It is only by insisting that human experience is intelligible that we will ever discover the shortcomings of our own reason. Continue reading

Recently a good philosophical friend dropped in to visit and, after a pre-emptive apology, said, “Aren’t you just a chicken-sh*t Nietzschean? Because you accept his view of the world, his psychology, and his critique of religion and traditional morality, all the way up to the last point — his claim that pity is weakness —… Continue reading

David Hume provided a compelling argument against believing in reports of miracles in chapter 10 of his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. The basic idea is this: we have to weigh the likelihood of a miracle taking place against the possibility that the report is exaggerated or simply false. The end result is that it is… Continue reading

It seems to me that if you try to lead your life by reason, you end up as a skeptic. A skeptic, of course, can believe many things, but will regard all these beliefs as tenuous hypotheses which can be modified or rejected if some experiences or reasons come along which seriously challenge those beliefs… Continue reading