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Nothing is Hidden in Philosophy
Mystics say ‘there is a profound and mysterious truth that I know, but you cannot know because you are not a great master, like me’. But Epicurus says ‘anyone can know this’, and Socrates says not only that anyone can know this, but you already know this and have forgotten!
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What is a Good Life?
This is a difficult question. To answer it, you need to make sure you’re asking the right question in the right way. Consider any part of what you might traditionally (or stereotypically) think of as being essential to living a good life: wealth, property, success, family, love, confidence, popularity, freedom, power, status, productivity, etc., etc. These are the things that most people aim for […]
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Good Enough
I am convinced that virtue is necessary for happiness. I am not convinced that it’s sufficient. But knowing that it is necessary to be good is good enough for me.
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Be More of What is Good
The goal in life is not to have more of what is good but to be more of what is good.
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Shadow Chasing
Over the past few years – having made an attempt to pursue philosophy as a way of life, to take it seriously and digest its lessons and not only treat it as an academic discipline – I’ve come to see new depths in old ideas. One example of this is the cynical little detail in Plato’s ‘Allegory of the Cave’. There, Plato suggests that these poor souls – imprisoned in a dark cave of ignorance and only able to look at the shadows on the wall in front of them – would esteem those who are best at discerning the…
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Junk and Nonsense
A lot of philosophy and philosophers are junk and nonsense. But you can’t dismiss philosophy itself for that. There are a lot of bad musicians and bad music, but that doesn’t make music itself bad.
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A Philosopher’s Difference
Philosophers chase what matters and so neglect what doesn’t. Most people neglect what matters and so chase what doesn’t.
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Artificial Intelligence and the Illusion of Understanding
‘I went down to the university yesterday to talk about Plato’s cave with the academics.’ If I say this to an AI, it would miss everything that matters in this sentence and see everything that doesn’t. But if I say this to a philosopher they would reply: ‘I see you are making a point.’ Having had this thought for a while, I thought I’d put it to the test.
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Artificial Intelligence
‘I went down to the university yesterday to talk about Plato’s cave with the academics.’ If I say this to an AI, it would miss everything that matters in this sentence and see everything that doesn’t. But if I say this to a philosopher they would reply: ‘I see you are making a point.’
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The Allegory of the Cave in Plato’s Republic
In Plato’s Republic, Socrates paints a strange picture. Imagine a cave, underground (as caves are), with no natural light. In this cave are people chained up and chained down; they can’t move a muscle, not even their heads from left to right, and they’ve been stuck like that forever. They’ve never known any different. They are stuck in a dark cave looking at the wall directly in front of them. On this wall are shadows cast from a fire behind them. Between the fire and the people and the wall is a little runway with a kind of shadow-puppet theatre.…
An experiment with philosophy as a way of life
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