Philosophia Polymathematica

Disclaimer: References to postmodernists herein should be construed to mean laypersons whose thinking is influenced by postmodernism, not postmodernists in the strict sense. One of the basic tenets of good thinking is that one must base their reasoning on how things are rather than how one wishes things to be. The greatest challenge that postmodernity has hurled at us is that the conception of how things are has been so thoroughly blended with how one wishes things to be that the two constructs have been rendered inextricable. Postmodernism’s consistent messaging about the purely subjective nature of truth and the impossibility of objective truths can have the undesirable effect of orienting one to believe that how one wishes things to be is actually how those things are. This misguided understanding can then be used as the basis for further misguided reasoning. I encounter my fair share of truth relativists (often very obstinate ones) at my weekly philosophy club meetings. Despit...

The 20th century philosopher of science, Karl Popper, through his falsifiability criterion, proposed a novel approach to scientific discovery. Though his criterion was eventually shown to be flawed, it nonetheless at least bequeathed us with knowledge of how not to practice science. Popper’s falsifiability criterion was, at its core, rooted in the Humean problem of induction. His essential argument was that empirical statements were no more verifiable than metaphysical ones since they were inductively derived from true premises. The inherent, obvious error in Popper’s conclusion aside, ironically enough, Popper never considered that the judgments necessitated through his own proposed criterion were ultimately not free of verification.   The verifiability criterion is a long-standing central tenet of science according to which scientific claims must necessarily be observable in the world or induced from experience. Rejecters of inductivism, on the other hand, would assert that inf...

Gender issues, in general, and transgender issues, in particular, are highly contentious hot button issues in contemporary America. Issues such as the incidence of gender reassignment procedures, transgender women’s participation in female sports and their usage of gender reserved-bathrooms are hysterically discussed by news pundits, politicians, and influencers of various stripes alike. These issues have pervaded our societal conscious to the point that one cannot help but hear of them. Admittedly, though this has certainly allowed me to become better aware of the prevailing gender-related controversies, as a largely unaffected heterosexual male, I have always been disinterested in, and capable of thinking only very coldly about, this subject. However, that has at least slightly changed upon my recent viewing of Joyland , Saim Sadiq's brilliantly-directed film that won awards in the Un Certain Regard and Queer Palm categories at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. While Joyland expl...

The idea of the existence of reality independent of, and beyond our, limited human perception has been exhaustively expounded and debated in many different philosophical contexts. Different versions of the same basic premise have been variously called the noumenal world, Forms, dharma, and The Real among others. For purposes of this blog, I will, as per my general preference, use the Kantian terms of noumenal/phenomenal although I should be clear that I will not use the terms within the strict meaning of Kantian canon. While I am amenable to this idea, I am often troubled by how it contributes to erroneous conclusions amongst casual philosophers. It has also, over the years, reinforced in me the idea that in many matters, those who are oblivious are actually more likely to draw close-to-the-mark, albeit not accurate, conclusions than those who possess rudimentary or insufficient knowledge. Alas, that is an altogether different subject that deserves its own epistemological inquiry on s...

“[The Twilight Zone] is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge.” –Rod Serling Rod Serling’s crowning achievement, The Twilight Zone, a Kafkaesque anthology show that frequently traversed through the realms of the supernatural, paranormal, and science fiction, is widely regarded as one of the greatest television shows of all time. Having premiered in the late 1950s, when filmic technology and special effects were nowhere near where they are today, the show relied on the brilliance of storytelling, dialogue, and thematic structure to captivate audiences. These are indeed timeless, transcendent, and permanent cinematic qualities, demonstrated by the fact that more than 50 years later The Twilight Zone has still not lost its charm. When in my early 30s I finally came around to exploring The Twilight Zone, I was immediately gripped by Serling’s penetrating opening voiceover...

Philosophers, since ancient times, have asserted some version of the theory that apodictic certainty is a sine qua non for scientific knowledge. Apodicticity—with its literal linguistic definition being demonstrable or capable of being demonstrated—denotes that something is necessarily, axiomatically, or self-evidently true. The point is that apodictic propositions, either factual or logically deduced statements, are beyond dispute. For Aristotle, this was the chief distinguishing feature of science from other domains of human inquiry and knowledge. Based on my, what is most likely a very incomplete, understanding, for a claim to be countenanced as scientific it must minimally be, among other things, apodictic. To me, as an amateur philosopher, this proviso’s convenient and plain dilemma is that, what appear to be or are considered as, legitimately scientific claims also do not necessarily always bear apodictic certainty. Consider that significant aspects of Newtonian physics were eve...