What Is X?

“What Is X?” has been described as “a cross between a Platonic dialogue and ‘The Price Is Right.’” It combines dialectical inquiry of the sort perfected by Socrates and his interlocutors with a distinctly ludic spirit. Here’s how it works: For each episode, host Justin E. H. Smith invites on a guest distinguished in their field (or occasionally a “regular” person who really likes to talk). Smith asks the guest to answer a question of the form “What is X?” (for example, “What is beauty?” “What is nature?” “What are dreams?”), after which the two partners in dialogue undertake a Socratic inquiry into the nature of X, in search of a definition that satisfies both of them. There are three possible outcomes: agreement, disagreement, and aporia (Greek for “dead end”), each with its own sound effect: if we arrive at agreement, a church bell will chime; disagreement is signaled by a bleating goat; if aporia is the best we can do, we will hear naught but a gust of wind. Rigorous but freewheeling, fun and serious at once, accessibly highbrow, these conversations model rational inquiry in a new way, providing answers for truth-seekers... or perhaps just more questions. /// Host: Justin E.H. Smith (justinehsmith.substack.com) /// Presented by The Point Magazine (thepointmag.com)

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What Is X?

What Is Time? | Emily Thomas

June 01, 2022 • Justin E.H. Smith | The Point Magazine • Season 2 • Episode 8

In this episode of “What Is X?” Justin E.H. Smith and Emily Thomas tackle the timely yet timeless question: "What is time?" Is time an external, objective fact, or is the flow and tempo of the world internal to us—in some sense, all in our head? Could a robot have consciousness even if it didn't understand time? To help concretize these potent questions, Justin and Emily look back at the thought of a now mostly-obscure metaphysician by the name of J.M.E. McTaggart, who argued that time was unreal. In doing so, however, he proposed a framework for time that philosophers have taken up enthusiastically ever since: either one must believe that time is purely linear—occurring as a series of discrete moments in sequence, plotted out on a timeline, simply past or future—or that there is some special interval we might call the "present," in addition to the past and future. Since McTaggart's time, philosophers have been excitedly proclaiming themselves either A theorists (partisans of the present) or B theorists (team pure past and future). Listen in to find out which identity Justin and Emily claim for themselves! Throughout the hour, they also touch on Leibniz and Aristotle's notions of temporality, Adorno on the spatialization of time, and why the ancient Greeks could dream up many notions we'd now think of as sci-fi, but the one thing that seemed to exceed their imagination was time travel.