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Once you learn what the "uni-context" is, you'll see it everywhere: "A Philosopher’s One-Word Theory to Explain Why the World Feels So Weird" @dkthomp.bsky.social @agcallard.bsky.social
(Plus- Easier Said Than Done)
Muse on milieu: https://roughlydaily.com/2026/07/20/i-believe-that-we-can-forecast-the-changing-landscape-of-context/
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Courage of Uncertainty
Agnes: I think that a lot of your worries about the tower and the- I still think they go back to something- There's a question whether we ever make any progress in a conversation. That seems to me to be the real question there. Can we learn from each other? And can we learn from each other, in some sense, without taking as the frame of our conversation something that we just happened to get slotted into and that we don't question? I actually think that it's true about philosophy that you are not guaranteed in any way that the answer to that question is yes. You don't know that it's yes. Eric: You've had epiphanies in conversation which have changed your life? Agnes: Uh, my problem is that I have too many of them but yeah! Eric: That would be an awesome life. Agnes: It's not a dearth of epiphanies. It's a total instability. But can I just say, there's this moment, okay- I feel like you're Meno. This is Plato's Meno.
They're having this conversation. Socrates is like, "You're a big opponent of excellence.”
Meno comes to Socrates like "I want excellence. How do I get it?"
And Socrates is like "Well let's start by figuring out what it is."
And Meno's like "That's not hard. That's super easy." Meno says it's easy about seven times in a row. It's really funny. He's like "Here's what it is. Here's what it is."
And Socrates refuses him a bunch of times. At a certain point Meno's like "Look, this is not going anywhere. Obviously you can just sort of come up with more words against my words. How do we ever know we'll ever get anywhere with this?"
And Socrates actually at that point turns to math and they use a mathematical example about finding the double square. So if you have a square and you want to find the square whose area is twice as big as that square. And how, somebody who goes into that problem making a certain set of assumptions will never find the answer. We can talk about it if you want, it's a great example. But the point is, afterwards Socrates is like "Yeah, the truth is... there is no guarantee. We don't know. But! I think we will be better men, and braver, if we believe that we ought to inquire than not."
And, you know, you say you like physics, but I don't see it as an alternative in the sense that it's not gonna give me- It's the layers- levels problem right? Physics is not gonna give me the answer to the questions I have, and I can't just abandon those questions. And I would be a coward if I didn't try to find answers to them. Eric: Well coward is in a very high state of the stack. High level of the stack. In some sense the questions that really have come to animate me throughout my adult life have to do with this question, "How can we improve upon “It is” without involving ourselves in the equation?" Agnes: Maybe that's a good- I'm mostly interested in the equations that essentially involve me. Eric: Right? Agnes: So that might be a big difference. When you say coward, I think in some sense courage is what makes life worth living. Eric: Are you a courageous person? Agnes: If I thought I didn't care about courage, like if I thought I was okay being a coward, I would think that my life might not be worth living. I think courage is the sense- at least- The sense of the importance of courage is the sense that life is not merely a biological. That life is worth something.
-Prof. Agnes Callard on The Portal, Ep. #023 - Courage, Meta-cognitive Detachment and Their Limits
https://youtu.be/hJtA-_pBg8g?t=2386
Origins of Philosophy & Unity of a Thought
Eric: Is the examined life really aided by philosophy? Or is there sort of an infinite tower of questions and it's sort of an intellectual check kiting scheme by which you keep getting into deeper and deeper water by noticing something only to find out that the noticing created a larger problem than the previous one that you had? Agnes: I think one way to put the case for philosophy is you have to have a right. You can't just draw a distinction. You're just not allowed to just draw a distinction. That's why I said about the quadripartite, you're not just allowed to slash the world up into bits. The place where philosophy comes from is Parmenides. Parmenides was really the first philosopher, okay? And you know this was pre-Plato. This is the pre-Socratic philosophers. And you know he- Zeno's paradoxes are sort of woven into Parmenideanism. But Parmenides' basic thought is that there's only one thing you can say: "It is." So there's just one thing: it. And there's one thing you can say about it: That it is. And you're like “Well Parmenides look there's also, like, 'this chair is.'” And Parmenides says "Well, if you say that the chair is, and you want to say that the chair is something and is different from, say, that table, then you're saying that the chair is not the table. So you're saying that the chair is not. But you're also saying that it is." Parmenides and generations of people after Parmenides thought that this was like this really terrible puzzle about how non-being can be. How can there be anything that isn't? Like this chair not being this table? The problem of non-being has a lot of different manifestations. Difference is one manifestation. Change over time. How can the chair at one time exist and then later it's collapsed and it's not there anymore? And Parmenides' thought was that our thinking cannot support this way of talking. It's like it's just words, when we talk about the diversity out in the world. And there's only one thing we can coherently say. There's only one thing where, when we say it, we've understood what we've said. And that's: "It is." Now Plato comes along and he's like "No, Parmenides. That's nuts. We have to be able to talk about some kinds of difference. But you're right that the entire world as we see it - the entire sensible world - that's just nonsense. That doesn't make any sense. That's a bunch of contradictions. But there are these things called forms okay? Like the beautiful and the just or whatever. And at least the beautiful, it's always beautiful. The only thing that's true about it is that it is beautiful." And that's something I can say. The beautiful is beautiful. The just is just. So at least I'm one step beyond Parmenidies. I can talk about these forms. I still can't talk about the chair. Okay and then you get Aristotle. And Aristotle is like "No, guys. We have to be able to talk about like human beings and things and we need to enrich our language further." Now the reason I bring all this up is that the basic philosophical impulse is that when you draw distinctions and you carve things up and you talk about layers, you've in a sense collapsed your own thought into a bunch of different things that are not unified. And you need to be able to see the unity of them. If you can't, you haven't actually had a thought. You haven't thought anything. You've just said words. So philosophers are constantly attuned to this worry that we might just be saying words and not having thoughts. And that there's a standard for the unity of a thought that's a pretty high standard. And so if you draw a distinction you need to understand the unity that underlies the distinction and what legitimates the distinction. And so if I say, you know, I ate the cookie even though I knew that it wasn't the right thing to do. And you're like "Well wait a minute. You freely ate the cookie? You chose to eat the cookie? "Yes." "So that was an intentional action?" "Yes." "So intentional action like when we have a reason?" "Yes." "So reason means you think that it's, all things considered, the best thing to do?" "Yes, that's what a reason is." "Wait a minute, you just said you thought it was, all things considered, the best thing to do. And you thought that there was something better that you should do. You just contradicted yourself." And Parmenides thought that contradicting yourself was written into "This is a chair and this is a table." And so, you know, we've come really far! We can talk about so much now. But only, I think, if we can sort of back those checks. That these distinctions have some way of holding together. -Professor Agnes Callard on The Portal #023 - Courage, Meta-cognitive Detachment and Their Limits
