trust
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On Testimony: Rhetoric, Witnesses, and the Problem of Trust
A Philosophical Happy Hour investigating the rhetorical use and fittingness of witness testimony in efforts at persuasion. Very little of what we know—or believe ourselves to know—comes directly from our own experience. That is, someone might have a kind of local familiarity with things, but he has never seen Africa or Asia, never observed distant…
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On Informal Language and the Dissolution of Community
A Philosophical Happy Hour questioning whether informal language has erosive effects on community—and how formal articulation might aid our relations. How do we acquire language? We perhaps first need to understand what language is—and we might presume falsely that we do. But we may think, nonetheless, about how young children learn to speak, to communicate. …
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Do You Trust Me?
A Philosophical Happy Hour on the reasons for and nature of trust, distrust, and the consequences of breaking it. Image: Christopher Plummer as Iago and James Earl Jones as Othello (Requiescant in Pace). Trust today seems a quality lacking and, yet for which there is great desire. We do not trust our politicians and often…