In the last few years a number of scientists, like Stephen Hawking, have been very vocal in pronouncing the death of philosophy. They seem to think that science can or will answer all the important questions there are. If there are any questions that science can’t answer, then they’re just pseudo problems, not worth thinking about.
The “Culture Wars”. Not just Liberal versus Conservative and Democrat versus Republican; but Secular…
Are some people better than others? You might wonder what kind of a question that is. On the one hand, there’s no controversy—some people are smarter than others, some are more creative, some are stronger or faster, and some are kinder or more virtuous. So, if that’s all we’re asking, the answer is obvious. In certain respects and in particular domains, some people are clearly better than others. But if we’re asking whether some people are just better human beings in general, it becomes much harder to answer the question.
Leibniz was a very practical philosopher. One could argue that he has as much or more practical impact on Silicon Valley as any philosopher. He invented binary arithmetic; without that, no computer science! Plus a lot of other ideas along the same lines.
Probably the most persuasive argument for the existence of God — I don’t mean to philosophers and logicians, but to ordinary people — goes something like this: All of this — that is, a world with life, intelligence, beauty, humans, morality, etc., — couldn’t have come about by accident. It must be due to some intelligent, powerful Being — and that’s what God is.
Left Lanes and Right Lanes by Charles Osborne I shall try here to divide two…
Does science progress in a cumulative way? In other words, do later scientific theories build…
Satire involves the use of humor to ridicule and shame people or institutions. It’s a potent tool for exposing society’s ills, especially when it comes to politicians and other powerful people. It’s the perfect way to take them down a peg or two. That’s the power of satire.
Some neuroscientists go so far as to claim that there is simply no such thing as free will. The feeling we sometimes have of freely choosing is just an illusion, a trick of the mind, they say. We might think we are making free choices, but, in fact, the choice has already been made before we become aware of it. But what, you might ask, would a neuroscientist know about the philosophical problem of free will?
There can be no denying that whistleblowers may sometimes have the potential to do us all a great service. Whistleblowers are willing to stand up, sometimes at great cost to themselves, and shine the light of truth into the dark corners where governments and corporations operate in secret.
Martin Heidegger is the Continental philosopher most analytic philosophers love to hate. I actually never knew enough about Heidegger to form much of an opinion. I knew that he said that “Nothings noths” (Das Nichts nichtet), giving Carnap a paradigm of meaningless, unverifiable, unfalsifiable, metaphysical gibberish.
This week, we’re thinking about the relationship between science and politics. Are they friends or foes? I can get myself in a cynical frame of mind in which I think to myself that whether they are friends or foes depends on where the money is. I’m kidding – sort of.
The classical view on the relationship between ethics and rulership can be traced back to…
The notion of ideology is very important in political thought, as well as in everyday…
This week, we’re thinking about Propaganda – how it works, why it matters. I feel about propaganda sort of the way I feel about pornography — I’m not exactly sure how to define it, but I definitely know it when I see it.
How do we get from noise to meaning? Well, however we do it, the…