An argument is a reason for believing something. Arguments consist of two or more claims, one of which is a conclusion. The conclusion is the claim the argument purports to give a reason for believing. The other claims are the premises. The premises of an argument are offered as a reason for believing its … Continue reading Arguments
Opinion | Colleges Are Putting Their Futures at Risk – The New York Times (nytimes.com) Pamela Paul takes universities to task for failing to promote open ended inquiry and knowledge seeking in the editorial linked above. She blames misuses of academic freedom whereby academics short-cut inquiry on a rapid path to conviction, advocacy, and activism, … Continue reading Academic Freedom isn’t what this Pamela Paul thinks it is
Arguments are commonly regarded as tools of persuasion. Seen this way, arguments are sales pitches for believing something. In our consumer society, we are all skilled at negotiating the constant onslaught of sales pitches. Our default is the hard no. Any of us would soon be broke without rejecting the vast majority of sales pitches. … Continue reading Critical Thinking Note 30: It’s not about Buying and Selling
I have no ideas. I grasp a good many ideas. I’m acquainted with even more. Some ideas I understand pretty well. But none of them belong to me. Not even any I might have been lucky enough to entertain before anyone else. Even people who have discovered an idea or two didn’t create them. Sometimes … Continue reading I have no idea
This charge is being leveled at higher education frequently. The idea that colleges are in the business of indoctrination is a standard trope in attacks on higher education. Foes of education aren’t just preaching to the choir with this indictment. The appeal of the indoctrination charge is significantly wider, since many of our students aren’t … Continue reading Critical Thinking Note 29: Is Education Indoctrination?
Early on in the exploration of reasonableness we made a point of acknowledging basic human fallibility. Inquiry is not a linear path from absolute truth to absolute truth. Inquiry is a more typically a meandering path with frequent back tracking as we learn from or mistakes. Our conclusions, even when they support a healthy degree … Continue reading Logical Fallacies
Normative claims aim to tell us how things ought to be or what we ought to do. This, as opposed to claims that just aim to describe how things are. Philosophy may be the only discipline that inquires into the nature of normativity. We don’t just aim to uphold normative standards, as happens in every … Continue reading Varieties of Normativity
When someone else offers you reasons to change your mind, you should be convinced by those reasons if they are good reasons. That’s not exactly the same thing is being convinced by the person. Nobody likes to be bullied or coerced and we often resist the reasoning others offer because of this. It can feel … Continue reading Nothing Personal, it’s just Reasoning
One of the hazards of teaching philosophers like Descartes and Hume is that some students are too willing to embrace the skeptical claims and sit content with not being able to know. The idea that “It’s all just a matter of the individual’s subjective opinion” can be powerfully appealing to people who haven’t yet figured … Continue reading From Skepticism to Inquiry
We humans are very prone to suffer from a psychological predicament we might call “the security blanket paradox.” We know the world is full of hazards and like passengers after a shipwreck we tend to latch on to something for a sense of safety. We might cling to a possession, another person, our cherished beliefs, … Continue reading Note on Russell’s “Value of Philosophy”