About this episode

Nathan Jacobs discusses the trustworthiness of our reasoning faculties with guest Thomas Thorogood, exploring philosophical questions around realism and skepticism.

Can we trust our minds to know reality? This clip is taken from Nathan Jacobs' most recent interview with Thomas Thorogood and features a reaction to a discussion between Destiny and T.K. Coleman on The Minimalists podcast. Their exchange raises a profound philosophical question: what makes our reasoning faculties trustworthy in the first place? Nathan explores properly functioning faculties, Descartes' skepticism, moderate foundationalism, and the crucial distinction between realism and nominalism. Along the way, he argues that every act of perception, reasoning, language, and scientific inquiry already presupposes realism, making it impossible to consistently live or argue as a nominalist. If you've ever wondered whether we can genuinely know reality—or what our ability to reason tells us about the nature of the world—this discussion offers a compelling introduction to some of philosophy's deepest questions. ====================================== Timestamps 00:00 — A Debate About Objective Morality 06:24 — Why Our Faculties Matter 09:21 — Properly Functioning Faculties 09:48 — Hard vs Moderate Foundationalism 10:19 — Descartes and Radical Doubt 13:09 — Why Skepticism Cannot Be…

People in this episode

Host: Nathan Jacobs

Guest: Thomas Thorogood

Topics covered

• trust in reasoning
• philosophy
• realism vs nominalism
• skepticism
• perception
• morality

Keywords

• trust
• reasoning
• philosophy
• realism
• nominalism
• skepticism
• perception
• morality

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: The Minimalists

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