Epistemology
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I was saddend to learn Melvin Bragg retired from In Our Time. Whilst I understand some listener’s complaints, especially in recent years, of Bragg’s performance, I considered him essential to making the programme as legendary as it is. A show spanning decades with the same host will naturally have its ebb and flows. As with
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Over the past week I was reading something that reminded me of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, particularly the Kantian problem of a priori and a posteriori knowledge. At its core, the Kantian problem can be framed around the claim that mathematics and logic are based on synthetic a priori judgments – statements that are
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I recently read an interesting essay by Egil Asprem entitled Dialectics of Darkness. Its original purpose was to serve as a review of The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences by Jason Josephson-Storm. I have yet to read Josephson-Storm’s book, so I shall have to reserve comment for another
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I find philosophy to be an incredibly controversial subject, one that is difficult to get a handle on. There is a value to philosophy, though I often struggle to understand it or place it. Perhaps this is because I lack a satisfactory definition of philosophy – a term which can represent so many different bases
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One may have noticed something distinct about the title of this essay, namely that I have enclosed the word “truth” in quotations. The purpose is to bring focus to the question of its status, not because the concept itself is in doubt, but because it appears, at least in many postmodern circles, to have undergone
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The debate about which triumphs, free will or determinism, can on many occasions feel so unsatisfying. Over the years I’ve picked up or have come across quite a few pieces of literature on the subject, from historical and social studies to psychological research, neuro and cognitive science, and also various speculations within philosophy and physics.
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R.C. Smith If we take as a stated assumption, based off the growing body of science, that prejudice is pervasive – that human irrationality is, to put it philosophically, a central theme in the human struggle toward a rational society – I think one of the lessons is epistemological in form. Its basic reduction is
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It is not common for me to begin an essay this way. But the latest edition of New Scientist was released – “the ethics issue” – and it raised a few points of reflection, however informal and searching. New Scientist is generally known for its unique combination of science reporting and communication, critical thinking and
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I decided to make a video the other day on exponent properties. I like to think about mathematical concepts and to explore first principles. I spend a lot of my spare time working through proofs and also studying the history of mathematics and physics (as well as science in general). A natural extension of these
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R.C. Smith Ethics of Experience In think, ultimately, what we read in The Gods in Whom They Trusted is a set of philosophical formulations that take the human tendency to formulate faith-based constructs, fundamental principles of “life direction”, “core or ultimate convictions”, or “visions of life” – very much in the philosophical sense of absolute first principles – as universal.
Dialogues at still points 