What is Knowledge?

If you mis-remembered your life in a positive way, would it be a blessing or a curse? Is every memory precious, or beyond giving us a taste and an impression are they but pleasantries? Does it matter that you remember what you've done with a friend, or doesn't it seem to matter so much more that you remember they are a friend? And when you forget is the life you lived the less for? Do you even notice that you don't remember? Or are you painfully aware of the void where memory once was?Maria, Mike, Logan and Ben ask these and reflect on memories.To go along with our Philosophy Club! visit our website at: https://philosophyclubpodcast.substack.com/

The standard answer is: a knowledge is a "Justified True Belief." Logan, however, disagrees. This bar is too high, David Hume made a good case that we really can't say for certain that anything is true. Does that mean there is no such thing as knowledge? Logan presents an alternative, and Sara and Ben do their best to make him see his error.To go along with our Philosophy Club! visit our website at: https://philosophyclubpodcast.substack.com/

Ben and Sara think not. Logan, however, thought there was no good evidence about it, and just because an idea seems reasonable, that is not the same thing as being correct. The three of us discussed whether a plausible idea is more likely to be true than an implausible one. Does plausibility say something about the likelihood of an event, or only the creativity of the thinker?To go along with our Philosophy Club! visit our website at: https://philosophyclubpodcast.substack.com/

Logan tells Aaqib and Ben that he has doubts that Wisdom exists at all. Might Wisdom not be an empty term? For who can be wise if it takes a single foolish act to make you foolish? What is there for wisdom to do when we already have words for intelligence and virtue? And how can wisdom mean anything when it seems to apply so broadly to so many disciplines; that is, how can subjects which have nothing in common, all be affected by Wisdom?Ben and Aaqib generally charm his doubts away, but in the last moments you might notice we contradict ourselves. While Wisdom might yet exist, it was an excellent conversation that touches on the virtues of Plato, Bertrand Russell's opinion of Marcus Aurelius, Oedipus, Solon of Athens, and best of all, Wittgenstein's beetle in a box! Buckle up!To go along with our Philosophy Club! visit our website at: https://philosophyclubpodcast.substack.com/

With dash and their typical circumambulatory style, Logan, Ben, Sara, Kitty and Aaqib ask what is education for? There are several answers, perhaps none of which we stumble on. Undaunted, we do discover a great deal about what it means to teach and to learn, what we missed out on in our education, and what the youths might be missing out on now. We also get a chance to indulge our "back in my day" reflex, much to the edification of any youngins who may listen.To go along with our Philosophy Club! visit our website at: https://philosophyclubpodcast.substack.com/

In an effort to better understand education, Ben, Kitty and Logan ask each other for 100 things every American should learn? What should make the list may tell us something about the purposes of education. We find out that among the most controversial topics our club as broached are ATP (adenosine triphosphate) and sunscreen. We then compare our list to another and discover we overlooked some very important ideas. Whoops. It was a spirited talk!

The Butterfly Effect is the common term for a system where small changes to initial conditions create outsized impacts. Logan, Katie and Ben discuss the "Baggage Claim Effect," to describe a system where for a limited time, changes to initial conditions—even large ones—have no impact whatsoever.When we rush to catch a connecting flight, there is one thing that may hold us back. We may speed off the aircraft, run down the corridors, breeze through passport control, and yet, if our bag is not blundering down the carousel, we have gained nothing. It seems then, that to hurry brings you nothing more than if you hand merely dawdled. Logan, Katie and Ben discuss this "baggage claim effect," whether it exists, how it might be significant or meaningless and wonder just how determined our lives might be. Still, there may be some solace to be gained from those moments when you believe you have no control, baggage claim is still ahead of you.

After a six-month hiatus, Logan and Ben come back to dismiss "Consent of the Governed" and move on to what happens next. If consent of the governed does not dictate good governance, what does? We rollick through ideas from John Rawls, Jean-Jacque Rousseau, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Socrates (by the way, it was the Dialogue of Crito, in case you were wondering) and Charles Tilly before comparing our results with James Madison. Philosophy Club! is back and this is just the beginning!

Is Justice getting what you deserve? Is it perhaps the balance of wisdom moderation and courage? Or is Justice a chimerical idea we are fed to go along with authority?Beau, Ben and Logan begin to tackle this timeless question. We explicitly reference Plato's Republic, Batman and John Austin's Command Theory of Law to make sense of this question. Beau will allude to H.L.A. Hart's Core and Penumbra understanding of legal terms, as well as evoke Hart's Rule of Recognition to deal with the problem of authority.In the end, we temporarily settle on a version of justice--"the obligatory exercise of authority" (we realized afterwards this definition seems to owe a great deal to Hans Kelsen's Pure Theory of Law, which we don't address at all), and our philosophers agree to re-attack this problem another time.

No question so concerns our collective humanity as that of freedom. Unsatisfied with our first conclusions on the subject, Ben and I reframe the question of Liberty. Perhaps it is not choice maximizes freedom (to the credit of Kitty as well from the last episode, no quantity of colorful consumer choices which line the shelves of our stores and line our streets with briefly used garbage add even an ounce of real freedom to our lives) but there are certain higher order freedoms that outline what it is to lead a free life. If we but look to the Federalist Papers or the Preamble to our United States Constitution, we find a treasured attempt to outline freedoms by demarcating the limits of government power. It is from this angle, we re-attempt to discover what it is that makes us free.