Steve Patterson

Category: Logic and Epistemology

  • Logic and Infinity: The Errors of Calculus

    Humans are lazy when thinking about infinity. Usually it doesn’t matter, but sometimes, our imprecision comes with big philosophical implications. Profound logical errors permeate mathematics – in calculus and set theory in particular – due to an inaccurate conception of infinity.

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  • On the Mind’s Access to Objective Truth

    “You can never know objective truth, because you’re stuck inside your own mind.”

    I’ve heard this argument many times. Supposedly, we cannot know anything about the world because we cannot “get outside our own minds” to verify whether our claims are true. The argument goes, “we live in a subjective mental bubble, and we’re restricted from ever knowing what lies outside the bubble.”

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  • Faith and Reason

    “You’ve just got to have faith.”

    I heard this innumerable times growing up. Usually after a heated debate about religious ideas. Faith is a central part of many religious traditions, and it certainly was in my evangelical community. I have a problem with faith, to be honest. In the conversations I’ve had throughout the years, I’ve noticed that many people use “faith” as an excuse for intellectual laziness.

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  • Steak and Certainty

    A few years ago, my mind was blown. I was thinking about food. Steak, in particular. It was well past midnight, and I was lying in bed, worrying about an idea. I’d been on a quest to find absolute certainty. And I found it; logical necessity provided a bedrock for my worldview. I had certain knowledge about a number things, all of which were ultimately grounded in logical necessity.

    And then it happened: I thought of a distressing sentence which ultimately forced me to expand my worldview:

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  • Defending Zeno’s Paradox

    Paradoxes don’t exist. But they can teach us something about our ideas. Whenever we discover a contradiction in our beliefs, we’re forced to make revisions. Paradoxes can help us elicit nestled contradictions in our worldview that we wouldn’t see otherwise.

    Some of the most famous and oldest paradoxes in the world are Zeno’s paradoxes. He came up with several, but I just want to focus on the most famous one.

    And defend it.

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  • The Sliding Scale of Certainty

    A central question in philosophy is “Can we know anything with perfect certainty?” Throughout history, philosophers have disagreed on the answer. One popular response is to say “We can’t ever be completely certain – there’s a sliding scale of certainty. Things aren’t black and white, but rather, different shades of gray.” The scale goes from not-so-sure to very-sure-but-not-completely.

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