Electric Agora (archive)

Tag: Sextus Empiricus

  • What the [Bleep] Can we Know? Montaigne and the “Apology for Raymond Sebond.”

    By Kevin Currie-Knight ___ [The following is a transcript of the video linked at the end.] My sense is that the world today is too full of confidence in belief. It seems like today, it is imperative not only to have a belief about everything – the right politics, the right stance toward religion, what…

  • Three New Books: Three — How to Keep an Open Mind, edited by Richard Bett

    by Kevin Currie-Knight ____ A friend  of mine posted a meme about how vegans are cultural elitists because they do not take seriously the fact that many societies are dependent on eating animals. Against my better judgment, I chimed in. I pointed out that it isn’t necessarily cultural elitism to see something another culture does…

  • THREE NEW BOOKS: tWO — jULIA GALEF’S “THE SCOUT MINDSET”

    By Kevin Currie-Knight ____ Early in her book, The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don’t (Portfolio, 2021), Julia Galef comes right out and says: “Motivated reasoning is so fundamental to the way our minds work that it’s almost strange to have a special name for it; perhaps it should just…

  • A Certain Moral Blindness in an Age of Polarization

    by Kevin Currie-Knight Like probably everyone who reads philosophy, I have favorite writings I return to again and again, sometimes to find fresh insight, and sometimes, just to appreciate again the beauty of what I’d already found in them. One such writing for me is an underappreciated article by William James, titled “On a Certain…