My recent post, “A Skeptic’s View of the Meaning of Life” elicited the following response from a regular reader.
Category Archives: Skepticism
The Democratic Virtues Of Skepticism
Pyrrho of Elis is credited as being the first Greek skeptic philosopher.
(This essay first appeared at 3 Quarks Daily on July 13, 2020. Reprinted with permission.)
by
Skepticism is the view that knowledge is unattainable. It comes in varying strengths. In the strongest version, it is a thesis about all knowledge, the global denial that anyone has ever known anything. Continue reading The Democratic Virtues Of Skepticism
The Disconsolation Of Philosophy
Boethius teaching his students
(This essay originally appeared at 3 Quarks Daily. Reprinted with permission.)
By Joseph Shieber
This semester I’ve been teaching a first-year seminar entitled “Propaganda”. It is, unfortunately, a very timely topic. Continue reading The Disconsolation Of Philosophy
Can We Know Anything with Certainty?
Rene Descartes
There are many reasons we might want to philosophize—to become better people, gain self-knowledge, understand the history of thought, etc. But I was drawn to philosophy because I wanted to know, as far as is possible, what was true. This sentiment echoes the first sentence of the first book in my very first college philosophy class, way back in 1973. Continue reading Can We Know Anything with Certainty?