The Stoic Handbook with Jon Brooks
You've read the books. You know what Marcus Aurelius would do. But when life gets hard, the philosophy disappears. This podcast is for people who want to close the gap between knowing Stoicism and actually living it. New episodes weekly. Start with the free 7-Day Stoic Challenge: https://www.stoicchallenge.co/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=show-description&utm_content=global
The Stoic Handbook with Jon Brooks
Massimo Pigliucci: How to Think Clearly Without Certainty
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How do you make a decision when you might be wrong? Philosopher Massimo Pigliucci joins me to explore critical thinking and scepticism in everyday life.
Drawing on his book How to Be a (Happy) Skeptic, Massimo explains how the ancient sceptics and Cicero approached uncertainty. We discuss degrees of confidence, how much evidence a decision needs, and why an open mind still needs a way to act.
You’ll hear how to examine a belief you hold strongly, argue for a view you disagree with, and distinguish scepticism from self-doubt. We also explore relationships, meaningful work, unsolicited advice and helping children think for themselves.
Try this after listening: choose one belief you hold strongly. Ask how confident you are, and what gives you that confidence.
Watch the interview: https://youtu.be/VSDxXsN2aC8
Massimo’s book: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/806907/how-to-be-a-happy-skeptic-by-massimo-pigliucci/
Figs in Winter: https://figsinwintertime.substack.com/
Massimo’s website: https://massimopigliucci.net/
Go well.
Free 7-Day Stoic Challenge: stoicchallenge.co
The Stoic Vault: stoicvault.com
How to Be a (Happy) Skeptic
Jon BrooksSo uh your book, I'm about halfway through How to Be a Happy Skeptic. Uh I am loving it so far. Uh I'm listening to an Audible and uh I'm gonna buy the the hardcover as well. I love skepticism. I've been in interested in like modern skepticism for a number of years. And I love the kind of combination of self-improvement and skepticism because often self-improvement can kind of take you down some strange avenues that they don't, it doesn't really back, it isn't backed up by evidence much. Um I love that you're kind of combining skepticism with stoicism and ancient philosophy. Uh so the first question for you is why do you have happy in brackets in the title of the book?
Massimo PigliucciYes. We we wanted to with the editor, we wanted to highlight it because there is this, I think, misconception that skeptics are kind of sour people or, you know, it's sort of negative about things and don't believe in anything. They're cynical about all sorts of stuff. While in fact, the word skeptic comes, of course, from the Greek skepticos, which means inquirer. A skeptic is somebody who strives to keep an open mind and trying to figure things out. It accepts uh truths only provisionally. It's a probabilistic kind of epistemology, as a philosopher would say, meaning that, you know, I know I'm fallible as a human being, and therefore I'm gonna hold whatever position I'm holding with a little bit of detachment. It's like, okay, this is what I think right now, but should the evidence or the arguments change, I'm gonna change my mind. So I think that actually skepticism makes for a happy life in the sense of a eudaimonic life, which was the term that the Greco-Romans uh used. So happiness, today even psychologists tend not to talk about happiness because it's a little bit of a you know variable concept. It means different things to different people. It often refers to a feeling, an immediate feeling. You know, I'm happy to see you or I'm happy to eat a gelato or whatever it is, right? That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about eudaimonia, that is uh a life well-lived. Uh the kind of life you get to the end of it, and you say, yep, that was not wasted, or you know, that sort of stuff. In that sense, I think skepticism is a good uh component, at least, of a life well-lived.
Jon BrooksYeah, I love in the book that you highlight certain words uh as like paying particular attention to, and I think eudaimonia is one of them.
A life worth living
Jon BrooksCan you maybe explain how we might know if we've lived a life well-lived? Is there some way of measuring it, or is this something that you have to kind of get to the end of life to kind of be able to weigh things up?
Massimo PigliucciWell, uh we we cannot know with a capital K, meaning if you want certainty, no, that's not uh that's not gonna happen. I'm sorry. Uh but we certainly can do something about about it, meaning we can in fact study quantitatively. I mean, the ancient the Greco-Romans uh derived their philosophy of the philosophies of life and their ethics from observation of human nature. So, in a sense, they were kind of anti-literum psychologists, right? Except, of course, that they had not invented the scientist the modern scientific method, so they was that they were not doing systematic observations and experiments. We can. And in fact, there is a number of modern research projects about happiness. Probably the most famous one is the happiness, the Harvard Happiness Pro uh project, uh, which has been going on for decades, in fact. And these are people who are interested in quantifying, as you say, you know, what works and what doesn't work. Now, work by what standards? Well, there are a couple of standards that you can use. One is subjective, meaning, you know, people ask. Psychologists ask people, do you think your life was worth living? Right? They get, they get to the end. There's a number of um studies that look at interviews of people that are uh, you know, older or they're even very close to the end of their lives. And, you know, there's detailed questionnaires about self-reported happiness, right? Are they are these people uh happy or not? And there are certain things that that emerge, certain patterns that emerge from these kind of interviews, and I'll get to that in a second. The other one is uh more objective uh and in or I should say probably inter-subjective. You can measure things like, you know, uh are people uh suffering from stress and depression and you know, anxiety, things, or not? Uh are there you know, there are physiological parameters and psychological parameters that you can use to determine whether somebody is actually living a life that seems to go to flow uh more or less normally or or not. So those kinds of studies reach a couple of major conclusions, which are probably not surprising, especially again if you read the Greco-Romans, you definitely wouldn't be surprised. But it's nice to have the data. And it turns out that uh the major thing that makes people happy is relationships. Right. So, yeah, again, big surprise. We're social animals. So uh, you know, we we think when we think back to our uh to our lives, we are happy about it. We are you we feel euthodemonic if we had good, constructive relationships with you know our children, if we have any, our partners, our friends, and so on and so forth. So relationships is a big component of it. The second big component of it, uh, of a sort of happy life or a life worth living is um meaningful projects, having been able to embark on meaningful projects, either as a career or outside of one's career. Now, what counts as a meaningful project, right? Because that that's the that's where the situation becomes a little bit more complicated. As it turns out, meaningful projects are projects that involve and benefit other people. So, stamp collecting is not a meaningful project. It could be fun, right? Um, but it's not it's not a meaningful project, meaning that you can, it's something that you can certainly do. There's nothing wrong with engaging in stamp collecting or or money, you know, uh coin collecting or whatever it is. Um, but it's not the kind of thing you look at the end of your life and you say, yeah, that was really worth doing. That was certainly something that added meaning to my life. On the other hand, projects that are outward, you know, uh involving other people, outward oriented and involving other people are, of course, if you're talking about professions, you know, things like doctors, nursing, uh uh teaching, uh, writing, uh, artistry of any of any kind, you know, performances of any kind, um, you know, or uh even lawyering, if it if done well, or or or political uh careers, again, if done well. If if you're not spending your career sort of trying to corrupt the system, but in fact helping people, then then that actually is a meaningful career. Outside of one's career, uh projects that involve volunteering for organizations locally, nationally, internationally, if you have the opportunity starting new organizations, you know, nonprofit organizations, things like that. Those are the kinds of things that make a life meaningful, a life happy in the sort of broad sense of the term. Pleasure also enters into it. You know, we are seeking pleasure animals, we are hedonistic animals. However, surprisingly perhaps for some, not so for the likes of Cicero, uh, pleasure is is good when it's a spice on the main dish, not when it's the main dish. Right? So if you're if you spend your entire life seeking pleasures one after another, you know, uh physical or or otherwise, uh you risk getting to the end of your life and you say, Whoa, boa, this is this was definitely a waste of time. So think of think of pleasure as you know, the the salt and pepper then you put on your dish. Uh you wouldn't want to have a whole main meal made of salt and pepper. That would be disgusting.
Jon BrooksRight. Yes. Okay. And uh on the top on the topic of pleasure, you know, some people they kind of put pleasure on a pedestal.
Pleasure and Epicureanism
Jon BrooksWould the Stoics say that lots of people would the Stoics say that they are sort of um just not valuing things correctly if they actually examined things, they would see things differently.
Massimo PigliucciYeah, I think not just the Stoics, but a lot of the Greco-Romans, of course, except the Epicureans who were hedonists. Um but uh but even the Epicureans actually would probably uh criticize the modern conception of hedonism because Epicurus thought that uh a good life was mostly the result of lack of pain, physical and and mental. And uh, even though Epicurean Epicureanism has this um reputation of being the sex, drugs, and rock and roll of philosophy, of ancient philosophy, that's definitely not the way Epicurus describes it. He in one famous letter that he writes to a friend, he says, uh, bring over a piece of cheese, I'll I'll I'll I'll add some watered-down wine, and then we'll have a feast. It's like, so this is not exactly hedonism as is understood in in modern times, or it has been understood throughout the centuries. So, wait, the Stoics and other ancient, but not just in the Western traditions, uh, Buddhists will tell you the same thing. Confucian Taoists would tell you the same thing. Yeah, it's a wasted life. Uh it's you're you're making because you're making the wrong judgment. Now, we live in a society, especially in the West at the moment, where people don't dare telling other people that their judgment is incorrect. It's like, who are who are you to tell me that I'm wrong? Well, I'm trying to help you. That's that's what you what I what I'm trying to do. And I'm trying to help you on the basis of, again, number a number of ancient traditions, most ancient traditions throughout the world, arrive at the same conclusion that pleasure is at best a spice on your life, not the main dish. Some traditions go so far as saying that you actually should stay away entirely from pleasure because it's distracting and corrupting. I I don't go that far. I think that, you know, I like my glass of wine before dinner, you know, at dinner or something like that. But um moderate pleasure is is certainly a component of a good life, but not the main component. And as I said before, modern research backs that up with empirical, quantitative empirical evidence. So what else do you need? Now, of course, uh, you know, one can only give advice to people, and then people can do whatever they want, right? But this notion that people can even get offended by uh the the idea that somebody else might actually have advice to give to them about um what counts as a good life, I find very bizarre. I I like to have good advice about how to live my life. I don't I don't reject it out of hand.
Jon BrooksUm that's just yeah uh yeah, on that uh on that uh point, all of the books that you've written, I'm sure you go through the world
Unsolicited advice
Jon Brookskind of seeing um folly and uh faulty judgments and maybe questionable ways of living. Does that kind of bother you? Do you ever feel the need to kind of speak up? Do you ever speak up to people or do you kind of what's your approach to giving advice yourself? Do you kind of only wait until you're asked for it or do you just give it freely?
Massimo PigliucciWell, first of all, I make plenty of mistakes and bad bad judgment calls myself. Uh is hopefully, especially in the past, you know, you get older and you you reflect on your mistakes and you learn a little bit. So hopefully you're gonna make less and less. Um, but so it's not like I'm putting myself on some kind of you know pedestal where where I'm a sage and everybody else needs to learn from me. So that's the first thing. When I was younger, I would certainly give unsolicited advice because I was arrogant. Um, and also I didn't appreciate the nuances of human psychology. These days I give advice only when people ask for it. So you know, if because uh the the the fact is, this this is a fact about human nature. Uh people have to be receptive to the advice, otherwise, not only does it do any good uh if it is unsolidated and unwelcome, it actually does some bad probably. Because the the reaction of somebody who doesn't want the advice is not only to reject the advice, but to do kind of something like the opposite of it. So in fact, you might be pushing people even further away from where they should be going. And so, no, I'm not doing that. So when people ask me, you know, when when uh people write to me or um occasionally, especially in the past, I did um regular counseling, philosophical counseling for people. Uh now I write books and uh articles and stuff like that. So, you know, if you want to read them, go ahead, read them. Happy, happy to be helpful. If you don't want to read them, it's just as fine with me.
Jon BrooksYeah. Okay. Yeah, I love that. Um so you've been uh sort of like a skeptic within the stoic movement for I feel like a decade plus.
Stoicism with an open mind
Jon BrooksUh when I was reading the book, it sort of felt at times like a battle between stoicism and skepticism, and sometimes in the harmony as well. Like it kind of I felt both sides. Do you kind of see yourself as a stoic now or more as a skeptic, or what is your relationship to to these two philosophies personally?
Massimo PigliucciYeah, that's a good question. Uh fair question. I I still think of myself as a stoic primarily, but with a skeptical twist or a skeptical attitude, or whatever you want to do it. So I I don't think skepticism itself by itself is a philosophy of life. It's an epistemic stance, it's a it's a an attitude toward knowledge, right? And so it can be applied to everything. Whether you are a stoic or or Buddhist or anything else, I think you should be skeptical. Uh, meaning that you should inquire. Again, you should be open to the possibility that this or that other notion that you are taking on board might turn out to be incorrect. I mean, take Cicer himself, right? Caesar is the protagonist of my book. And he was a skeptic, yes, he was a member of the uh Platonic Academy. Plato was dead by that time, but the academy founded by Plato. During something called the skeptical period, there was a period of the Academy of for several decades where the practice was essentially inclined towards skepticism. Nevertheless, these were Platonists. I mean, Cicero thought of himself as a Platonist. So he was a skeptical Platonist, right? But not just a skeptic. So his philosophy of life was Platonism. As in fact, it turns out, and as I argue in the book, he was actually more of a Stoic than a Platonist, because a lot of his ethics comes on the Stoics. And he says so explicitly. He mentions one of his most famous and most important books is On Duties, which is uh a book about the kind of duties that we should all have in society when dealing with other people. We should keep in mind not just the fact that we have rights, which everybody these days talks about. You know, I have a right to do this or that or the other. Yes, you do, but you also have duties toward other people, right? Rights, rights come with duties, they're coupled with duties. And so in On Duties, Cicero goes through, you know, the kind of life uh that public life, meaning life oriented toward the people that we should be living. And he says right at the beginning, these are Stoic ideas. He says, you know, I I've I'm writing on the basis of readings that I've done of the Stoics, specifically Paninius, who was one of the Middle Stoics. So even though Cicero thought of himself as a skeptical Platonist, arguably he was more of a skeptical Stoic than anything else, in terms of, you know, in practical terms. So I don't think there is any contradiction there in thinking of yourself as following, broadly following a particular philosophy. Again, that may be anything from Stoicism to Buddhism or whatever else, and at the same time practicing with a little bit of skepticism, which means essentially with open mind, with the with the notion that, you know, not everything that is currently accepted by that philosophy might turn out to be correct or useful. And so if I find out otherwise, I'm gonna change my mind.
Jon BrooksDo you think skepticism is compatible with religions as well? Or do you think that's like a different category from philosophy?
Scepticism and religion
Massimo PigliucciThat is an excellent question. No, I don't think so. Um, I mean, if if you become start becoming a skeptical, a skeptic within a religion, you're very likely going, in my mind, you're very likely going to leave that religion at one point or another. Now, that said, that's my opinion. There are clearly people who think that they can practice skepticism within a religion. But it seems to me that there is a much more of a tension between skepticism and religion as opposed to skepticism and philosophy. So the major difference between philosophies and religions is that philosophy, at least ideally, philosophies are based on argument and evidence. Certain things work or don't work. And you argue one way or the other. You say, oh, we should do this because you provide reasons for it, right? And since you're providing reasons, you're opening yourself to rebuttals. That's the Socratic, the Socratic approach, right? So, oh, you're saying uh that this is the definition of courage. Well, let me put to you this alternative. What do you think? And it goes on as a conversation, as a dialogue, as a kind of dialectics. In religion, typically you don't do that because the source of knowledge, such as it is, for religions, usually is revealed texts or revealed appearances of some kind of supernatural entity. Or people just say things. This is the way it works, period, without giving you any reason for why that actually is the case. So if you start being skeptical about that, then you know, you start, I mean, that's what I did when I was young. I grew up Catholic, right? And uh so I went to catechism and I was I started asking questions to my priest. And initially was kind of happy, kind of welcomed the whole challenge because he thought, you know, this is a kid. I'm gonna, it's gonna be easy to, you know, take care of it. And then it turns out, you know, I was beginning to get annoyed because annoying, because uh, you know, I will ask things like, so wait a minute, let me get this thing straight. The doctrine of transubstantiation, for instance, in Catholicism. This is the notion that when I go to communion and I drink the wine, in Italy you actually drink the wine, not like in places in certain places in the United States where you drink grape juice. Forget the grape juice, you actually eat drink wine, even if you're a kid. So you drink the wine and then you eat the the you know the little holy wafer kind of thing, right? Okay, uh, so you are telling me, you priest, are telling me that I'm not actually drinking wine, I'm drinking the blood of Christ. And you're telling me that I'm not eating the wafer, I'm eating the flesh of Christ. First of all, disgusting. But setting that aside, um are you telling me that this is metaphorically what I'm doing? Because that I can buy, right? It's okay, this is this is a ritual, and metaphorically that's what you're doing. And my priest said, No, I'm telling you that in reality that's what you're doing. That that literally is the blood and the flesh of Christ. And I said, Bullshit. This it doesn't taste like blood, and it doesn't taste like flesh. So no, I'm sorry, you're just you know making stuff up. That was the beginning of of the end of my Catholic journey.
Jon BrooksOh wow, that's a great story. Um you you mention in the book uh a story with your daughter when you're in Yellowstone and you need to get fuel,
Changing your mind
Jon Brooksyeah. And she asks, How do you know that? And you said to her that might be the mo one of the most important questions you'll ever ask. Um that that little story kind of uh it lays the ground for a lot of the book, I think. You know, just coming back to that question. Um is there anything, if you turn that question on yourself, is there anything that you used to believe with a lot of confidence as an adult, let's let's just say, that you then later took apart with skepticism or this type of inquiry?
Massimo PigliucciOh yeah, plenty, plenty of things. In fact, uh until a few years ago, um I had a a blog. Now I write for Substuck, but I used to have a blog where every few years I would actually on purpose put out a post that said, here's what I changed my mind about over the last five years or you know, something like that. So I I should go back and and actually download and take another look at those um at those articles. First of all, let me go back to my daughter. So my daughter was at the time eight or nine when we were uh when that episode happened, and she certainly took that lesson to heart because today she's a journalist for the BBC and she keeps asking questions, embarrassing questions or uncomfortable questions, you know, how do you know these kind of things? You know, on what basis are you believing that? And you're absolutely right when you say that that question, I think, is fundamental to the book. It was fundamental to Cicero. Uh Cicero uh asked that question in one of his uh major books. He said, you know, first of all, we have to agree on how do you we know things. Because if you don't have an answer to the epistemic question, as a philosopher would put it, you know, how do you know stuff? On what basis are you going to make certain claims or others, then nothing else is relevant. You can't defend anything else. You cannot tell me anything, it doesn't matter what you tell me about what you believe or don't believe, or you know, what kind of philosophy you follow or don't follow, because I I don't know why you're doing that. First, you have to tell me what is your epistemic warrant. How do you actually know uh stuff? So, in terms of what I changed my mind about, yeah, plenty of things. Uh, for instance, uh uh, in terms of sort of philosophical positions, I changed my mind about uh free will. I used to be open to the possibility that we actually have free will. Now I don't. I I I've I've right to the conclusion after several years of sort of ups and downs, uh, that no, the universe uh really does look like it's it's a universal cause and effect. And if and if by free will you mean a will that is independent of causality, which is what standardly the phrase means, then no, I think that's an illusion. That it's something that just does not exist. Now, now that may seem like a technical issue in philosophy, but that has plenty of consequences in practice because it actually affects your behavior. There are studies showing that people who don't believe in free will tend to be kinder and more ethical than people who do believe in free will. Wow. Yeah, which is interesting, right? And the reason for that is because if you believe in free will, like let's say a lot of most Christians do, that the fact that free will is one of the fundamental tenets of Christianity, then you're more inclined to blame people. What you did was your decision, it's your responsibility, so down to hell you go, right? And if you don't believe in free will, you said, oh, that person made a misguided judge, had arrived at a misguided judgment because his brain or her brain was not working properly. So it looks like I should pity that person and try to help them more than uh, you know, condemn or talking about it. This is, by the way, the stoic position, uh, as a matter of fact. In fact, one of the things that that gradually convinced me of the non-existence of free will is reading Epithetus. Uh Epictetus says very clearly, and what there is a point in the discourses, very in the first book of the discourses, where one of his students says, you know, shouldn't we just eliminate these people, these, these, these uh uh thieves, for instance, you know, robbers and stuff like that? And Epithetus says, whoa, whoa, slow down. What do you mean, these these robbers and thieves? Uh what you mean is these are blind people. Blind, not in the sense that, in the literal sense that they cannot tell black from white, but blind in the sense that they lost the ability, or maybe they never had the ability of telling right from wrong. Well, don't you think that instead of killing them, I should try to help them if I can? And maybe I can't help them and I do need to make sure that they don't hurt other people, but still, that doesn't mean I should hate them. It doesn't mean that I should think of them as evil. They're just misguided and they're, you know, they're in a sense, they need to be pitied because they don't that unlike the rest of us, they don't understand how the world actually is supposed to work. So I find so that's one of the major things I changed my mind about. Um there are also some nuances in terms of like political positions, for instance, that I changed my mind about. Um, when I was young, I was um uh far more left-leaning than I am now. Uh I still consider myself a left liberal progressive kind of person, but I've started to look at skepticism at even some of the positions in that on that um side of the spectrum. I think that uh I've experienced in firsthand how well-intentioned uh people on the left progressive side of the spectrum can be just as intolerant and just as close-minded as people on the right. And so I was like, okay, that that's not an equivalence. I uh because as an equivalence, it would be false. I still think the fascism is much more uh dangerous than uh than most of the things that uh the modern left can do or or is willing to do. Nevertheless, I don't like close-mindedness, I don't like uh intolerance, and uh, even when it's couched or understood in terms of um uh justice and and fairness and all that sort of stuff. You can think that you're just and fair, but in the fact at the same time, you uh you're actually being close-minded. So those, you know, there's a couple of major things that I change. Not to mention a number of other issues that are more pertinent to my work uh in philosophy of science or in science itself. So so yeah, there's plenty of examples. Now, I'm sure that I probably should have changed my mind about other things that I did not, but you know, that's that's an ongoing process.
Jon BrooksSo Yeah. Um yeah, I kind of want to go back and look at some of those posts as well, but the things you change your mind about. Um perhaps I'll link to some. I love that as just a practice, just like making it stand and saying, like, here I've done a review, here are some things I think about differently now, and updating your beliefs. Is there anything that you can do to nurture skepticism in children? As someone with with children myself, and I'm
Helping children think
Jon Brookssure many people watching this will have children. And there there are fears now with AI thinking for young minds, school is gonna be different, university is gonna be different. How can we help younger people think for themselves? Is there anything that you would recommend for that?
Massimo PigliucciOh, yes. Uh, there is a lot. First of all, I would keep kids as much as possible away from social media and AI. Um, and that is because those technologies are uh I think they're dangerous even for mature adults, for minds that are not formed and not capable yet, that have not developed yet um the tools of critical thinking, that that can be a disaster. Now, that said, you know, it's impossible to keep kids completely out of, you know, completely shielded from things. You know, you can you can you can negotiate things, you can say, okay, an hour in social media, but no more, and that kind of stuff, right? So, but one thing it would be on the negative side, I think the best thing to do is to minimize people uh kids' exposure to those kind of technologies. On the positive side, the advice is simple, although most people don't actually want to follow it. Read books. Make your children read books. Of course, good books, right? Not just any trash that comes out there. Most of most stuff that is out there, whether it's on social media or in in in in uh bookstores, is in fact trash. But um, you know, uh we're talking about education, essentially. And education is not something that parents should be uh willy-nilly just just just uh leave out to uh you know schools. Schools are certainly an important part of education. Uh, you know, the the better school you can send your kids to, the the better your kids are are gonna be. But that doesn't doesn't excuse you from doing your part as a parent. Right? So and part of that that duty is I think to try to expose kids to things that are valuable and try to shield them as much as possible for things that are not valuable. It also depends on the age, right? I mean, uh when they are very young, four, five, six years old, then you just say, no, that's it. You're not doing that. End of story, because there is nothing to reason there. You know, this is pre-reasoning abilities. Once they get to the age of reason, which psychologically speaking is about seven, eight years old or something like that, then you start gradually replacing the straightforward no, this this straightforward prohibition with uh arguments, with reasons, right? You know, no because. And then when they get into you know early pre-teenage and teenage, then you hopefully you've established the basis on the uh on on which you can actually build a conversation, even though, of course, you all you also have to remember that the goal is not to create a copy of yourself or is not to to mold uh something in your in your own image. The goal is to allow them to grow in whatever direction they want to grow. So they're gonna disagree with you. And you have to be okay with that. You know, the older they get, the more likely that's gonna happen. So, but I think that reading books is something that is a simple answer, of course, a partial answer, but nevertheless, a simple answer that lots of people these days just don't even consider. I mean, uh, Seneca, as you know, one of the one of the big stoics, uh says at one point in one of his letters to Lucilius that reading books, he's talking about philosophy books, but the same goes for any kind of you know, fiction, nonfiction, classics, whatever you whatever you have in mind. Uh, reading books is like having a conversation with the best minds that humanity has produced across cultures and across time. Why not take advantage of that, right? There's there's lots of those people and lots of those minds out there. And uh, you know, reading books when I was a kid uh was was not only one of the most interesting and important experiences that I had at the time, but certainly one of those that molded my character and my worldview. I had I was lucky enough to grow up, not with my parents, but with my grandparents. And uh my my grandfather uh made a point very early on. I was I was still pretty pretty young, I was like seven or eight years old. When he made a point, every weekend we would go into one of Rome's major bookstores, and I would be let free to roam the bookstore and I would be allowed one book of whatever. Right? I mean, he would give suggestions, you know. Oh, maybe you want you considered this, but uh at it at the end of the day, I was the one choosing, and so I would come come home with a book and I would read the book before the following Saturday because I knew that that was the condition in order to get another one. Right. So uh that had a huge impact on day. And uh I I think that um we should do more of that.
Jon BrooksExcellent. And when you say read books for children, are you talking about fiction and nonfiction, just you know, as long as it's like good thinking, good
Reading actively
Jon Brookswriting, or are you talking more about nonfiction books? No, I'm talking about both.
Massimo PigliucciUm literature, good literature, of course. Again, the the the parenthetical qualification here should be good, because as I said, unfortunately there's a lot of trash out there, uh, an increasing amount of which is actually generated by AI. But um, both literature and non-literature, because uh sorry, yes, fiction and non-fiction, because literature is just has always been just as important. I mean, the the the ancient uh Greco-Romans were reading Plato, but they were also reading Homer. Um so you know, they they were uh going to theater and listening to Euripides or or Aristophanes or, you know, things like that. So uh fiction, certainly good again, good fiction, what we call classics today, or or their modern equivalent, certainly uh is is helpful. Um the the problem, as I said, is that it becomes increasingly difficult to tell the good stuff from the bad stuff. But you know, there is help. There's lots of lists of books out there that are worth reading and and so on. One issue that I think one needs to be um careful about is this idea that um how how should I put it? Um when you read something, as I said, you should get into a conversation with that author. So you shouldn't be reading passive. I mean, reading too often is a um is considered a passive activity. It's not. It's you're you're supposed to be engaging with the reading, right? Take notes, uh, highlight passages, you know, talk to other people about it, have a conversation about books with other people, join a book club, in fact, if you if you had there's plenty of that stuff out there, right? Because that makes it a dynamic, active way of participating to uh to the general conversation as opposed to just you know. Oh, one thing that I would add, so there is, of course, children literature, right? And you know, there is age-appropriate literature. However, most of the stuff that I read when I was a kid was not children literature. Uh, it was things that were pushing my certainly not when I was seven or eight, but definitely when I got to 12, 13, or something like that. One of the things that I think has been a bad idea is the so-called young adult gen. Now I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna generate a lot of enmity by saying this, but that's okay. I'm all right with that. I think that the uh young adult literature is a big mistake. It it belittles um teenagers, it treats them as if they were idiots that couldn't be possibly interested or capable of reading real books. And so I'm gonna write a watered-down version of stuff where the story is much simpler and when the, you know, the characters are much more cartoonish so that you can understand it. Like, no. I I started reading actual literature when I was in middle school. And that was no problem. Even if you don't get the whole thing, you know, you might you might be reading some, you know, I don't know, Dickens or Dostoyevsky or something like that. You might not get the whole thing when you're 13 or 14 or 15. It doesn't matter. You're you're getting into the notion that there's something to get there, and then you come back to it, you know, 10 years later or 20 years later.
Jon BrooksYes. Uh that's yeah, such good advice there. Um I have a I have a seven-year-old, a nine-year-old, and a 10-year-old. And uh yeah, reading is a big, big part of like what we do at home. And I think it it does kind of show in quite a big way. And I'm always trying to push them to read things that are a bit challenging as well. So yeah.
Massimo PigliucciAnd you model it. I mean, one of one of the other things is you know, you can't be hypocritical about it. You can't spend your your evening in front of the TV or playing a video game and then tell your kids to read a book. That's not gonna work. You have to model yourself. So they have to see you that you actually enjoy reading books in your spare time, or you read to them, right? When we tend to read to you know, parents uh read to children when they're very young, but then somehow that kind of uh the practice stops. And it's like, why? You you you should continue it reading uh with to another person. It's a great idea, it's a great way to spend time together.
Jon BrooksYes. Yeah, absolutely. Um some of my best memories have been reading to my son at nighttime. It's just since he's been two, we've been doing it, it's been amazing. Right. Uh I want to switch gears to um some of the philosophical themes in the book. So a lot of people
Ancient scepticism
Jon Brooksthink that skepticism, they have this kind of knee-jerk reaction to skepticism, uh, as as you alluded to as being kind of cold and being like hyper-rational and just disagreeable for the sake of it.
unknownRight.
Jon BrooksUh I was wondering if you could give uh an explanation about skepticism as a philosophy and the difference between the academic skeptics and the pyronists as well.
Massimo PigliucciYeah. So so one of the things that it's interesting to me is that the observation that um most of the words that were used that with a positive connotation in antiquity to characterize different schools of thoughts have acquired a negative connotation in modern times. So think about it, right? A stoic today is somebody with a stiff upper lip who suppresses emotions, which is not what the ancient Starks were trying to do. An Epicurean, as we were saying earlier, it's a sex, drugs, and rock and roll kind of person, which is not what Epicurus meant. A skeptic today is somebody who doesn't believe anything, which is not what the ancient skeptics were going about. And a cynic today is somebody who has a sour attitude over everything and does it also doesn't believe anything. And the ancient cynics weren't anything but that. So I blame actually Christianity for uh those changes of um of uh meaning, because of course all those schools pretty much ended uh at uh with the rise of Christianity during the late uh Roman Empire, right? And of course, Christianity, once it became dominant, it also became intolerant. One of the standard uh virtues of Christianity is supposed to be tolerance, but in fact, Christianity historically has been one of the most intolerant religions uh that have uh blessed uh our planet, so to speak. And so one of the things that they did was to try to undermine the credibility of everything that came before them, right? Including the major schools, philosophical schools, because uh they they wanted to replace them. So I think that at least in part, that's what happened. That kind of the the words m changed meaning in a pejorative way, in a negative fashion. Now, back to ancient skepticism, so the the positive meaning of the term. Yes, you're right. There were two major schools of skepticism in the Western tradition. Skepticism is something that appears also in other traditions. There's been a uh, for instance, a strong school of skepticism with it within um uh Indian thought and and within Buddhist uh thought. So it's not like skepticism is just an invention of the West. It pops up uh in other places, although it's always been a minority position because it's difficult to actually practice, I think. You know, it does it tells you that you don't have certainties, that you have to constantly be on guard to revise your opinion. That's a lot of work. So many people are not inclined to follow the skeptic path. The two ancient Greco-Roman schools were the Pyronists, as you say, and the academic skeptics. The Pyronists came first, although not by much, uh by you know, basically a generation or so. The founder of that school was Pyrrh of Ellis, who is a pretty mysterious figure. We don't know much about him, other than he was a real figure, it was a real historical figure. He followed Alexander the Great in India during Alexander's expeditions, there are military expeditions there. And in fact, Pyrrhot did come in contact with some Indian sages. Uh the uh the Greeks referred to them as gymnosophists, which literally means naked, uh wise men. And so, because of that detail, naked, uh people think that these were early Jainists, because we know that some sects of Jainism do practice the uh going around in the forest basically naked. So it's possible that that's what Pyrrh um encountered. Anyway, Pyrrhonism is uh it's really not a uh modern philosophy at all. It has not really, I mean, there are some a few people today who consider themselves Pyrrhonists, but it's not really a relevant presence uh in the modern world. But it is interesting for a number of reasons. The first thing is that the Pyrrhonists developed some of the early skeptic techniques that is, you know, how do you actually keep yourself a skeptic, right? How do you keep an open mind? It's easy to say I have an open mind, but that there's
Arguing the other side
Massimo Pigliuccia there's a big difference between just saying it and actually having an open mind, right? One of the techniques that the early skeptics, the Pyronists, and then later on uh this was adopted by the academic uh skeptics, developed was this notion of um arguing both sides. Uh there is a Latin term for this, inutramque partum, which is actually used today in when people teach rhetoric uh in law school, for instance. But the idea is, let's say that uh, as I said before, right? So I don't believe in free will. How do I keep myself from entrenching my position from being close-minded about it? Well, from time to time, I might uh go through the exercise of writing a page or two arguing for the opposite position. Or I might have a conversation with a friend where I say, you know what, let me defend the opposite position. Let me defend the position that there is, in fact, framework. As it turns out, so this this keeps you on your on your toes because it gives you a better understanding of the opposite position. And as it turns out, uh, this is a technique that is used in modern pedagogy, and there is very good quantitative evidence that shows that it does open people's minds. Some people change their mind when they're forced to defend a different opinion, or even if they don't change their mind, at least they come to a better understanding and more tolerance for the opposite position. So the in-utranque partum approach or technique is something that was invented by the Pyronists and then transmitted to the early academic skeptics. The academic skeptics invented something else that is very interesting and I think very useful today, and
Degrees of confidence
Massimo Pigliucciwhich I devote an entire chapter uh in the book to. Uh, one of the academic skeptics was a guy named Carniades, he was arguably the most influential of the academic skeptics. And he introduced this notion of the uh what in Greek is called pitanon, which trans translates to persuasive. What is persuasive? So he said, look, um things don't come in yes and no, true or false, zero or one. They come into degrees. There are some things that are barely credible, there are other things that are significantly more credible, there are st still other things that are you know almost certain, and so on. And in fact, it it describes four levels of these Pitanon, uh which are equivalent to the situations where the first one, the lowest level, is a situation where I find something potentially true, but I'm not really I don't have a lot of evidence in favor. So let's say more than 50 50, but not much. I'm not gonna bet a lot of money on that. Notion. The second level of the P Tanon is something that I find significantly believable, you know, convincing. I'm not definitely not certain, but I now find that I have I have pretty strong reasons to believe it. So this would be something like, you know, let's say a 70% or 80%, you know, acceptance. So I'm now willing to bet more money on that notion, but not the house. A third level of Pitanon is something that Carniele said is not only convincing, but as he put it, undiverted, meaning that it actually, there's nothing you know that that that contradicts it. So not only it's a notion that you find convincing, but as far as you know, there is no other notion that goes contrary to it. There is nothing that undermines it. Now you're now your level of acceptance is higher, like 90%. Now you can bet a significant amount of money on the truth of that particular notion. And then finally, there's a fourth level of the Python, which he calls thoroughly explored, meaning that people who actually know what they're talking about have spent a significant amount of time and energy checking this out. So it would be the equivalent of modern scientific knowledge.
unknownOkay.
Massimo PigliucciNow you can go, if if something reaches level four of the Pytanon, now you're at about 99%. Now you can actually bet the house. Let me give you two examples just to uh to put this in concrete terms, right? If you invited me um to go to the movies, and I'm not so sure that the movie that you suggested is really that good, right? I'm barely, barely into that territory, like 50 above 50%, but not much. Well, it's not that important. I mean, after all, the main reason is to go out and hang around with you, and if it waste two hours because the movie turned out wrong, bad. It's not a big deal, right? So I don't need a high level of confidence. I don't leave a high level of pita none in order to agree that, sure, let's go and see the movie. However, if we're talking about, I don't know, vaccinating my kids, well, now I want scientific evidence that vaccines work. Right? Because otherwise I'm risking people's lives, my own life or my kids' lives. So now the degree of confidence has to be much higher. Importantly, however, that degree of confidence never reaches truth with the capital T. It never reaches 100%. Why? The skeptic said, because all of our knowledge at the end of the day comes from two sources and two sources only. Our senses, you know, things that we see, touch, smell, hear, and so on, and our reason. And we know from experience that both our senses and our reason can occasionally go wrong. We can make, you know, we can reason incorrectly about things, or we can see things that turn out not to be there, or we might be mistaken about what we thought we saw, and so on and so forth. So if the only two sources of knowledge we have are at least occasionally fallible, then we can never be sure 100% of what we believe. But we don't need 100%. We need just a high degree of confidence depending on what is at stake. If if nothing much is at stake, you don't even need a high degree of confidence. If a lot is at stake, then you want to raise your bar so that you're only doing things that are actually worth doing, that had to come with a certain uh degree of confidence. Now, I use the word, the Greek word pitanon, which we don't use today, of course. Cicero translated Carnieris. And one of the goals of Cicero's life was to translate, uh to render Greek philosophy in Latin, because the Romans uh were far behind the Greeks in terms of philosophy. In fact, Cicero is one of the early uh Roman philosophers. And often there was no equivalent term. He had to make up words, you had to adapt Latin words to the original meaning. And he brilliantly, I think, as it turns out, uh translated Pitanon with the Latin probabilis, from which we get probability, right? And that is what the skeptics were talking about. So, what is the probability that this is a good movie or not? What is the probability that vaccines work or not, and so on and so forth. And so one of the things that I suggest the readers do um in the book is to always ask yourself, what level of confidence do I have in this, in this particular notion, and why? Right? We were we started out this conversation by saying, by talking about uh my daughter's question, you know, how do you know this, right? So if I have a high degree of confidence in a particular notion, let's say the vaccines work, why? Where does that confidence come from? And in asking yourself those two questions, number one, how confident am I about this thing? And number two, why I am I have that degree of confidence, that goes a long way, I think, toward guiding your you in life in making decisions.
Jon BrooksYeah. Yeah, wow, that's super helpful. I love the lists as well, like the the list there, the four-part list and the there.
Massimo PigliucciAnd if people don't remember the names, you know, the specific terms that that that um uh Carnegis uses, just use level one, two, three, or four. Just think about, you know, level one is barely acceptable, two a little bit more, three significantly more, four is the highest you can get. So ask yourself, this notion that I'm entertaining, what level is it? And that that already forces you to think in a more systematic way instead of saying simply true or not true, uh, then you answer yourself in a in a more nuanced uh way. And that is the beginning of something as opposed to the end of inquiry.
Jon BrooksThere's uh a case uh that I want to talk about and get your opinion on. So there are
Scepticism and self-doubt
Jon Brookscertain types of people that are overconfident about everything, and then the the use of skepticism is obvious there. And then there's another type of individual where they may be full of self-doubt, questioning everything to the point that they are stuck. You know, they go down to do work and they're asking, what am I trying to do? Can I even do it? What's the point in anything? And they go down a spiral, right? Uh is skepticism, this philosophy, useful to help this kind of person who's, you know, overthinking and and in doubt all of the time? Is there a healthy version of that?
Massimo PigliucciYeah, you would think that that skepticism might be a problem for those people, right? Because skepticism does uh suggest that you should pause and think a little bit more carefully about what you're doing. These people are already, in a sense, uh the way you describe them, overdoing it, but they're overdoing it in the wrong way. Right? So it's one thing if your doubt comes from the fact that you're not, you don't have confidence in yourself, right? That's a psychological issue. If you don't have confidence in yourself, you might need that, you might need help from a professional who, you know, can address that that specific problem. The kind of confidence the skeptics are talking about is confidence in the evidence. Again, the answer to the question of how do you know this, right? So it's not about you. It's not it's not about your self-confidence, it's about how confident am I that whatever I'm believing or not believing, accepting or not accepting, actually corresponds to reality. It is actually true. So it's about the external evidence and how you assess it. And so I don't think that there is an issue with insecure people embracing skepticism because they're really kind of two different things. There's this, it's one thing is to ask yourself about the epistemic warrant that you have about certain beliefs. It's another thing entirely to ask yourself, do I believe in myself? Although, of course, you couldn't uh approach things from a skeptical perspective even at that level and ask yourself, why don't I believe in myself? What kind of empirical evidence do I have that I'm unreliable, let's say, or incompetent or anything like that, right? And that actually is what a cognitive behavioral therapist would ask you. If you go to a CBT session, that they will challenge your beliefs. I mean, the whole idea, it's a major part of the idea of cognitive behavioral therapy, is challenging the beliefs of the client, right? So, oh, everything's gonna catastrophe. Why? Why do you think that everything is a catastrophe? I'm not good at anything. Why? On what basis do you think that you're not good at anything, right? What are what are your reasons for that? And that's how the therapist will challenge you and and will therefore challenge your your beliefs. And so, in a sense, even CBT is a type of skepticism because it's asking you to actually inquire into why you believe certain things and revise your beliefs if it turns out that your evidence is actually not backing them up, right?
Jon BrooksRight. Yes, that makes a lot of sense. Um just playing devil's advocate a little bit. Uh, there are a lot of people that might be listening to this thinking, I'm I have common sense.
The limits of common sense
Jon BrooksYou know, I'm I must I'm I believe I'm sensible. I believe I'm I look at evidence and I'm open-minded. What is different about this way of looking at things versus the philosophy of skepticism and how might it help even people like this?
Massimo PigliucciWell, one of the issues with common sense is it's actually not that common. Uh it's, you know, lots of people think, as you just said, uh, think that they have common sense, whatever that means. But what they actually mean is I have the same opinions that most people that I know have. That's not common sense, nor is it critical thinking that's going with the heart. That's just being comfortable uh, you know, adopting the beliefs of people in your in your immediate surroundings, your family, among your friends, or in society at large, because you feel uncomfortable challenging them. But one of the things that the skeptics will remind you, so the original skeptic was was Socrates. And Socrates was certainly not somebody who really accepted uh societal bullets without questioning them, right? So he was always questioning things. That doesn't mean that he thought that he had the truth. I mean, he famously went around saying that he actually didn't know anything. It's not true. He actually, it turns out he didn't know a few things here and there. But um, at least his attitude was open, right? So, okay, let me ask a question. You you're the expert. I'm gonna ask you what uh what do you think about this? I don't I don't know myself. So common sense can be an excuse for complacency. It can be an excuse for making you feel comfortable in your cocoon and and not actually asking questions that lead you down uh a path that might actually be uncomfortable. And look, if that's what you want to do, fine. I said, you know, you can't force people. They people have to do it on their own. But at the same time, it is my experience, and it also comes out of systematic studies that people really do like, do really cherish the truth. You know, very few people say, Oh, I don't care about the truth. It's like, I don't, I don't care. Whether I'm wrong or right, I don't care. Uh most people would say, yeah, I'd rather be right than wrong. Okay, well then ask yourself, do other people believe differently, especially people who seem to know what they're talking about? And if so, and if so, what would you say to them? And on what basis would you defend your uh your opinion? So just being open-minded, it simply means be open to the possibility that you could be wrong and ask other people what they think. That's it. Yeah, I love that.
Jon BrooksWell, uh the time has flown by. I know you have uh places you need to be. Uh I've probably got through like a third of all the different topics I wanted to talk to you about, but I I still have more of the book to finish, and I'm sure some themes will come up there for me. Uh it's been a big honor to talk to you today. I really appreciate the time. Is there any way people could find out more about what you're working on? Um, first of all, thanks for having me.
Massimo PigliucciIt's
Massimo’s books and writing
Massimo Pigliuccibeen it's been a pleasure. Yes, uh, people can find my books, of course, wherever books are sold online or or or in person. And then uh most of my writings aimed at a general public can be found at my Substack, which is called Figs in Winter. And everything else that I do, including my technical uh stuff in science and philosophy, can be found at massimopigliucci.net.
Jon BrooksYeah, and I will say as well, uh Figs in Winter is super high quality. Uh I was actually for a time just reading articles as as just a way to kind of learn about philosophy in general. Uh yeah, so I I thank you. Fully, fully recommend that.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Jon BrooksUh well, thank you very much. And uh yeah, hope you have a good rest of the day. Thanks. You too. Great. Okay.