This was supposed to be a thinking out loud episode. Instead it is more of a summary of what I learned when I couldn't sleep.

Here is a fact check by ChatGPT-5.

Show Notes

🏃‍♂️ Episode Introduction

In this late-night recording (past 3 a.m. thanks to a caffeine-fueled 5K race), Jimbo explores one of philosophy’s most profound questions: Can we ever be certain of anything?

This episode blends personal reflections on running in 94° heat with a deep dive into epistemology — the study of knowledge — featuring thinkers like Descartes, Hume, Kant, and Voltaire.

• Evening 5K race in high heat and wind.

• Pacing strong for two miles, with a slowdown in the third mile due to fatigue and conditions.

• Reflections on how environmental factors (heat, wind, time of day) can shape performance.

• Special shout-out: Jamie’s first fun run mile — and she crushed it!

• We don’t perceive the world directly; we perceive mental representations shaped by senses.

• Related to but not the same as Plato’s Allegory of the Cave.

• Limits of perception proven by things outside our sensory range (infrared, microscopic life, etc.).

🔗 Learn more:

• Plato’s Allegory of the Cave – Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

• The Veil of Perception – Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

• Deduction: From premises to guaranteed conclusions (e.g., All humans are mortal. Socrates is human. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.).

• Induction: From past observations to probable conclusions (e.g., The sun has always risen → it will rise tomorrow.).

• Deduction = certainty (if premises are true).

• Induction = probability only.

🔗 Learn more:

• Deductive and Inductive Reasoning

• Hume on Induction – Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

• Hume pointed out we have no logical guarantee that the future will resemble the past.

• Example: Just because the sun has always risen doesn’t mean it must tomorrow.

• Conclusion: All empirical knowledge is probabilistic, not certain.

🔗 Learn more:

• David Hume’s Problem of Induction – SEP

• Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy (1641) introduced methodic doubt: doubt everything until reaching a foundation of certainty.

• His famous line: Cogito, ergo sum (“I think, therefore I am”).

• Only certainty: his own existence as a thinking being.

🔗 Read: Descartes’ Meditations (Full Text)

• Kant accepted Hume’s challenge but argued we can know how things must appear to us through human cognition.

• Certainty exists only within the structures of our perception and reason (phenomena), not about reality itself (noumena).

🔗 Learn more:

• Kant’s Epistemology – SEP

• Famous quote: “Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one.”

• Reaction to Baron d’Holbach’s System of Nature (1770), which argued for atheistic materialism.

• Voltaire criticized both dogmatic atheism and dogmatic theism, favoring deism and intellectual humility.

• His message: embrace doubt and modesty in belief, avoid absolute certainty.

🔗 Learn more:

• Voltaire’s Philosophy – SEP

• Baron d’Holbach – System of Nature (Full Text)

• Most of what we “know” in science, history, and daily life is inductive, not deductive — therefore probabilistic.

• Certainty is rare, and often only available in definitions, math, and logic.

• Hume showed the limits of induction, Kant reframed knowledge within cognition, and Voltaire warned us that claiming certainty itself is folly.

• Podcast mentioned: Philosophize This! – esp. episodes 39–41.

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP – free, scholarly reference).

• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (accessible summaries).