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Dear Socrates
Dear Socrates
Having returned from the turn of the Fourth Century B.C. to the turn of the Twenty-First A.D., Socrates has eagerly signed on as a Philosophy Now columnist so that he may continue to carry out his divinely-inspired dialogic mission.
Dear Socrates,
In an earlier column about scientific knowledge and mathematical knowledge (Issue 41) you put forward a convincing argument for the value of philosophy despite its inability to progress beyond the assumptions that any process of logic relies on. You proceeded to outline how the dialectic involved in a dialogue should lead to a more valid basis for conviction. I would accept this view but for the problem we have with this idea of validity. A criticism of your analysis would be that one view could be no more valid than the next. The ability for one conclusion to be stronger or more worthy than another would depend upon an agreed measure for value or validity.
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