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Category Archives: Philosophy
Four Deadly Errors
Four deadly errors creep into most debates about social policy. They are the moralistic fallacy, the realistic fallacy, the rationalistic fallacy, and the existentialist fallacy: My new book Why Sane People Believe Crazy Things Second Edition helps you spot fallacies … Continue reading
Posted in Epistemology, Human Relations, Life, Philosophy, Psychology, Society
Tagged arguments, errors, Fallacies, Logic
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Roll the Dice
Common wisdom gives us a lot of contradictory advice. There’s: And there’s: But I think the best advice comes from the Bible: “The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, … Continue reading
Posted in Bible, Life, Philosophy, Psychology
Tagged Chance, Courage, Determination, Luck, Rudyard Kipling, Strength, Wisdom
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We Are All Pythagoreans Now
“We are all Keynesians now.”— U.S. President Richard M. Nixon, 1971 If you took geometry in school, then you probably know the Pythagorean theorem: “in a right triangle, the square of the longest side equals the sum of the squares … Continue reading
Posted in Christianity, Human Relations, Life, Philosophy, Psychology, Science
Tagged Courage, Justice, Morality, Positive attitude, Wisdom
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Publication Day for Why Sane People Believe Crazy Things!
Today is publication day for the second edition of my book Why Sane People Believe Crazy Things: How Belief Can Help or Hurt Social Peace! The new edition adds a chapter about the foundations of morality, as well as various … Continue reading
Two Views of Human Rights
Human rights are important: on that, everyone agrees. But that’s about the only point of agreement. A big problem is that people don’t think about what human rights are or where they come from. Rights are a claim that we … Continue reading
Wisdom to Face Life’s Challenges
Stoicism is the belief that we should try to be serene and rational. It seems totally alien to our hyper-emotional culture, where people can get rich by crying and complaining without actually doing anything worthwhile. A crucial part of stoicism … Continue reading
Posted in Life, Philosophy, Psychology, Society
Tagged Courage, Life, Morality, Positive attitude, Stoicism, Wisdom
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Healthy Societies Are Efficient
Efficiency isn’t everything, but healthy societies and people need it. If you want the deep explanation of why that’s true, read about Charles Darwin’s observations of birds (finches) on the Galapagos Islands off the coast of South America. Each island … Continue reading
Always To Be Blessed
It’s seldom that a two-line passage from a poem can explain so much that’s wrong with the world. But Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man (1732) has just such a passage: “Hope springs eternal in the human breast, Man never is, … Continue reading
Posted in Philosophy, Political Science, Society
Tagged Alexander Pope, Command economy, Desire, Economics, Essay on Man, Free market, Greedy desire, Serenity, Social Peace, Wisdom
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The Basic Truths Are The Same
My mentor Brand Blanshard, a philosophy professor at Yale, said that “the basic truths of life are the same for every honest mind, whether atheist or devotee.” My grandfather, a Methodist minister, said that “Every person you meet knows something … Continue reading
Posted in Life, Philosophy
Tagged Blanshard, Freedom, Meaning of life, Rationality, Serenity, Tolerance, Truth, Wisdom
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Celebrating Pi Day
Today, March 14, is “Pi Day.” The date matches the first three digits of pi, 3.14. On the Nerd Calendar, Pi Day is even more important than Festivus or G.H. Hardy‘s birthday. Pi is the ratio between a circle’s circumference … Continue reading
Posted in Life, Philosophy, Science
Tagged Ancient Egypt, Ancient mathematics, Geometry, Irrational numbers, Pi, Pi Day, Pythagoreans, Rhind Papyrus
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The Thousand-Year View 