Philosophy Week 2

This exercise is all about testing your logical thinking skills, and perhaps lowering your opinion of them. Take the test.

If you've encountered the Trolley Problem, you know that it frustrates many first-timers as well as many experienced philosophers. Well, it just got a bit more (ethically) complicated. Start the thought experiment.

When Robert Nozick published the paper introducing this exercise – the Newcomb Paradox – in 1969, he wrote that "to almost everyone, it is perfectly clear and obvious what should be done. The difficulty is that these people seem to…

Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors: behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors,…

Economist Bryan Caplan writes on why the ability to engage in hypothetical thinking is essential for developing intellectual clarity.

Daniel Dennett is a world-renowned thinker on the philosophy of consciousness. In this Big Think video, he explains how philosophers use thought experiments (or "intuition pumps"), and he invites you to participate in the time-honored tradition.

In 2011, Edge.org publisher John Brockman, linguist Steven Pinker, and psychologist Daniel Kahneman asked 151 influential philosophers, doctors, and research scientists for their answers to the question “What scientific concept will improve everybody’s cognitive toolkit?” The answers that follow take…

Here are some examples of fallacious statements. Practice identifying the fallacy committed in each example. Ready to find the fallacy? Start the exercise.

Validity is one of the first tests for a good argument. This exercise will train you to spot what makes an argument valid or invalid. Take the valid or invalid test.

Logical fallacies, illustrated by cartoon characters. Need we say more? Read An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments here.

Reasoning is a skill like any other. You can choose to do it well or badly, and that choice depends on how you approach the principles of critical reasoning outlined in this article from Philosophy Now.

Perhaps you've heard that Socrates was one of the fathers of philosophy. But what made him so unique and memorable as a thinker? In this Philosophy Bites interview, King's College London professor M.M. McCabe introduces the Socratic method.  

Human beings are remarkably good at getting things wrong. Many of our moments of greatest certainty come when we're furthest from the truth. This lecture explores some of the limits of human thought, feelings, and sensory experience – and some…

Jason Fried of 37 Signals discusses the importance of taking time to think things through before being too quick to disagree.

When, where, and how should you share your opinion? There are some prerequisites.

In this TED talk, philosopher Daniel H. Cohen argues that our world of talk radio pundits and combative debate has missed the entire point of argumentation.