manwithoutqualities

Superb open access presentation by Bloomsbury. And here Jim introduces the book in The Philosopher’s Magazine.

There are a few practical and political consequences, mainly about the attitude you take to matters of controversy. If you have a solid grasp of necessities, you will be confident in doing what’s right and won’t think all values are equally worthy of respect and anything goes. In ethics and in evidence evaluation, as in mathematics, there are easy questions and hard ones, but there is a right answer each time. You won’t be intimidated by political correctness or any other fads in ideas – you’ll go and evaluate the evidence yourself, according to rational principles. You won’t be intimidated from looking into questions you don’t yet know about either: logic and evidence work the same in all subjects, you just have to put in the work.

Aristotleethicshistory of ideasnecessityphilosophy of mathematicsphilosophy of religionprobability