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Monday, October 24, 2022

Review: Sci-Phi Science Fiction as Philosophy

 I saw Sci-Phi: Science Fiction as Philosophy as one of the great courses offering on Kanopy, and tried one lecture and was blown away. The lecturer, David Kyle Johnson, took apart Inception, analyzed it, demonstrated in detail the pieces that were self-contradictory, and demonstrated his thesis in the movie, while using the movie to ask the question about how it's possible to have knowledge in the face of multiple competing theories. And he did it all in 30 minutes, some of which was spent explaining the plot of the movie!

The rest of the 24 lecture course covers everything from Pacifism, Women's Rights, Free-Will, and other topics, using many movies/TV shows you may have heard of or watched. To my surprise I'd actually seen a lot of those movies, and the ones I didn't Johnson explains enough of what you didn't watch that you can follow along his points. Johnson is a great lecturer, clear, perfectly paced, and great to listen to. His logic is easy to follow, and his conclusions (or in some cases, lack of conclusions) made a lot of sense to me. I enjoyed how much of different philosophers' ideas, books, or statements made it into even the most kitschy science fiction.

Definitely worth your time. Look at the list of movies he analyzes and if those movies appealed to you, this lecture series will as well.

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