Electric Agora (archive)

Tag: Reason

  • The Uses of Philosophy

    By Daniel A. Kaufman ___ [1] We need to distinguish between philosophy and what people have called philosophy. Physics is not philosophy and neither is biology, yet once, they — and the rest of the natural sciences — went under the name “natural philosophy.”  [2] I would identify philosophy with a set of tools and techniques,…

  • Standards

    by Daniel A. Kaufman ____ Both religion and philosophy endeavor to provide us with objective standards for our moral and aesthetic and other judgments, as well as our actions. Religion does it by stipulating a supreme authority in the person of God, while philosophy does it by appeal to reason and rationality, the authority of…

  • To Share or Not to Share (On Social Media)

    by Kevin Currie-Knight ___ There is a joy to not sharing one’s thoughts with others. This is an unexpected benefit I stumbled onto when I recently all but gave up social media. A story might illustrate. I made the decision in very late 2021 to radically restrict my social media use. [1] Around two weeks…

  • Frege’s View of the World

    by Mark English ____ Gottlob Frege was a mathematician with strong philosophical interests and preoccupations. In an attempt to discover and make explicit the logical foundations of mathematics he developed — almost singlehandedly — the basic ideas of the predicate calculus. But he also had deep and compelling views on language and an appreciation of…

  • knowledge is power

    by James Pannucci ____ Knowledge is power. We’ve all heard this, but what does it mean, and where did this concept come from? Historically, it is attributed to Francis Bacon, an English philosopher from the late 1500’s and early 1600’s. He was a key Renaissance philosopher making major contributions to scientific methodology and the topic…

  • Evolution, belief, and manipulation: A discussion with Hugo Mercier

    by Robert Gressis ____ In this dialogue, Hugo Mercier (French National Center for Scientific Research, Not Born Yesterday) and I discuss how human belief and manipulation work, and Hugo’s research about why people aren’t as manipulable as we sometimes think. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NcMWlU6jzA&list=PLFBaXJ7yNOYERObvjSkJfoDOgtMWVhWse&index=2&ab_channel=ElectricAgora 01:24​ Hugo’s thesis: When it comes to communication, people are not easily manipulated, but…

  • This Week’s Special: On a Metaphor in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

    by Daniel A. Kaufman I want to talk about a certain metaphor in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.  It appears in a lone sentence in Book III, Ch. 3., and while mentioned only briefly, it is significant, not just in understanding the Ethics, but in grasping a crucial point about the limits of reason and deliberation more…

  • On the Philosophy of David Hume (Part Two)

    by Daniel A. Kaufman The second of two conversations on the philosophy of David Hume, with Robert Wright.  First appeared on the Sophia program, MeaningofLife.TV, October 30, 2016.