Why David Deutsch believes good explanations are the antidote to bad philosophy
In this interview from the long-running series Closer to Truth, the British theoretical physicist and philosopher David Deutsch makes the case that understanding the difference between good and bad explanations is central to advancing knowledge. In conversation with the US presenter Robert Lawrence Kuhn, Deutsch outlines what he believes makes for a convincing explanation – primarily, unprejudiced thinking, relevance and specificity. Further, he argues that this framework for explanations is a vital corrective to a century in which what he calls ‘bad philosophy’, including logical positivism, has dominated, constraining the search for good ideas.
Video by Closer to Truth
videoNature and landscape
Scenes from Aboriginal Australian pottery chart the turn of the seasons
7 minutes
videoEthics
What’s an idea worth? How prominent thinkers have understood intellectual property
6 minutes
videoChildhood and adolescence
‘Do worms cry?’ – and other questions collected from the mind of a curious child
4 minutes
videoPhilosophy of mind
‘Am I not at least something?’ A surreal dive into Descartes’s Meditations
3 minutes
videoMetaphysics
What do past, present and future mean to a philosopher of time?
55 minutes
videoKnowledge
Why it takes more than a lifetime to truly understand a single meadow
11 minutes
videoKnowledge
An Indigenous myth and a geological survey elicit two ways of knowing one place
4 minutes
videoMetaphysics
Simple entities in universal harmony – Leibniz’s evocative perspective on reality
4 minutes
videoEcology and environmental sciences
The ancient Hawaiian myth that sparked a modern ecological breakthrough
10 minutes