testable hypotheses, and openness, creativity, and care. 00:00 Welcome and Brooklyn Invite 04:20 Meet Charlie Munford 04:35 Banana Couch Story 05:49 Kids and Creativity 08:48 Mississippi to Yale Adventures 15:17 Farming Cuba and Sausage Business 18:40 Crisis Sparks Biology Questions 21:38 Agential Biology Explained 30:04 Lamarck Darwin and Natural Selection 36:45 Evidence for Inherited Change 46:21 McClintock and Popper Teaser 47:51 Cells Sense Not Code 48:36 Genes Aren't Difference Makers 49:45 Popper Versus Selfish Gene 54:06 Agency Without Theology 55:11 Horizontal Gene Transfer 58:34 Three Testable Agency Ideas 01:00:00 Popper And Falsification 01:06:05 Episolution And Cellular Mind 01:12:58 Harmonic Resonance And Sleep 01:17:12 Attention And Surprise Learning 01:20:33 Personal Journey And Meaning 01:26:24 Love Openness And Invitation 01:30:16 Otter Story Farewell Andrea Hiott is a philosopher and cognitive scientist developing the navigational approach to mind — the view that mind is “the body’s navigational action in all spaces of life, from the geographical to the emotional to the social to the virtual.” She hosts the Love & Philosophy (Beyond Dichotomy) podcast and Substack, and her work draws on hippocampal research, 4E cognition (embodied, embedded, extended, enactive), and the ecological tradition. Her book Holding Paradox: A Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness is forthcoming. Her recurring interests — holding apparent contradictions open, “way-making,” constellation/kaleidoscopic thinking, and moving beyond either/or — frame her approach here throughout. Support the show Buy Holding Paradox: The Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness by Andrea Hiott Sign up for Making Ways newsletter and projects. Please rate and review with love. YouTube , Facebook , Instagram , Substack .

Send a love message Andrea, Yogi and Marcus are forming Paradoxis. This is one of the conversations towards that, a Third Space episode of Love & Philosoph y. Philosopher Andrea Hiott sits down with artist and facilitator Marcus Neustetter and biologist-philosopher Johannes "Yogi" Jaeger for a wide-ranging conversation about working in the space between art and science. The two have collaborated for about six years as part of The ZoNE , a transdisciplinary collective they run in Vienna alongside artist Bronwyn Lace and curator Başak Şenova. Marcus and Yogi introduce each other, then talk through how their collaboration actually works: not illustration-for-hire, but a genuine co-production where a text and a drawing "wrap themselves around each other" into something neither could have made alone. From there the conversation moves through constraints and "staying alive," productive tension, performance and vulnerability, the trickster, space and context, institutions and gatekeeping, conflict and tolerance, and finally care and love. The episode also introduces the paradox project (referred to in the audio as "Paradoxis"), a shared piece of writing on treating paradox as a practice and performance, and the idea of building offline "circles of trust," a concept Andrea draws from her earlier conversation with Parker Palmer. Read PARADOXIS here. Watch the ZoNE talks here . Link to Zone talks Andrea mentions on the Zone channel with one of her favorite philosophers. And the one with Julian Gough on Egg and Rock . Topics covered How Marcus and Yogi met and why they were both looking for a "third space" between art and science The Perspective Studio methodology and collective co-creation Constraints, co-construction and "staying alive" as an organizing principle drawn from evolutionary biology Productive tension vs. problem-solving; adaptation over optimization Finite games vs. infinite play, and "serious play" Performance, persona, authenticity and vulnerability The trickster figure and the danger of putting narcissists "in charge" Space, context and embodiment (including a 10-second listening exercise) Institutions, gatekeeping, decolonizing spaces, and the "plastic mushroom in the Pompidou" Conflict, tolerance, "overlapping consensus" and "coherence from difference" Care, love, and the shadow — seeing "the person behind the persona" People, projects and references mentioned Love & Philosophy — Andrea Hiott's podcast and Substack The ZoNE — the art/science collective (Lace, Neustetter, Jaeger, Şenova); see also the Makers page and Actions/notation log The emerging book Beyond the Age of Machines / Expanding Possibilities — the manifesto and chapters referenced throughout, published chapter by chapter Perspective Studio — the workshop/facilitation methodology Andrea Hiott's Holding Paradox and her Embracing Paradox guide Andrea talking with Parker Palmer — "circles of trust" James Carse — Finite and Infinite Games Hanzi Freinacht — "serious/existential play" Tyson Yunkaporta — Sand Talk (the trickster) Ludwig Wittgenstein — "whereof we cannot speak…" Plato — the allegory of the cave Michael Schmidt-Salomon — the paradox of tolerance John Rawls — "overlapping consensus" Carl Sagan — the gas-giant "blobs" thought experiment Patricia Martin — Will the Future Like You? Declan Donnellan and Sophie Fiennes — on performance and theatre (episodes Andrea mentions are forthcoming) Anathi Konjwa and Micca Manganye — performers in Marcus's Johannesburg short-film anecdote Steven Hobbs — Marcus's longtime South African collaborator Support the show Buy Holding Paradox: The Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness by Andrea Hiott Sign up for Making Ways newsletter and projects. Please rate and review with love. YouTube , Facebook , Instagram , Substack .

Send a love message Why Caring Isn't Self-Sacrifice with Elissa Strauss The episode of Love and Philosophy introduces a conversation with journalist and essayist Elissa Strauss, author of When You Care: The Unexpected Magic of Caring for Others, framed by the host’s view of care as an embodied, orienting force and “minds as actions.” Strauss distinguishes “caring,” social-status “not caring,” collective/kumbaya care, and “dependency care,” which she calls a “Hotel California” relationship you can’t easily exit; she argues dependency care is fraught, messy, and misunderstood when treated as pure altruism. She describes moving from fast-paced feminist journalism and a policy lens on U.S. caregiving failures (including lack of federal paid leave) to a deeper account of motherhood’s embodied realities, attention, and moments of union and estrangement with children. The discussion links care ethics (Gilligan, Noddings, Kittay) with Iris Murdoch and Simone Weil on unselfing and attention, critiques binary labels that assume we are all always one thing or the other related to ideas like “trad wife,” explores caring-for versus caring-about and the “glass door” separating home from public value, and connects care to economics, interdependence, faith as “wrestling,” and intergenerational “sandwich” caregiving. Elissa's Book When You Care Elissa's Substack: https://elissa.substack.com/ We All Care the Navigational Approach to Mind Heat by H.D. Care of Things episode mentioned here 00:00 Trad Wife Label 00:48 Embodied Parenting 01:55 Estrangement Moments 02:57 Care Philosophy Intro 05:25 Care Ethics Primer 09:35 Care Economics Value 11:55 Poem Heat Reading 17:18 Defining Care Buckets 19:19 Dependency Care Explained 22:20 Writing Career Origins 25:53 Motherhood Identity Shift 30:32 Beyond Binary Labels 33:15 Embodied Early Motherhood 33:52 Embodied Early Motherhood 36:18 Attention and Listening 39:00 Touch Versus Screens 42:27 Dependency Care Awakening 46:25 Unselfing as Parenting North Star 49:54 Estrangement and Return 52:39 Faith as Wrestling 55:45 Finding Care Ethics 01:00:21 Gilligan Noddings Validation 01:05:46 Caring For Versus About 01:08:16 Shame and the Glass Door 01:09:44 Glass Door Feminism 01:10:48 Care Work Counts 01:13:00 Tradwife Backlash 01:15:12 Money Meets Meaning 01:16:19 Care Beyond Maintenance 01:20:47 Home Everywhere Politics 01:25:05 Figure Eight Care 01:27:42 Parenting as Process 01:31:51 Love Clarity and Illusion 01:35:54 Sandwich Caregiving Crunch 01:41:08 Wired to Care Together 01:43:55 Closing and Where to Find Care Ethics Andrea Hiott is a philosopher and cognitive scientist developing the navigational approach to mind — the view that mind is “the body’s navigational action in all spaces of life, from the geographical to the emotional to the social to the virtual.” She hosts the Love & Philosophy (Beyond Dichotomy) podcast and Substack, and her work draws on hippocampal research, 4E cognition (embodied, embedded, extended, enactive), and the ecological tradition. Her book Holding Paradox: A Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness is forthcoming. Her recurring interests — holding apparent contradictions open, “way-making,” the importance of care and 'mattering', constellation/kaleidoscopic thinking, and moving beyond either/or — frame her questions throughout. Support the show Buy Holding Paradox: The Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness by Andrea Hiott Sign up for Making Ways newsletter and projects. Please rate and review with love. YouTube , Facebook , Instagram , Substack .

Send a love message Isabella Granic on Liminal Learning, Neither Nor , and Education for Flourishing Andrea Hiott introduces a guest podcast from Life Itself , Jacob Kishere interviews developmental psychologist Isabella Granic about “education for flourishing” ahead of the Human Transformation in a Time of Metacrisis conference at Harvard. Granic describes shifting from studying anxiety and depression as psychopathology to seeing them as adaptive responses, and focuses on prevention by designing social contexts that support resilience and thriving. She frames learning as liberation from inherited narratives and introduces the “neither nor” framework, developed with philosopher Bryan Kam, which teaches oscillation between conceptual and experiential ways of knowing. Granic explains Liminal Learning, a year-long program for 18–25-year-olds beginning with a wilderness “quest,” followed by a digital hub, practices like appreciative inquiry, and collaborative “heists” to build small real-world projects, moving participants from worry to wonder to world-building. Find info here and below to participate. 00:00 Embodied Learning Basics 02:16 Podcast Intro and Who Its For 06:18 Life Itself Guest Setup 07:03 Flourishing and Mental Health 12:40 Education as Liberation 16:42 Neither Nor Framework 21:50 Skills for Metacrisis Times 28:39 Wilderness Quest and Stirrings 32:34 Heists and World Building 37:47 Games and Digital Hub 46:52 Tech Shadows and Evidence 57:44 Conference Questions and Wrap Liminal Learning is in ther final week of welcoming participants for the upcoming UK Quest. Are you or do you know a young adult (18–25) — who’s feeling a bit lost, uncertain, in search of community, a way to explore purpose, or at a crossroads in these times? If so, our yearlong program could provide the support to transform their experience from worry into wonder. 🎡 Quests and yearlong programs starting soon 🌳 Kicks off in the Forest 🧑‍💻 Then moves to the online Hub The weeklong wilderness Quest is the starting point of Liminal Learning — a yearlong journey supporting young people to find direction, meaning, and confidence in work, study, and life. We focus on 3 core components the Quest, the Hub (our online community and continuation) and the Heist (our hybrid project based real-world experiment) ✨ We have a small number of scholarship places still available, supported by our non-profit mission. 👉 Quest details & applications here: https://liminal-learning.com/upcoming-quests What’s Liminal Learning? It begins with a weeklong retreat in nature, then continues with a year of learning, mentoring, and community — both online and in person. In a supportive cohort with peers and guides, participants explore purpose, values, and how they want to meet the world. 👉 Full program overview: https://liminal-learning.com/program Life itself ( https://lifeitself.org/ ) Jacob Kishere www.jacobkishere.com or www.theresonantman.com Harvard series videos starting with IG and the Neither Nor paper Support the show Buy Holding Paradox: The Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness by Andrea Hiott Sign up for Making Ways newsletter and projects. Please rate and review with love. YouTube , Facebook , Instagram , Substack .

Send a love message Beyond Genes, Toward Meaning & Care, But Rigorously Andrea Hiott hosts British science writer Philip Ball (former Nature editor; trained chemist and physicist) to discuss his book How Life Works and why the popular idea “it’s all in the genes” is untenable. Ball argues biology is shifting beyond mechanistic, bottom-up “blueprint” metaphors toward a view of organisms as open, adaptive informational systems with complex genotype–phenotype relations, constant interaction across levels (genes to ecosystems), and robust behavior emerging from “committee-like” molecular collectives. They discuss why biology has avoided purpose, teleology, and meaning, yet living systems make contextual value judgments and goal-directed decisions, with continuity from cells to human minds and emotions, emphasizing embodiment and symbiosis. Ball links these themes to his prostate cancer diagnosis while finishing the book, reflecting on mortality, persistence of patterns and information through art and writing, and the open-endedness of life and evolution, ending with love as a real evolved capacity. 00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro 00:35 Why Biology Is Shifting 02:09 Cancer, Meaning, and Patterns 04:37 Challenging Gene Determinism 11:03 Beyond the Machine Metaphor 17:52 Purpose and Teleology in Life 23:58 Messiness and Higher-Level Causation 31:54 Meaning Making in Cells 38:10 Embodiment and the Mind-Body Link 41:20 Embodied Minds 42:23 Nested Bodies and Meaning 43:52 Molecular Caring and Committees 45:02 Physics of Collectivity 47:19 Universality From Traffic to Cells 51:11 Leaky Layers in Living Systems 53:20 Beyond E. coli to Elephants 55:49 Caring as a New Metaphor 57:44 Symbiosis Parasites and Affordances 01:03:23 Brains Agency and Emotions 01:08:10 Mortality and Whirlpools of Meaning 01:15:42 Uniqueness Open-Ended Evolution 01:18:25 Love as Evolutionary Reality Andrea Hiott is a philosopher and cognitive scientist developing the navigational approach to mind — the view that mind is “the body’s navigational action in all spaces of life, from the geographical to the emotional to the social to the virtual.” She hosts the Love & Philosophy (Beyond Dichotomy) podcast and Substack, and her work draws on hippocampal research, 4E cognition (embodied, embedded, extended, enactive), and the ecological tradition. Her book Holding Paradox: A Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness is forthcoming. Her recurring interests — holding apparent contradictions open, “way-making,” the importance of care and 'mattering', constellation/kaleidoscopic thinking, and moving beyond either/or — frame her questions throughout. TRANSCRIPT Andrea Hiott: Hello, everyone. Welcome to Love and Philosophy . This is Andrea Hiott, and I’m glad you’re here. Today is a really special conversation, which I had quite some months ago, back in February, with a writer who is one of my favorites, Philip Ball. He is a British science writer. He used to be the editor at Nature for over 20 years. He’s trained as both a chemist and a physicist, and he’s written a lot of really good books. Critical Mass was a prize-winning book, and there’s also H2O , The Music Instinct , and the one we’re talking about here, How Life Works . Let me tell you a little bit about this book. It comes at a moment when I think biology is really shifting. It’s a shift that’s been going on for a while, but it’s at an important moment now where this mechanistic gene-first story we’ve been telling — the one that says you are your genes, you are your DNA, the selfish gene, that whole idea — is really changing a lot. The idea of the body as a machine assembled from the bottom up, that story is coming apart. But it’s interesting because we don’t want to just flip to the opposite, to reject all that came before. That’s what this book is doing that’s so interesting, and also this conversation. I think you’ll hear it. We’re trying to hold a certain tension because even though that story is coming apart, it’s not that everything is wrong about it. The hope is not to flip into the opposite, but rather to hold the tension and to really open up a new space about how we actually think about what life is and what we are. We have more ways to communicate and more ways to study this that can help us get more rigorous even as we also open up. So that’s what we’re trying to do in this conversation. It gets a little bit messy — that’s a word I’m always using, but in a good way — because we’re trying to talk about a lot of very hard things here, and we’re also trying to talk about them in a way that isn’t the usual way. You’ll hear that Philip is very articulate about this. He’s even better in the book, so I really highly recommend it. He’s also written some very beautiful essays, and one of them, which is in Nautilus , is about how at the end of writing this book he got diagnosed with cancer. We get to that by the end of this conversation because he’s come through well. He had surgery. All is good. It’s all gone. But there was a time when it was very tense for him, and he was writing this book about life, so can you imagine? He was really having these questions pressed on him directly as he had been thinking about life and trying to understand what it was. There’s something very moving about that. What he came to through this was that we are made of this material that’s changing all the time, but what persists are these patterns that come through us, or are in the world with us, or that we create and give to the world that then go on without us. It’s not that they’re floating around in the air. It’s that I can read this book again that he wrote, and there’s an imprint to the book that changes me, and that will continue even in 100 years when people read the book. It’s the same with music. It’s the same with everything we create and do. But it’s also the same with conversations that you just have with one another, because we change each other as we do that, and those patterns continue on in further conversations that those people have. So we end up in a place a little bit like that, and it’s very interesting that that can come from a very scientific conversation and a very scientific book. One thing about Philip is he’s really good at holding that. In the book, he talks about meaning, which is not a word you see often in a very scholarly biological book, but he does it with real rigor and grace, and I think that is such a gift at this moment. I’m very happy to bring you this conversation and to share his work with you. I’m really grateful that he spent some time with me. Thanks for being here. I hope this conversation gives you something that helps you carry on these patterns that connect in some way that’s meaningful for you today. Author website : philipball.co.uk Wikipedia : Philip Ball Chemistry World biography : Philip Ball at Chemistry World Philip Ball's Books (mentioned or relevant to this conversation) How Life Works: A User's Guide to the New Biology (2023) — the main book discussed University of Chicago Press Author's page The Book of Minds: How to Understand Ourselves and Other Beings, from Animals to AI to Aliens (2022) University of Chicago Press Reviews on author's site Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another (2004) — winner of the 2005 Aventis Prize for Science Books Author's page Macmillan H2O: A Biography of Water (1999) Author's page The Music Instinct: How Music Works and Why We Can't Do Without It (2010) Support the show Buy Holding Paradox: The Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness by Andrea Hiott Sign up for Making Ways newsletter and projects. Please rate and review with love. YouTube , Facebook , Instagram , Substack .

Send a love message Andrea Hiott in conversation with investor Jenna Nicholas . Jenna discusses her book The Enlightened Bottom Line and how spirituality, love, and purpose can inform investing and business rather than oppose them. She traces formative experiences from ages 11–14 in a Swiss “Transformation for Peace” program and speaking at Commonwealth Day in Westminster Abbey, including meeting Desmond Tutu, to the confidence instilled by her mother and grandmother, faith, and a lifelong practice of hosting “Saturdays at Jen’s” discussion groups. After moving from London to Stanford, she was inspired by social entrepreneurs, worked on socially responsible investing in China with mentor Wayne Silby (Calvert Funds), and later organized experiences and interviews exploring profit–purpose paradoxes. She describes practices like symbolic objects to bridge divides, dreams-based decision-making in the Amazon, and a HEAL framework (Hope, Empathy, Abundance, Legacy), emphasizing pauses, stewardship, seven-generation thinking, and money as “currency” valuable when in motion. Find Jenna’s book The Enlightened Bottom Line here . Parker Palmer conversation with Andrea is here Jacob Needleman conversation with Andrea is here. 00:00 Welcome and Book Setup 00:25 Teen Years and Abbey Speech 02:25 Tutu High Five and Lasting Joy 04:01 the Women Who Raised Her 06:48 Holding Paradox in Community 08:56 From Stanford to Impact Investing 11:40 Choosing Stanford by Fate 14:43 Wayne Silby and Legacy Shift 17:18 Bhutan and Business of Happiness 19:24 Enoughness and Inner Compass 22:52 Saturdays at Jens Conversations 25:14 Fierce Love in Organizations 27:25 Creating Listening Spaces 28:03 Building Impact Experience 28:40 Coal Meets Solar Values 30:13 Redefining Money Capital 34:00 Heal Framework Questions 35:37 Hope Empathy Abundance 37:16 Playful Abundance Wand 40:04 Amazon Dream Circles 43:03 Death Joy Legacy 46:31 Stewardship Seven Generations 49:02 Reflection Questions Pauses 52:40 Grandmother Loving Kindness 55:37 Honoring Stories Love 57:15 Podcast Farewell The Enlightened Bottom Line by Jenna Nicholas Jenna’s Substack is here . Jenna on LinkedIn Baha’i Faith Books discussed in addition to the Enlightened Bottom Line: InnSaei : the Icelandic Art of Intuition by Hrund Gunnsteinsdottir The Soul of Money by Lynne Twist Support the show Buy Holding Paradox: The Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness by Andrea Hiott Sign up for Making Ways newsletter and projects. Please rate and review with love. YouTube , Facebook , Instagram , Substack .

Send a love message What Marks our Movement through life? Andrea Hiott interviews A.A. Kostas, a Singapore-based lawyer and writer who runs the Substack Way Markers, blending poetry, fiction, and essays. They discuss how moving through different places shaped his writing and his interest in avoiding simplistic binaries through discernment—first identifying what kind of decision is in front of you—using hiking metaphors of many paths versus a narrow ridge. Alex cites Into the Wild as a cautionary way marker about seeking truth without rejecting human connection, and describes a Cradle Mountain hike where his wife had to find her own route. They explore how technology reinforces binary thinking, why poetry and music hold meanings beneath prose, and the value of humility from engaging Western and Eastern traditions (including Merton and Suzuki). They examine care as uncomfortable attention, the importance of embodied presence, and Alex’s experience of fatherhood as immediate responsibility and obligation where love grows. 00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro 02:21 Becoming a Writer 03:51 Growing Up Everywhere 05:15 What Is Way Markers 07:12 Pilgrimage and Substack 10:29 Into the Wild Lessons 14:29 Beyond Binary Thinking 18:49 Cradle Mountain Metaphor 22:36 Discernment and Ridge Lines 25:20 Tech Shapes Our Minds 27:00 Why Braid Genres 31:04 Music and Poetry Under Language 34:12 Law as Applied Philosophy 37:41 Zen Meets Catholic Mysticism 43:00 Humility and Unknowing 46:48 Craving Oneness Safely 48:19 Mystical Moments Explained 50:20 Flow State With Meaning 51:00 Desire Points to God 52:25 You Cant Conjure Awe 56:14 Care In Writing 58:36 Audience Capture Trap 59:27 Pamphlets Off The Internet 01:02:40 Love Is Uncomfortable 01:17:58 Fellow Travelers And Faith 01:24:28 Humor Holds Paradox 01:28:34 Fatherhood And Obligation 01:32:18 Closing Reflections See the Substack for links to the books mentioned. Support the show Buy Holding Paradox: The Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness by Andrea Hiott Sign up for Making Ways newsletter and projects. Please rate and review with love. YouTube , Facebook , Instagram , Substack .

Send a love message B. Scot Rousse (“B”)'s substack, "Without Why," focuses on what it means to be alive in an age of intelligent machines. He is philosopher in residence at Topos Institute and visiting scholar in Philosophy at Berkeley. He also drums in 3 punk bands. To support us, please sign up for the newsletter or Give any amount . Andrea Hiott has a conversation with philosopher B. Scot Rousse (“B”). B is an Oakland-based, Berkeley-affiliated Heidegger and phenomenology scholar focused on AI’s effects on our capacities to care. He is also a Topos Institute affiliate and a punk drummer. Andrea and B discuss Heidegger’s care as living in “meaningful differences,” embodied affordances, moods, and existential orientation. They explore how AI risks compulsive optimization and an overly narrow picture of the role of language in human life. B argues that technologies design ways of being human, urges users and designers to ask “for the sake of what,” articulates punk’s embodied, communal, joyful “controlled chaos” as an antidote to technological nihilism, and celebrates love and care in their visceral, pluralistic, and risky uncontrollability. Along the way, B traces a path from growing up Hare Krishna in Florida, to an encounter with a philosophy teacher who encouraged his transfer to UC Berkeley where he came under the mentorship of Hubert Dreyfus, whose teaching and critiques of symbolic AI shaped B’s work. B also shares about his work with philosopher-entrepreneur Fernando Flores (thanks to an introduction by Dreyfus), who applies philosophy to organizational “networks of conversations” that coordinate commitments and care for customer concerns, drawing on his experience in Chilean political history and ontological reinterpretation of entrepreneurship. In all of these experiences, B focuses on an abiding and urgent question: How do we protect our capacity to care in an age of optimization? How can you create, in your life, your version of the worldly joy and shared meaning of being in a punk band? B’s substack is Without Why . He currently drums in the bands Realistic, Vexxyl, and Wildfire. Here is the piece on Hubert Drefyus that Andrea mentions. Subscribe to B’s YouTube channel here . Support the Hubert Dreyfus Audio Archive Project here . Share Subscribe now 00:00 Welcome and Care Question 00:36 Meet B Scot Rousse 04:31 Highlights and Themes 07:08 B Introduces Himself 08:14 From Krishna Roots to Philosophy 10:27 Teacher to Berkeley and Dreyfus 12:01 Ambassadors of Possibility 13:16 Dreyfus Mentorship Years 14:52 Fernando Flores and Careful Organizations 18:40 Heideggerian Care Meets AI 23:56 Care and Agency in Analytic Ethics 30:04 Mattering and Affordances 33:13 Dreyfus on Technology and Optimization 38:00 Language as Commitments Not Info 39:02 Language as Commitment 40:54 Why LLMs Aren’t Human Language 43:18 Training, Deployment, Disembodiment 45:22 Languaging vs Symbol Systems 49:44 Care and Ontological Design 52:41 Compulsive Chatbot Loops 55:30 Disorientation and No Recipes 01:02:10 Kierkegaard and Commitment 01:11:35 Practicing Conversation with AI 01:14:38 Punk as Embodied Community 01:17:46 Punk As Belonging 01:18:50 Drummer Life And Community 01:19:14 Mood Joy And Chaos 01:21:10 Entropy And AI Randomness 01:23:19 Choosing The Wild Path 01:27:01 Teaching At The Edge 01:33:01 Meaning Is Out There 45:45 Care As Human Andrea Hiott is a philosopher and cognitive scientist developing the navigational approach to mind — the view that mind is “the body’s navigational action in all spaces of life, from the geographical to the emotional to the social to the virtual.” She hosts the Love & Philosophy (Beyond Dichotomy) podcast and Substack, and her work draws on hippocampal research, 4E cognition (embodied, embedded, extended, enactive), and the ecological tradition. Her book Holding Paradox: A Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness is forthcoming. Her recurring interests — holding apparent contradictions open, “way-making,” the importance of care and 'mattering', constellation/kaleidoscopic thinking, and moving beyond either/or — frame her questions throughout. Support the show Buy Holding Paradox: The Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness by Andrea Hiott Sign up for Making Ways newsletter and projects. Please rate and review with love. YouTube , Facebook , Instagram , Substack .

Send a love message The Great Psychology Delusion: Why the Mean Misleads and Pluralism Matters Read the book here. This is an academic psychology-focused episode with lecturer Marek McGann, whose work spans enactive cognitive science, embodiment, politics, feminist philosophy, and STS. Andrea and Marek discuss his co-authored book The Great Psychology Delusion with Craig Speelman. McGann explains why “delusion” fits psychology’s persistence in treating long-critiqued assumptions as valid, especially the aggregation delusion: averaging group data and applying it to individuals despite human non-interchangeability and change over time, linked to the ergodic assumption and ergodic theorem conditions rarely met in human behavior. They discuss how averaging can create misleading “laws” (e.g., power law of learning), the research–practice gap in clinical work, psychology’s history and method-driven identity, and the need for disciplined, pluralistic, scale-aware science that better integrates perspectives and practitioner expertise. 00:00 Show Intro And Guest 01:23 Book Thesis And Stakes 02:24 Aggregation Delusion Explained 03:54 Research Practice Gap 04:49 More Detailed Book Summary 07:47 Averaging Artifacts And Ergodicity 09:29 Careful Critique Not Anti Psychology 11:06 Warm Reorientation Sendoff 11:51 Conversation Begins 15:17 Why Call It Delusion 20:11 How Psychology Became Method Led 31:08 Aggregation Delusion Deep Dive 33:35 Ergodic Fallacy in Humans 35:21 Scale Slippage and Delusion 37:59 Research Practice Gap Explained 41:01 Clinician Code Switching 42:46 Many Scales of Mind 43:57 MRI Averaging Pitfalls 48:32 Method Silos and Identities 52:43 Care, Careers, and Canalization 55:27 GPS Model for Pluralism 01:00:33 Pluralism Not Relativism 01:02:58 Why Marek Cares 01:06:06 Psychology’s Moment of Change 01:06:56 Closing Thanks and Wrap Marek McGann has been a lecturer in the Department of Psychology since 2005. His principal research is theoretical work on the enactive approach to cognitive science, which examines the mind more as something we do rather than something we have. This is also related to ecological approaches to psychology, which explore how behaviour and mental life can be examined by looking at what your head is in, rather than what is in your head. He also has a related interest in critical considerations of theory and scientific practice in psychology more broadly. Marek co-convenes the ENSO Seminars , a series of online seminars with researchers from enactive and ecological cognitive science. Andrea Hiott is a philosopher and cognitive scientist developing the navigational approach to mind — the view that mind is “the body’s navigational action in all spaces of life, from the geographical to the emotional to the social to the virtual.” She hosts the Love & Philosophy (Beyond Dichotomy) podcast and Substack, and her work draws on hippocampal research, 4E cognition (embodied, embedded, extended, enactive), and the ecological tradition. Her book Holding Paradox: A Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness is forthcoming. Her recurring interests — holding apparent contradictions open, “way-making,” the importance of care and 'mattering', constellation/kaleidoscopic thinking, and moving beyond either/or — frame her questions throughout. The paper Andrea mentions: Facing Life Buy Holding Paradox: The Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness by Andrea Hiott Sign up for Making Ways newsletter and projects. Support the show Buy Holding Paradox: The Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness by Andrea Hiott Sign up for Making Ways newsletter and projects. Please rate and review with love. YouTube , Facebook , Instagram , Substack .

Send a love message This is an impromptu bonus episode previewing the NYC premiere of Sophie Fiennes’s documentary film Acting, which follows the celebrated theatre company Cheek by Jowl through their production of Macbeth. Andrea is speaking with her this week in NYC. Andrea introduces the ideas of director Declan Donnellan, whose book The Actor in the Space (2024) helps us get some insight into the film. Subjects: the philosophy of performance to spatial cognition, presence, and what it means to be truly alive on stage — or anywhere. Perhaps this is a good moment to revisit the themes of Macbeth. Come Saturday April 11th at 6:45pm for the film and Q &A with Sophie Fiennes (and Andrea) : ️tickets at https://quadcinema.com/film/acting/ Declan Donnellan: " Human beings are actors. It is hardwired into our DNA — from toddlers playing make-believe to old-age pensioners sharing jokes in the pub. We need to perform. It’s an essential part of being human. Acting starts early. We use it to develop our relationship with our mothers. We watch her and wonder, mirror her smiling, repeat the sounds she makes. We learn things by performing for her, and she performs for us. Does that mean we are lying to each other? Of course not. Performance is woven into the fabric of our lives. It’s as natural and important to us as breathing. Performance is not merely a habit that humans keep repeating across millennia, languages and cultures. It is more fundamental than that. Performance is what it is to be human. It is the operating system for life." The episode previews a bonus conversation with filmmaker Sophie Fiennes ahead of a screening of her film "Acting," about the London theater company Cheek by Jowl, co-founded by director Declan Donnellan and designer Nick Ormerod. Andrea introduces Donnellan’s ideas from his books "The Actor and the Target" and "The Actor in the Space," emphasizing that performance is fundamental to being human and that acting depends on creating the conditions—especially the space and context—where a character can exist and feel alive, rather than forcing meaning or emotion. The script contrasts older, space-oriented filmmaking with faster kinetic editing, highlights the importance of giving audiences room for their own cognition, and includes clips from Macbeth rehearsal discussing dread, avoidance, and the challenge of convincing the audience. It ends with details about attending the New York screening and future posting of a longer conversation. All links to books and notes are here. 00:00 Love and Dread 00:11 Macbeth in Fragments 01:00 Creative Risk and Space 02:59 Audience Cognition and Care 03:55 Art Beyond Meaning 04:58 Bonus Episode Intro 06:39 Performing Everyday Life 08:11 Who Is Declan Donnellan 10:25 Performance as Human OS 12:12 Why Acting Is Hard 14:20 Alive in Rehearsal 16:24 Space That Supports Life 18:30 Care and Plugging In 21:43 Avoidance and Reacting 24:44 Philosophy and Presence 26:34 Macbeth Actor Dialogue 27:35 Closing Macbeth Beat Support the show Buy Holding Paradox: The Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness by Andrea Hiott Sign up for Making Ways newsletter and projects. Please rate and review with love. YouTube , Facebook , Instagram , Substack .

Send a love message Holding Paradox Through Serious Play: Can serious play be a portal to wisdom? This is an episode about puzzles and care. Andrea has a conversation with puzzle maker Jason Robillard (StumpCraft) about how puzzles cultivate new ways of being and seeing, holding paradox by repeatedly joining opposites only to realize they were never quite opposites but mirror-like pieces of a coherent whole. Robillard describes his wooden, laser-cut puzzles built from Canadian fine art, with uniquely drawn organic pieces, symbolic elements, sensory “shock,” and sometimes multiple valid placements that challenge assumptions of a single solution. He connects puzzling to embodied experience, attention, OODA loops, cognitive biases, and navigating complexity through “alternating base camps” and Goldilocks destabilization, the metamodern idea of 'serious play', relating this to career upheavals and identity change. The conversation emphasizes care as community glue and highlights values embedded in his work—curiosity, creativity, integrity, and generosity—plus a resonance with David Whyte’s poem “ Start Close In .” 00:00 Paradox Through Play 02:36 Podcast Intro Puzzles Theme 07:54 Meet Jason And His Work 09:20 Puzzles Holding Paradox 11:38 Designing Artful Wooden Puzzles 14:47 Embodied Senses And Touch 16:58 Career Shift Into Puzzles 23:24 Serious Play And Homo Ludens 25:50 Moving Childhood And Safety 31:57 Base Camps And Destabilization 34:30 Polarity Recipes Beyond Flatland 38:47 Designing Paradox Puzzles 39:48 Many Solutions Mindset 42:54 Puzzles as Conversation 47:53 Liminal Times Need Puzzles 56:00 Sensemaking and OODA Loops 01:00:22 Home Gifts and Community 01:03:17 Four Values in Design 01:11:29 Start Closer In Practice 01:13:39 Care Belonging and Vulnerability 01:18:52 Where to Find Jason 01:19:57 Closing Poem Reading StumpCraft Amazing Instagram Photos and Videos of Games Jasen’s writings: Releasing the Muse Jasen on LinkedIn Metamodern influences: Serious Play OODA loop (observe, orient, decide, act) Homo Ludens Jasen Robillard was always a closet creative who long denied the creative muses, focusing instead on a “secure” engineering career until it dried up in 2017. As is often the case, necessity proved to be the mother of invention… In 2016, Jasen started designing and prototyping his whimsical puzzles which were inspired by other wooden laser-cut puzzles he had enjoyed years earlier. He noted a lack of wooden puzzle availability in Canada, as well as a severe lack of deliberate focus on Canadian fine art. After a year of playful prototyping and a clear end to his engineering-focused career, Jasen decided to launch StumpCraft formally in 2017. Since the formal launch, StumpCraft has experienced growth and praise as more and more fans share their love of puzzles with friends and family members. StumpCraft was also the recipient of the 2021 Made in Alberta Award in Games & Leisure , exposing us to an ever more rapidly expanding fanbase. Support the show Buy Holding Paradox: The Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness by Andrea Hiott Sign up for Making Ways newsletter and projects. Please rate and review with love. YouTube , Facebook , Instagram , Substack .

Send a love message Facing Reality with Clear Eyes but without Desperation: Scilla Elworthy on Listening with the Heart to Transform Conflict Three-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee Scilla Elworthy reflects on 70 years of work with conflict and war, beginning at age 12 after seeing tanks in Budapest and being sent to help concentration camp survivors. She describes how others’ suffering “hit” her heart and led her to action in Algeria, the Congo, and South Africa, where she worked on starvation relief, shipped milk powder, and supported education, noting the central role of women in community resilience. Elworthy emphasizes “listening with the heart” to discern what people truly need beyond narratives, and explains how turning to the heart helps release harsh self-criticism. She also shares practical self-nourishment through nature and gardening, and recounts using humanizing, vulnerable moments—like discussing children—to soften high-stakes meetings, including military dialogues in China, as a way to build connection and “power with” others. " Triple nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for her work with Oxford Research Group to develop effective dialogue between nuclear weapons policy-makers worldwide and their critics from 1983-2003. Founded Peace Direct in 2002, awarded the Niwano Peace Prize in 2003, the Luxembourg Peace Prize in 2020, the GOI Peace Award in 2023. Founded The Business Plan for Peace based on her latest books - The Business Plan for Peace: Building a World Without War (2017), The Mighty Heart: how to transform conflict (2020), and The Mighty Heart in Action (2022)." Find all Scilla's work here. Kyla Scanlon's post mentioned here 00:00 Why We Still Kill 00:55 Action Over Apathy 01:07 Heart As Guide 01:39 Inner Critic Quieted 03:23 Podcast Introduction 07:03 Meet Scilla Elworthy 08:17 Tanks In Budapest 11:32 Early War Witnessing 14:33 Africa Conflict Journeys 17:47 Women Leading Change 19:52 Listening With Heart 22:29 Defining The Heart 25:31 Nature As Nourishment 29:35 Self Inspection To Embodiment 32:41 Taming The Inner Critic 34:04 Heart Led Self Compassion 35:54 Daring Diplomacy With Generals 36:49 Breaking The Ice With Humanness 42:48 Power With Vulnerability 47:24 Courage In The Moment 51:07 Love In The Garden 53:03 Closing Thanks And Future Fears 53:55 Listener Note And NYC Event Support the show Buy Holding Paradox: The Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness by Andrea Hiott Sign up for Making Ways newsletter and projects. Please rate and review with love. YouTube , Facebook , Instagram , Substack .

Send a love message Janet Levin on Physicalism, Zombies, and Changing Minds Andrea hosts philosopher Janet Levin, newly retired after 40 years at USC and the department’s first tenure-track woman hire, to discuss a life in analytic philosophy and debates about mind and consciousness. Levin recounts stumbling into philosophy at the University of Chicago with Ted Cohen and later studying at MIT amid figures like Jerry Fodor, Noam Chomsky, and advisor Ned Block, and writing the Stanford Encyclopedia entry on functionalism. They contrast dualism and physicalism, explain metaphysics as inquiry into what exists and what is possible, and examine thought experiments such as Descartes’ arguments, Jackson’s knowledge argument, and Chalmers’ zombie case. Levin holds that our feelings and experiences are nothing over and above physical processes in the body, primarily the brain and central nervous system. The conversation closes on teaching, women in philosophy, and how openness, identity, and social forces affect willingness to change one’s mind and pursue truth. The Road Taken APA Talk Janet Levin Time Stamps: 00:00 Big Questions on Mind Change 01:47 Consciousness and Zombies 02:11 Welcome and Season Setup 03:22 Meet Janet Levin 07:31 Stumbling Into Philosophy 08:25 Why Minds Change Slowly 11:10 Synthetic Hippocampus and Extended Mind 12:57 Chicago Origins With Ted Cohen 18:02 MIT Era and Cognitive Revolution 22:01 From Behaviorism to Functionalism 26:17 Defining Physicalism and Supervenience 29:23 What Is the Mind Really 34:46 Cognitive Phenomenology Debate 37:31 What Metaphysics Studies 40:02 Classic Metaphysics Puzzles 43:15 Free Will and Determinism 46:34 Descartes and the Self 51:41 Conceivability and Zombie Arguments 58:40 Dualism’s Causation Problem 01:11:40 Type B Physicalism and Phenomenal Concepts 01:22:46 Water Lightning Mind 01:24:15 Identity Theory Pushback 01:27:51 Physicalism Explained Broadly 01:30:05 Phenomenal Concepts Introspection 01:32:17 Introspection As Skill 01:34:44 Defending Armchair Philosophy 01:37:22 Armchair Near Window 01:39:10 How Minds Change 01:43:55 Bias Identity And Windows 01:45:35 Women In Philosophy Shifts 01:50:28 Grad Training Mentorship 01:54:43 Teaching Confidence Bloomers 01:57:42 Love Retirement Future Questions 02:02:12 Host Outro Waymaking Giving Page Longer Show Notes and PDF of APA talk Janet Levin is Professor Emerita of Philosophy at the University of Southern California, where she was a longtime faculty member in the School of Philosophy. Her research focuses on epistemology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of psychology. She earned her Ph.D. in philosophy from MIT and her B.A. from the University of Chicago. Much of her work engages with one of the hardest problems in philosophy: how to account for the subjective, felt quality of conscious experience within a broadly physicalist framework. She has also written the entry on functionalism for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — the view that what makes something a mental state depends not on its physical makeup, but on the functional role it plays in a larger system. Levin holds that our feelings and experiences are nothing over and above physical processes in the body, primarily the brain and central nervous system. In her 2022 book The Metaphysics of Mind , published by Cambridge University Press, Levin surveys the major contemporary theories of mind — including dualism, type-identity theory, role functionalism, Russellian monism, and eliminativism — assessing the strengths and weaknesses of each. Support the show Buy Holding Paradox: The Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness by Andrea Hiott Sign up for Making Ways newsletter and projects. Please rate and review with love. YouTube , Facebook , Instagram , Substack .

Send a love message Love and Philosophy Beyond Dichotomy: Way Making, Care, and a New Season Andrea Hiott introduces Love and Philosophy Beyond Dichotomy and reflects on how a late-2023 research project became a podcast shaped by the guiding question of “way making”: how we find our way and how our way makes us. Drawing from philosophy, neuroscience, urban planning, ecology, biology, and navigability heuristics, she reframes life’s most crucial action as care, challenging fixed separations like ontology, epistemology, and axiology and emphasizing “constellation” or kaleidoscopic thinking over either/or dichotomies. She previews more rigorous work addressing questions about consciousness, representation, agency, self, mind, and technology through the lens of care, and mentions an upcoming book, Holding Paradox. A new season begins tomorrow March 17 with philosopher Janet Levine, releasing monthly episodes on the 17th, with show notes summarizing key ideas from the past two years. Give here: https://loveandphilosophy.com/giving-page Here is a link to the free Love & Philosophy Field Guide which comes to your email: https://making-ways.kit.com/01025445f6 or find it here: https://lovephilosophy.substack.com/p/focusing-on-care-field-notes-and 00:00 Welcome and Project Update 00:27 Waymaking as Core Question 01:03 Care as Life’s Foundation 03:48 Beyond Either Or Thinking 04:49 Books and Rigorous Philosophy Ahead 06:38 New Season Schedule and Thanks 07:15 Support the Work 07:43 The Hard Parts and Staying in Care 08:31 Show Notes Summary and Closing Good Wishes Field Notes at https://making-ways.kit.com/01025445f6 Support the show Buy Holding Paradox: The Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness by Andrea Hiott Sign up for Making Ways newsletter and projects. Please rate and review with love. YouTube , Facebook , Instagram , Substack .

Send a love message From the archive. Giving Page Andrea introduces an archive episode of Love and Philosophy featuring Perry Zurn , provost and associate professor of philosophy at American University about the book Curious Minds, coauthored with Dani Bassett. The intro previews an upcoming season launch with Janet Levin. In the following conversation, Perry links curiosity to desire and love, arguing love can guide curiosity away from appropriative or objectifying inquiry. Zurn reframes curiosity not as an individual desire to fill information gaps but as a social practice and a “capacity to connect,” drawing on network science, complexity, and ecological aesthetics through the idea of “edge work.” Andrea and Perry discuss diverse styles of curiosity (busy body, hunter, dancer), curiosity’s role in shifting knowledge networks and methods, interdisciplinary resistance, and how breaking “edges” or “cracks” can be both destructive and creative, relating curiosity to hope and to more-than-human ecologies. Perry also describes the book’s artwork by Poonam Mistry and the dedication to children who ask whether things must be this way. Perry Zurn's website Curious Minds : Buy the book 00:00 Archive Season Preview 00:56 Why Curiosity Matters 03:19 Support And Welcome 03:53 Love And Curiosity 06:28 Origins Of Curious Minds 08:51 Curiosity As Practice 11:24 Edge Work Explained 15:18 Pioneering And Ethics 17:39 Complexity And The Brain 21:27 Styles Of Curiosity 26:08 Curiosity Across Divides 30:12 Walking As Knowing 32:31 Methods As Paths 36:34 Why New Paths Threaten 39:38 Dead Ends And Branching 40:33 Connectional Curiosity 42:48 More Than Human Curiosity 47:29 Cracks Hope And Destruction 51:35 Daring To Disturb 53:47 Art And Dedication 56:45 Closing Reflections Support the show Buy Holding Paradox: The Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness by Andrea Hiott Sign up for Making Ways newsletter and projects. Please rate and review with love. YouTube , Facebook , Instagram , Substack .