At the time Intelligent Life went to press, the psychotherapist Susie Orbach had gained more than a quarter of the votes with her defence of self-knowledge. Personal ethics, she wrote, comes from knowing your own feelings and capabilities. Hard on her heels was the journalist turned philosopher Anthony Gottlieb, who urged readers to adopt Hume’s scepticism. A combination of doubt, caution and modesty, thought Hume, would cure people of their "haughtiness and obstinacy". Gottlieb convinced 22%.
For the neuroscientist Colin Blakemore, scepticism didn’t take it far enough. He argued for outright doubt, putting his faith in the only certainty there is, "that our opinions could be wrong". He managed to persuade 16% of voters. Studying "the actual world as it is" appealed to the philosopher turned MP Jesse Norman. His belief in Aristotle, mashed up with others, got 13% of votes. The philosopher Angie Hobbs preferred Aristotle’s old tutor Plato and his idea of flourishing. She recommended that we learn how to think, rather than what to think, and 12% of voters agreed. Our apps editor (and resident philosophy graduate), Simon Willis, picked the lesser-known school of particularism, which believes practice should be valued above principle. Rules, Willis explained, "don’t in themselves tell you how to apportion blame, or to whom, or how much." It won 6% of votes.
But the philosophical spirit had clearly been embraced by our readers. In his article on doubt, Colin Blakemore had written that "the most powerful philosophy is always to ask whether there is a possibility that you are wrong". Sure enough, in the two weeks between the magazine going to press and the online poll closing, a new leader emerged.
- More Here
For the neuroscientist Colin Blakemore, scepticism didn’t take it far enough. He argued for outright doubt, putting his faith in the only certainty there is, "that our opinions could be wrong". He managed to persuade 16% of voters. Studying "the actual world as it is" appealed to the philosopher turned MP Jesse Norman. His belief in Aristotle, mashed up with others, got 13% of votes. The philosopher Angie Hobbs preferred Aristotle’s old tutor Plato and his idea of flourishing. She recommended that we learn how to think, rather than what to think, and 12% of voters agreed. Our apps editor (and resident philosophy graduate), Simon Willis, picked the lesser-known school of particularism, which believes practice should be valued above principle. Rules, Willis explained, "don’t in themselves tell you how to apportion blame, or to whom, or how much." It won 6% of votes.
But the philosophical spirit had clearly been embraced by our readers. In his article on doubt, Colin Blakemore had written that "the most powerful philosophy is always to ask whether there is a possibility that you are wrong". Sure enough, in the two weeks between the magazine going to press and the online poll closing, a new leader emerged.
- More Here
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