Why do people come to reject climate science or the safety and efficacy of vaccines, in defiance of the scientific consensus? A popular view explains bad beliefs like these as resulting from a range of biases that together ensure that human beings fall short of being genuinely rational animals. This book presents an alternative account. It argues that bad beliefs arise from genuinely rational p…
In the beginning, when the world was just fifty centim-eters long, there was Jeanne’s inquiring face. A five-year-old face, flush up against the months-old fragment I then was, my opaque little mole eyes fumbling across this earliest of landscapes, my sister’s face watching me. She smiles, I smile. I smile, she smiles. She gives me a quick slap, I cry, she smiles, I smi…
All areas of philosophy are characterized by dissent. Philosophers disagree among themselves in innumerable ways, and this pervasive and permanent dissensus is a sign of their inability to solve philosophical problems and present well-established philosophical truths. Every philosopher who has not buried his head in the sand knows or at least suspects this.The saddest aspe…