30 Phil, Chapter 28, Kant, Touchstone 73: Categorical Imperative. The Categorical Imperative says you should act only in a manner that you would be comfortable seeing transformed into a universal law.
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30 Phil, Chapter 28, Kant, Touchstone 72: Transcendental Idealism. The Split and Three-Tine Fork: Transcendental Idealism is Kant’s view on epistemology. His distinction between phenomena and noumena and his three-tiered approach to knowledge. Kant introduced a crucial distinction between phenomena—the world as we see and understand it—and noumena—the world as it exists independently of our
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30 Phil, Chapter 27, Hume, Touchstone 71: Hume’s Fork. Hume’s Fork is a philosophical tool that categorizes meaningful statements into two distinct types: relations of ideas and matters of fact. It offers a clear demarcation between different kinds of truths. Relations of ideas are statements that are necessarily true, such as “all bachelors are unmarried.”
30 Phil, Chapter 27, Hume, Touchstone 70: The Problem of Induction. The logic behind induction is inherently circular, hence, the problem of induction. We expect future events to be like past events because this has generally been true in the past. This justification itself is inductive, making the whole process circular and self-referential. Although induction
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30 Phil, Chapter 27, Hume, Touchstone 69: Skeptical Empiricism. Skeptical Empiricism challenges the idea of innate knowledge, asserting all we know stems from our experiences.
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Public truth needs more than stories; it needs reporting. Journalism helps turn you turn what “people say” into “here is what we can show.”
You need a fully free press because public truth needs watchdogs, not just officials and institutions.
When publicly discussing spirituality, distinguish thought of the material world, what we directly experience, from the spiritual interpretations beyond it. Organize each spiritual idea into agnostic, non-theistic, and theistic.
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30 Phil, Chapter 25, Spinoza, Touchstone 65: Monism. Monism says the universe is composed of a single substance. An infinite reality that underpins all existence. There is only the Material World, no other realms.
30 Philosophers, Chapter 24, Locke, Touchstone 62: Checks and Balances. For the preservation of individual liberty and the prevention of tyranny, political power must be distributed among different branches of government—executive, legislative, and judicial. It is grounded in the idea that human nature is easily corruptible and concentrating power is dangerous. This diversification embodies the
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30 Phil, Chapter 24, Locke, Touchstone 61: The Social Contract. The social contract emerges out of natural rights and civil government. A government formed by the “collective will” of the people specifically to protect these rights. Citizens consent to be governed, but this consent comes with the stipulation that their inalienable rights must be respected
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Legal power is not the same thing as legal truth but when a claim carries legal force, give more attention to the evidence, not less.
30 Phil, Chapter 24, Locke, Touchstone 64: Natural Rights. Natural Rights are the inherent rights in our nature that all people have simply by being human. They are not externally granted.
30 Phil, Chapter 23, Roger Williams, Touchstone 58: Liberalism. Liberalism emphasizes personal freedom for all, individual rights, equality before the law, and limited government intervention. A suitable guiding statement is: “Social progress through individual autonomy, political freedom, civil liberties, and equality for all.” Emerging from the intellectual ferment of the Enlightenment, liberalism offered a radical departure
30 Phil, Chapter 23, Roger Williams, Touchstone 57: Separation of Church and State. More than a historical or religious treatise, the Bloody Tenet by Roger Williams is a seminal work. It launched a full-throttle assault on the prevailing norms of religious and political intolerance that plagued both Old and New England. In it, he passionately
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30 Phil, Chapter 22, Descartes, Touchstone 56: Mind-Body Dualism. This concept splits the universe into two different substances. Cartesian Dualism splits the mind and body into separate entities that interact with each other. It fundamentally challenged the Aristotelian view that the mind and body are inseparable, laying the groundwork for modern explorations of the unknown
30 Phil, Chapter 21, Galileo, Touchstone 54: Modern Cosmology. The story of Galileo is also the story of Copernicus, and the story of modern cosmology. To properly tell the story of Copernicus, we need to mention Aristarchus of Samos, a Greek astronomer and mathematician born around 310 BCE. Aristarchus put forth a heliocentric model, proposing
30 Phil, Chapter 21, Galileo, Touchstone 53: Infinitesimal. The infinitesimal is a form of infinity representing a theoretical value that is infinitely close to zero but not zero itself. Galileo Galilei discussed concepts related to the infinitesimal in his work “Two New Sciences”. In this work, he explored the foundations of kinematics and the strength
30 Phil, Chapter 20, Francis Bacon, Touchstone 51: The Scientific Method. Science is the ongoing study of nature through observation. It’s that simple. If you see something new in nature, that’s science. Many definitions of science tend to intertwine the “how,” but the “how” is perpetually evolving, just like science itself remains a continual journey, never settling
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