Science, philosophy, and the knowledge thereof

Words: 2,300Reading time: 10 mins Seriously consider the following questions: Do you know you’re not dreaming right now? How could you tell? Do you know that your perception of reality is not being deceived by some evil demon or mad scientist? Can you be absolutely certain that what you think you know is absolutely true? These are all questions asked by the philosophical skeptic, who answers…

Words: 1815Reading time: 7 mins Source: Craiyon How many times have you told yourself “I knew that would happen!” or “I saw that coming!”? Well.. you were 100% wrong. Let me convince you why. Imagine the following scenario: Your friend Jim has a new girlfriend, Sam. You meet Sam and note that she appears to be “way above his league,” and she is known for being demanding in a relationship. You…

Words: 1,500Reading time: 6 mins Source: Craiyon Is a wise person always ethical? We might assume that a wise person is knowledgeable enough to do the right thing. The wise person knows everything, or at least many things, right? Yes and no. That’s contradictory and confusing, yes. As I will show in this post, it is not necessarily the case that a wise person is an ethical person. The Wise…

Words: 1,970Reading time: 7 mins Image Source Consider the following situation: There is a runaway train (or trolley, if you prefer) barreling down the railway tracks. You notice that farther down the track are five people tied up on the track so that the train continuing on its current course will run them over. There’s a lever near you that you can pull that will change the train onto a…

This post argues why the reason "everyone does it" is irrational and unethical. First, it's a bandwagon fallacy. Second, it's anti-Kantian ethics. Finally, it's manipulative, and manipulation is unethical.

Words: 1,320Reading time: 5 mins Image Source Have you ever been a victim of someone using the excuse “but everyone does it” and felt pressured to accept their claim? Having the pressure to conform to society certainly makes it seem that something is right. But what if I told you that this is a terrible reason for justifying a claim? In essence, it’s a piece of sophistry (deceptively clever…

Words: 2200Reading time: 9 minutes Wilhelm Dilthey, 1855Image Source Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911) was a 19th-century historian and philosopher. His main concern and life project was with defining and bringing together the human sciences into a cohesive sphere (the human sciences are, for Dilthey, the humanities, the social sciences, psychology, and anthropology). However, it was also an attempt…

Words: 3000Reading time: 11 minutes Source: Craiyon Religious debates can be some of the most contentious and heated debates. Have you ever seen a religious person claim “God exists,” and the unreligious rebuts with “where’s your evidence for His existence?” This is probably the most common argument within popular (and perhaps even formal!) philosophy of religion. This post will discuss this…

Words: 1500Reading time: 5-6 minutes Source: Craiyon I have wanted to post this for several months now; however, as the second section is contentious, and I feared the view of others, I had always put it off. But I think this is important to add to the intellectual discourse on colonization and white supremacy. This idea won’t go away and if I am shamed for sharing these thoughts, then I think…

Words: 5680Reading time: 20-22 minutes Source: Craiyon In a previous post, I use a phenomenological approach to show that the only two necessarily true axioms are that 1) I exist and 2) I have various experiences. I then foresee a long difficult path to go from there to any further truths, and the goal of describing the necessary constitution of reality. These are some steps forward from those…

The Big Bang Theory asserts the universe came to exist at some point and is finite. It is eternally expanding and will fizzle out at some point.