Since becoming quite addicted to The West Wing television series, I’ve been finding it easier and easier to bring my laptop to bed with me to watch episodes of my favorite television shows as I fall asleep. Unfortunately, this has been slowly displacing my life-long routine of reading before bed and I’m feeling a bit, well, guilty.

For some reason I suspect that the X-Files, Star Trek:TNG and Red Dwarf just do not stack up - in the good-for-personal-betterment sense - against the usual diet of philosophy and science reading to which I’m accustom. Sure, I’ve been able to catch up on all the episodes of QI - and that has to count for something - but even ingesting the wisdom of the comics has left this lingering feeling that I’ve somehow become lazy.

And so, when just the other night I found myself eager to read again and not watch another Eddie Izzard special, I was feeling particularly happy. Only problem was that I was simply too tired to dig into the Dennett book that I had with me.

Enter the beauty of the online philosophy lecture! All the excitement and visual stimulation of Hollywood (Hollywood, Missouri, perhaps) with content enough to keep a hungry mind sated.

Yes, I admit it. I’ve been watching online philosophy lectures and discussions in bed. And thanks to Tanasije Gjorgoski and the list of online philosophy videos that he has compiled, I should have enough to keep me busy for a few weeks at least.

By sheer happenstance there seems to be a strong concentration of philosophy of mind videos, which is fine by me, with many of the most popular names featured: Searle, Chalmers, Dennett, Nagel, Pinker, Churchland, et. al.

In the comments of the blog you’ll find links to other compiled lists - not strictly philosophy but of interest nevertheless - such as public lectures from The Royal Society and the British Academy lectures online. Being a contributor to several blog carnivals myself, I was also excited to find the Philosophers’ Carnival.

As I say, all of this philosophy goodness should be enough to keep me busy when I’m yearning for the laptop rather than a book. And for those of you who have no interest in the material at all - I suspect that these links will be particularly useful in helping you get to sleep.

Glad to be of service.

Gute Nacht!

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tags: bedtime stories, books, british academy, chalmers, churchland, dennett, eddie izzard,the royal society, nagel, philosophy, philosophy lectures, philosophy of mind, philosophy videos, pinker, qi, reading, red dwarf, searle, star trek, stephen fry, the west wing, x-files

This entry was posted on Friday, August 31st, 2007 at Aug 31, 07 | 12:44 pm and is filed under Books, Just Noumenon Posts, Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.