Probably a lot less than you think. Today, we'll look at the thoughts of René Descartes', a French philosopher who lived in the early 1600s and went to extreme lengths to answer this question. He was interested in finding out what beliefs are truly undoubtable because philosophical reasoning, just like mathematics, is built on foundational beliefs. These beliefs are those that are self-evidently true, so they are the only sure points of thought that we can construct the rest of our beliefs on. F...

As our ultimate end, the question of whether we should fear our own death is a question that should be of the utmost importance to us. Everything that lives will die, and everything that has died once lived. Yet, it seems like a question that most people devote relatively low amounts of thought to--whenever I ask someone about their opinion on this, I usually get one of two answers to the effect of: "yes, obviously" or "no, obviously." I often wonder how intelligent people considering the same i...

I was speaking with a relative of mine back in August about what I'm studying at college when the conversation took an unexpected turn: he had never heard of the word "philosophy." I probably shouldn't have been all that surprised because he has about a 5th grade education, and only learned English through his time in the armed forces when he was much younger. Despite this, I was still completely surprised and caught without a satisfying answer because it seems like everyone I've ever met has at...