Quaere, how much do we really see? What can we learn about knowledge when sight is restored to a 13-year-old boy who had been blind since birth? Charlie Huenemann explains what the empiricist Locke and the rationalist Leibniz had to say about this. And don’t miss the very interesting readers’ comments to this very interesting essay.
Philosophy
A homepage for philosophy
What’s the difference between Wikipedia and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP)? SEP is “peer-reviewed, respected, accurate, and free.” It’s a terrific resource for “stressed undergraduates cramming before exams, professors looking for a topical refresher, or ‘regular’ people who are just interested in philosophy.”
How Aristotle invented science
Susan H. Gordon’s review of Armand Marie Leroi’s The Lagoon: “And so, in 2014, Aristotle joins the ranks of his fellow biologists. ‘Intimacy with the natural world shines from his works,’ writes Leroi, a communion that allowed Aristotle to ‘sieve the ocean of natural history folklore and travelogue for grains of truth from which to build a new science.’ Following his new scientific inquiry, Aristotle arrived at a final why: Why does any of this happen at all? It would take centuries before Darwin could find a scientifically plausible answer, and in ancient Greece Aristotle looked again to the practical for his own: Biological systems are true so that we might exist. And to exist is simply better than to not exist.”
The Socrates we don’t know
Adam Kirsch uses Plato, Xenophon, and Aristophanes to “to triangulate the greatest man of antiquity — Socrates himself” … and also to reflect on how much we can know at all.
Philosophy for warriors
What can philosophy do for warriors? Very interesting interview with Nancy Sherman about philosophy and the military profession … with special attention to the blessings and curses of Stoicism.
Empathy … for and against
Paul Bloom claims that “if you want to be good and do good, empathy is a poor guide.” Some agree, some disagree, and that leads to a very interesting exchange of ideas on empathy.
Dreaming the dream
What are the chances “you’re an isolated brain floating lonely through the vast expanse of the Universe with all your thoughts, memories and perceptions just figments of your imagination.” Consider Boltzmann brains. How would you know whether you’re one or not?
Not so foolish
“Humanity’s achievements and its self-perception are today at curious odds. We can put autonomous robots on Mars and genetically engineer malarial mosquitoes to be sterile, yet the news from popular psychology, neuroscience, economics and other fields is that we are not as rational as we like to assume. We are prey to a dismaying variety of hard-wired errors.” And so we exploit these hard-wired errors to nudge people into making the right choices. But Steven Poole claims there are ethical questions about nudging if only because “there is less reason than many think to doubt humans’ ability to be reasonable.”
The drowning child
Test your thoughts about what we owe others with this philosophy experiment based on articles by Peter Singer.
Socratically Speaking 