September 2020

What behaviour is characteristic of a philosophically minded individual?

By / / Metaphilosophy / ,

Thank you Jong Camallere for such a candid question. I am going to start by saying something that many philosophers will consider ridiculous: philosophers do not seek truth, but clarity. The philosophically minded individual must not seek truth, and must even be willing to accept that truth may be unattainable. There are several behaviours that […]

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Is Jordan Peterson a ‘stupid person’s smart person’?

By / / Epistemology, Value Theory / ,

Thanks to Mojahid Gauraki for the question. This is an interesting question, because while on the surface it seems to be about a single individual and whether they are ‘smart’, it is in fact about what it means for someone to be smart or stupid, and the different ways either might be recognised, or even

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Do diamonds have intrinsic value?

By / / Aesthetics, Value Theory / ,

Thank you, Arjun Sambhi, for this interesting question. I want to argue that diamonds are intrinsically valuable because they are intrinsically beautiful and resistant to change, both of which are intrinsically valuable properties. Let’s start with beauty. Beauty is an intrinsically valuable property. To see this, consider two worlds that are identical in all respects,

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How can we reconcile public philosophy with institutionalized philosophy?

By / / History of philosophy, Metaphilosophy /

Excellent question, Huka Dabaso! This is actually something I have thought about quite a bit. Like many people, before I studied philosophy in a formal sense, I was pondering the same big questions that philosophy has been dealing with since… well, since we started wondering. In his Metaphysics, Aristotle says that philosophy began when man

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Why should a philosopher not be wealthy?

By / / Ethics (Moral Philosophy), Metaphilosophy / ,

Hi, Mr Wynn P Wheldon! What an interesting question. Let me briefly sketch some possible answers! First of all, some people might question the assumption that a philosopher should not be wealthy. Although most philosophers are not wealthy (by western standards, at least), it might be totally okay for them to get a juicy salary

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Why has man chosen to reduce himself to the state of an animal?

By / / Ethics (Moral Philosophy), Philosophy of human nature / ,

Thank you Nderhe Paulin for such an incendiary question! The way you have asked the question assumes, first, that humans have chosen to reduce themselves to the state of an animal and, second, that they should not have done so. I assume this is not a positive choice, since your use of the word “reduce”

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What is a cultural shift?

By / / Philosophy of human nature, Philosophy of religion, Philosophy of science / , , , ,

Thank you, Ali Muràád Bàloç, for such an interesting question. To understand what one might mean by ‘cultural shift’, we first need to understand what we mean by ‘culture’. Friedrich Nietzsche described human beings as orphans of nature because, compared to other animals, we are all but devoid of instincts. Unlike other animals, humans are

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Why do we feel guilt?

By / / Ethics (Moral Philosophy), Philosophy of mind / , , , , ,

Thank you, Le Miguel Jumonong, for this interesting question. We often allude to several types of guilt. For instance, Sam may be guilty of stealing an apple, Mary of eating too much meat, and a political party leader of bitterly losing national elections. At first glance, these cases seem to be distinct. Indeed, Sam is

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