Mar 03 2025 42 mins 29
I recently had the opportunity to participate in "Spectrum Street Epistemology" with @drpeterboghossian and a number of others including @destiny . This episode was inspired by both that event and the many other conversations I had with Peter, Reid, David, Evan, Mia and Travis across the days I spent in Florida with those excellent people engaged in the important work of defending the Enlightenment. This is a sort of disjointed episode as I have in mind a particular audience of sophisticated thinkers on epistemology so I meander through my own worldview, take a historic look at why it is "belief" and "degrees of belief" or "strength of feeling", "confidence" and so on arose and became an important improvement on more primitive ways of thinking about the world. I compare all of that to what I argue is the most rational way of conceiving of "critical thinking". I end with some personal reflections. If you go to Peter's channel I imagine the many conversations we recorded together will be gradually released in the coming days and weeks. Compared to what I do here: their's is a very professional production! The videos accompanying the audio are a mixture of my own poorly shot camera work and stock footage - just so the viewer does not have to stare at nothing but my head for ~40 minutes.
00:00 Introductions
01:00 Are humans unique…just like every other species?
03:45 We are 98% the same as chimpanzees?
07:00 Was there an “Adam” - a first person?
09:00 The first creative minds
10:10 The evolution of authoritarianism
12:30 Medieval societies vs primitive tribalism
13:20 Early individualism, empiricism, rationalism and reason
16:10 Empiricism, rationalism and inductivism as “appeals to authority”
18:25 Belief and the weight of evidence
21:00 “Updating one’s priors”.
22:20 The God of the Subjectivism
23:30 Fossils
26:04 Better ways of thinking
29:00 Knowing and believing
31:00 Moving beyond “degrees of belief” and subjectivism
32:00 Knowledge: what it is
34:00 Knowing is binary
36:00 Reason is more than feeling
36:55 Reflecting on Spectrum Street Epistemology
41:05 Gratitude and acknowledgements
