What Philosophy Can Do

One alternative to this state of affairs is to ditch the idea, should we be under its sway, that what we need to make our way in the world is simply more information. For one thing, there are practical difficulties: even in cases where more information might be genuinely helpful, it may not be forthcoming when we need it. But, more importantly, som... See more

But there is a way forward. It is not a solution that relies on half-baked policy ideas—particularly given that I have come to view our political system as a big part of the problem. Rather, the solution requires an attitudinal change. This attitude is embodied by something called Bayes’s theorem, which I introduce in chapter 8. Bayes’s theorem is

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The most direct method for comprehending a world in which not all human beings are homo economicus would therefore appear to involve a return to some version of the older tradition. However, why did the older tradition fail in the first place? After all, it seemed to ask some obvious and important questions. How could these questions simply be aban... See more