[0:00:14 - 0:00:26] I'm here with Dr. Jim Madden. You're a professor of
philosophy who has dared to reconcile some ancient
philosophy with UFOs.
[0:02:09 - 0:02:27] You're a professor of
philosophy who has dared to reconcile some ancient
philosophy, you know, Plato, Aristotle, even up until today, you know, more modern Nietzsche, Heidegger, with UFOs.
[0:03:04 - 0:03:18] Well, first thanks for having me. It's a real honor to be here. Yeah, I appreciate. I think the only thing that's really surprised me, I guess I should say what surprised me the most about this whole process of getting the UFO and bringing
philosophy into it is that no one had done it before in this way.
[0:07:56 - 0:08:09] Okay. So at that point, then, you know, what is justice gets raised and how
philosophy breaks out. Okay. And there's a really vehement to babe between Socrates and Thursemicus. Eventually Thursemicus has had enough and leaves.
[0:09:17 - 0:09:29] And now once this is probably controversial force everything in academic
philosophy is controversial. Right. So you can find bright people brighter people than that I am who agrees me. You could find brighter people than I am who would disagree with me. That's always a problem. Yeah.
[0:09:44 - 0:09:59] Yeah. I'm I am being killed. Okay. So so I and I it was very interesting things that go on in the book. So basically we're told the only just state would be one that had a
philosopher as a ruler.
[0:09:59 - 0:10:27] So ultimately the famous
philosopher king. Okay. But it also like Plato says early on that any state that occurs naturally is going to fall apart due to greed and injustice and this. Okay. So so you think of like any natural city is not run by a
philosopher. Okay. And we get we get a story of how you would cultivate
philosophers sufficient to run a city.
[0:10:27 - 0:10:37] But no, you'd have to have a good city first to have those to produce those
philosophers in the first place. So there's this really difficult circular problem of founding in the Republic.
[0:10:37 - 0:10:46] Like how could you ever get a just city because we have to build by a
philosopher. Right. And but a
philosopher would have to be produced by a just city.
[0:11:00 - 0:11:14] And there's something else going on here. Right. There's also an important moment where it's after the allegory of the cave and the question comes up like, do we with the
philosopher have to return to the cave after leaving.
[0:11:14 - 0:11:24] And of course in the allegory, the
philosopher does go back and annoys people because he's asking the change of lives and things like that. And eventually it ends very very badly for him.
[0:11:24 - 0:11:42] And it's a not so thin reference to Socrates. Okay. And interesting what Plato has Socrates say when when he's asked, you know, would we have to make the
philosopher go back? He says, well, in our city, meaning the ideal city that we're thinking of, the
philosopher would owe his education to the city.
[0:12:00 - 0:12:29] The
philosopher really should not return. It would be a few title effort. Yeah. Yeah. Fascinating. Yeah. And so just what is the cave at a baseline for the average per sure. Okay. So at a certain point in the dialogue, the question of how we would educate a
philosopher comes up. Okay. And basically the cave is Plato's way of explaining what the education of the
philosopher would be like.
[0:15:23 - 0:15:37] Or yeah, because you think it's like throughout the book, it's clear for Plato, enlightenment doesn't just happen. You have to be taught. Like, but it's really you could you can make a case. The book is a
philosophy of education. Right.
[0:20:36 - 0:20:48] So the way I like to put it is I don't think Plato is a plate nest. Okay. What I mean is the kind of
philosophy 101 that we all teach our students, because you have to just, if they tell some goodness to get things going, be careful there.
[0:28:48 - 0:28:53] people say, you know, all
philosophy is a, you know, footnote of Plato or whatever, like he's
[0:28:53 - 0:28:59] really the founder of Western
philosophy. How did you think to reconcile that with UFOs, this sort
[0:30:29 - 0:30:34] that I was already working on in
philosophy of mind and cognitive science and speculative metaphysics,
[0:35:43 - 0:35:48] I subscribed to some ideas and cognitive science and
philosophy of mine that would sort of like
[0:51:29 - 0:51:37] Phil software tradition. It really bubbled up in the modern period. For him, he thinks there's
[1:05:32 - 1:05:39] like unfalse
phile or like crazy or whatever. Because you need to somehow, uh, there are receptors
[1:06:53 - 1:06:59] like Leo Strauss. This, you know, you know, 20th century
philosophy. He was a big, big, you know,
[1:12:24 - 1:12:31] never-ending quest. And yeah. So yeah, the
philosophical question of like what is disclosure?
[1:12:53 - 1:12:58] It's more, can I, can I come up with a
philosophical, metaphysical cognitive model?
[1:16:16 - 1:16:21] gone off the rails. Right. Like, this has been, you know, one of the central
philosophical paradigm
[1:16:43 - 1:16:48] Western
philosophy since Kant has like been dealing with that. Now, it's going off the rails really
[1:18:16 - 1:18:20] I'm, I'm forgetting his name now, an American analytic
philosopher in the last few years published
[1:25:03 - 1:25:08] century
philosopher, Gunther Anders. This is definitely something he's worried about that we're like
[1:27:06 - 1:27:14] inflection point. He had such interesting
philosophical kind of objections around what he was doing. He
[1:30:36 - 1:30:42] with what we're discovering
philosophically. So it seems for Aristotle, religion can go two ways,
[1:30:57 - 1:31:01] in front of what we can prove scientifically,
philosophically and like kind of guide the inquiry
[1:59:41 - 1:59:46] know it fits fascinating yeah I think one of the most profound moments in
philosophy is the the very
[2:02:24 - 2:02:27] remember if you stole I were not but it was a very important contemporary
philosopher named Hillary
[2:03:35 - 2:03:41] wrecked yes like to make any progress I love that yeah do you think some of these
philosophers I always
[2:04:18 - 2:04:24] you think some of these
philosophers like maybe Hegel being a good example dabbled in like the you
[2:04:29 - 2:04:37] and and you know if you found out that some prominent you know
philosopher at I have no one in
[2:04:37 - 2:04:45] mind here okay so prominent
philosopher at prestigious university Z let's right today you know was like
[2:06:14 - 2:06:21] talk about a
philosopher who's had just an outsized impact on modernity yeah and Hegel has to be