What do we want to know when we ask why someone does something? For example, if you asked me, ‘Why are you writing this article?’ what answer would satisfy your expectations? I can respond in at least two ways. One would describe my writing as an act of the body, a certain physiological functionality manifesting …
Continue reading John Stuart Mill on Truth and Meaning in Philosophy
The first Arabic philosopher, 9th century thinker al-Kindī, said that truth and wisdom are valuable regardless of where they come from. What did he mean?
Conspiracy theories, secret designs, nefarious activities, mystery stories as old as humanity where the decorations change but the plot remains. They fascinate us and pull us in, offend and enrage us, it takes an effort to ignore them, nobody is entirely immune to their potency, these arch-antagonists of a calm mind. Why? What is the …
Continue reading Spreading the Word: Why Do We Believe In Conspiracy Theories
How do you know that you know something? When does a belief or opinion become knowledge? Often an intuitive response to this is - when I can offer justification, proof, for my belief. Justification seems to play a silent but crucial role in our understanding of what counts as knowledge. However, there is more. When you justify …
This is the final part of the 3-part series on the art of thinking and pratice of persuasion as gathered from Plato's dialogue Phaedrus (a version of its translation available here). So far I have concluded that Socrates had the following goal in this dialogue: to demonstrate that no practice deserves to be called art if its practitioner does …
Continue reading Socrates and Phaedrus: Art of Thinking and Practice of Persuasion (Part 3 of 3)
Last week I published the first part of this 3-part series. This is the second part of the article where I continue by exploring in more detail the ideas that can be gathered from Plato's dialogue Phaedrus (a version of its translation available here). Of course, there are many insights that can be gleaned. The one I …
Continue reading Socrates and Phaedrus: Art of Thinking and Practice of Persuasion (Part 2 of 3)
In Plato's dialogue Phaedrus (a version of its translation available here), Socrates discusses the merits of rhetoric as the art of speaking. He wants to establish whether rhetoric, as practised and taught in Athens by the orators at the time and understood as "a way of directing the soul by means of speech" (we could say - …
Continue reading Socrates and Phaedrus: Art of Thinking and Practice of Persuasion (Part 1 of 3)
One of the last pre-Socratic philosophers of Ancient Greece, Anaxagoras hailed from the Ionian city of Clazomenae but is notable for being the first one to bring philosophy to Athens. There he taught and flourished for about 30 years until the mid-5th century BCE when he went back to Ionia due to charges brought against …
Continue reading Anaxagoras on Change: Everything Contains Everything
For the 5th century BCE pre-Socratic philosopher and leading figure of the Eleatic school Parmenides, truth is universal. It contains everything, unifies all. It is All and, therefore, One. Because of this, truth has the unshakable attribute of certainty. Accordingly, if something cannot pass the test of universality, it cannot generate certainty, so it cannot be the …
"How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise!" Homer, some 3.000 years ago "The Thinker" by Auguste Rodin, in the Legion's courtyard, San Francisco* How reliable is our common sense? It gets us by on a day-to-day basis mostly without big blunders. So we can agree that common sense is reliable as an adaptability …
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