Tag: Craving for certainty

Philosophy

Davidsonian Pragmatism

Donald Davidson didnā€™t like being called a pragmatist. He associated pragmatism with William Jamesā€™s definition of truth as that what works (or something similar), which he rejected for a number of reasons. Davidsonā€™s understanding of pragmatism and how it contrasts with his own view is probably most clearly expressed in a passage from ā€œTruth Rehabilitatedā€: Truth is not a value, so the ā€˜pursuit of truthā€™ is an empty enterprise unless it means only that it is often worthwhile to increase our confidence in our beliefs, by collecting further evidence or checking our calculations. From the fact that we will never...
BuddhismPhilosophy

Atrekic Buddhism

To be clear, atrekic Buddhism is not a variety of Buddhism. Itā€™s not un-Buddhist either, I think, but weā€™ll get to that later. The term ā€œatrekic Buddhismā€ works in a similar way as ā€œmethodological anarchismā€ (famously proposed by Feyerabend) or ā€œmetaphilosophical anarchismā€. The latter is a ā€“ more or less ā€“ anarchist approach to doing philosophy. It isnā€™t anarchism per sĆ© (i.e., anarchism as political ideology), but can be thought of as something like anarchism about philosophy. That said, it could be argued that (political) anarchists should also be metaphilosophical anarchists (but not necessarily the other way around), which doesnā€™t...