One of the more striking incoherences characteristic of the Enlightenment is the struggle to establish a naturalistic foundation for morality and ethics. Given the success of the natural sciences and overall confidence in the human cognitive capacities to understand and explain nature in a purely mechanistic way, the hopes of Enlightenment thinkers must have been …
Last year around this time I wrote about miracles. More specifically, the 18th century Scottish philosopher's David Hume's views on them. It is that season again when my thoughts, at least sometimes, turn to the topic of miracles. Perhaps especially this year. Wouldn't the world really need a few good miracles now! It turns out, …
Recently I have been thinking about the laws of nature. More accurately - about the different interpretations of what it means to be a law of nature. At first glance, all seems to be clear. Right? When you think about it, I am certain you can easily come up with your own rough definition. A law of nature …
In the last week's article about deductive and inductive arguments, I mentioned something called Hume's dilemma. In this article, I discuss it in more detail. Here is a short recap of the main idea - the 18th century Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume presented the scientific (and philosophical) community with a challenge: he claimed that …
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