The Rest is Uncertain
At the intersection of philosophy and public life. Hosted by philosopher and educator Dr. Laurance Splitter, the show embraces curiosity and complexity over easy answers. From truth and morality to knowledge, purpose, and the kind of world we want to create, each episode offers thoughtful reflections that inspire open-minded dialogue and deeper understanding, all without pretending to have the final word.
Episodes
In this episode, host Dr. Laurance Splitter invites listeners to think about why they make the decisions and choices that they make, which refers to our capacity for agency, whereby our beliefs and desires cause us to interact with the world deliberately or intentionally. He then broadens the topic to focus on the types of causal explanations that are appropriate ...
In this episode, host Dr. Laurance Splitter begins by reflecting on topics previously discussed, including: social and cultural polarization; the challenge of having dialogue when those involved not only disagree, but show no respect or empathy for their opponents; the positive value of uncertainty; immigration, housing, youth crime, and education; and the underlying t...
In this episode, Dr. Laurance Splitter finally engages in a real dialogue with another person, in this case, Professor Maughn Rollins Gregory, Director of the Institute for the Advancement of Philosophy for Children in the USA, and an outstanding scholar and teacher in both education and philosophy. Maughn has written extensively about the nature of d...
In this episode, host Dr. Laurance Splitter provides further clarification of the concept of quantitative, or strict, identity. Objects and people can and do change – we call this “qualitative change” – but such change makes sense only on the assumption that the objects in question remain “the same objects”, i.e. literally identical. We see this idea in su...
In this episode, host Dr. Laurance Splitter begins with some examples which reveal that the ideaof identity has been, and is still, used to mean different things. Heraclitus asserted that no man can step into the same river twice, because it is not the same river and he is not the same man; a parent insists that their child can’t wear the same shirt again because it is dirty; and a...
In this episode, host Dr. Laurance Splitter begins with several disclaimers, which include avoiding the explicitly political dimensions of immigration (which, inevitably, focus on extreme positions), and also making reference to specific religious or cultural groups. Listeners are invited to make these connections for themselves. Laurance makes a distinction between...
In this episode, host Dr. Laurance Splitter traces the tensions between individualism and various forms of collectivism, from the end of the Cold War (which heralded “The End of History”, except that it didn’t!), to the present day. The ideal of democratic liberalism became distorted as the result of g...
In this episode, Dr. Laurance Splitter shares practical examples of collaborative inquiry with students of different ages, sparked by stories, games, and classroom activities. Discussions range from loyalty and friendship to reasoning, mathematical abstraction, scientific concepts, and ethical questions about animals and human respo...
Drawing on h...
In the first of several episodes on education, host Dr. Laurance Splitter distinguishes between schooling, training and education. He then takes a brief journey into past theories of education, citing key ideas of Aristotle, Confucius, John Locke, Jean-Jacqu...
In this episode, host Laurance Splitter explores some of the difficulties experienced by teachers and students in our schools and classrooms. Many teachers are quitting because they are compelled to focus on administrative and assessment tasks, to the detriment of teaching excellence. They are experiencing greater levels of stress and anxiety, in a cyc...
In this episode, host Dr. Laurance Splitter explores the moral and social complexities surrounding youth crime, punishment, and responsibility in contemporary society.
He examines polarized responses from “lock them up” to broader social explanations and asks why societies punish in the first place. By considering agency, account...
In this episode, host Dr. Laurance Splitter expands on the role of dialogue and introduces philosophy’s “three Cs” — concepts that are common, contestable, and central. He cites the absurdist humor behind Monty Python to illustrate what happens when concepts are pushed to their extremes. Enlarging ...
In this episode, host Dr. Laurance Splitter introduces the central ideas behind The Rest Is Uncertain and explains why certainty can be more limiting than helpful when navigating complex questions and challenges through what he calls a philosophical lens. He emphasizes the importance of dialogue, and of questioning ...
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