[{"id":837,"title":"Clarifying Heraclitus' criticism of polymathy as a bad craft","sha":"048ab76455afe092019333825c4054c2","user_id":null,"state":"published","body":"In fragment XXV (Khan, 1979), Heraclitus writes that polymathy is bad craft (kakotechnie). However, in that extract he is referring to the “pilling up” of learnings without the application of rigor and without good guiding principles.\r\n\r\nNotwithstanding, cognates of polymath’s termination \"-math\" were associated with learnings implying inquiry, and rigor, correctness, precision, or akribeia (Bukert, 1972, p. 192). Heraclitus, then, attacks a version of \"polymathy\" that lacks both the depth of akribeia and integration aspects. Since [Breadth,_D](/ideas/5ff33bee3321766b7bb581634aebfd72) showed that these are constitutional elements of modern polymathy, it voids the application of this criticism.\r\n\r\nMoreover, Heraclitus wrote about the necessity to inquire into many things to obtain integrated wisdom (fragment XII). Thus what he really emphasizes throughout his fragments is that good learners should (i) be critical of learnings coming from \"authorities\" that cannot be trusted, and (ii) strive to integrate many knowledges in their pursuit of a single truth, which comes not from opinion but from nature. In this sense, he was only admonishing \"polymathy\" when void of depth and integration. Were these conditions true, most modern scholars would also concur that it would be bad practice. Hence, the fact that modern polymathy is now defined in terms of depth, breadth and integration puts an end this issue.","created_at":"2021-03-09T03:53:43.563Z","updated_at":"2021-05-21T06:01:19.696Z","zenodo_id":4775062,"doi":"https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4775062","subject":null,"tags":["polymathy","heraclitus","philosophy","polymath","polyhistor","knowledge","learning","depth","breadth","integration","opinion","correctness"],"vote_count":0,"view_count":1,"score":0.1,"deleted":false,"muted":false,"tweeted":false,"attachment_file_name":null,"attachment_content_type":null,"attachment_file_size":null,"attachment_updated_at":null},{"id":349,"title":"Playing Games with Ideas: when epistemology pays off","sha":"e4702f43c1c9f3561e57b3ab001a924b","user_id":null,"state":"published","body":"In standard game theory analysis, gameplay proceeds using rational strategies. While there is no explicit link between rationality and strategy selection, playing to equilibrium solutions often depends on choosing the optimal strategy. Yet what if strategy optimality is not obvious to the players? Often, people make seemingly irrational decisions based on beliefs or situational interpretations of the empirical world. These beliefs have high social import, but with little advantage compared to empirical reality. \r\n\r\nWe use a decision kernel to model how beliefs (an epistemological network) influence a rational strategy suite (top box in attachment). The feedforward network output is a set of beliefs that influence gameplay as a set of rational behavior (empirical strategy suite). This results in an epistemological-influenced social capital payoff function, and an empirical payoff function (bottom box in attachment). The joint distribution (or area of intersection between the payoff functions) is the epistemological payoff. This epistemological payoff can be small (low conditional social payoff) or large (high conditional social payoff). When small, players play their strategies close to the optimal expectation. Larger epistemological payoffs result plays that have with relatively higher social utility, but also little immediate utility when compared to the empirical world.","created_at":"2016-11-21T06:06:01.489Z","updated_at":"2016-11-21T11:38:15.392Z","zenodo_id":167647,"doi":"https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.167647","subject":null,"tags":["cognition","game theory","cultural evolution","complex systems","theory","philosophy"],"vote_count":1,"view_count":1,"score":1.1,"deleted":false,"muted":false,"tweeted":true,"attachment_file_name":"whole-figure.png","attachment_content_type":"image/png","attachment_file_size":286497,"attachment_updated_at":"2016-11-21T06:06:01.443Z"},{"id":143,"title":"Naturalness of Atheism and Supernaturalness of Religion - A Role for Theological Science","sha":"c4fcf79b9c0be4b2b24ee2baa941a221","user_id":540,"state":"published","body":"Scientific approaches (\"science\" narrowly defined as the \"sciences of nature\") metaphysically exclude divine effects as appropriate--in other words, science itself is structured to exclude divine action (pragmatically). The problem with the \"natural\" study of religion is that religion cannot be reduced to its natural causes and effects. This is precisely because divine causes and effects are the source and telos of religious life, with natural causes being more appropriately \"effects which follow from divine causes\". Science can contribute, because of its structure, studying natural phenomena associated with religion understood as natural phenomena and not as divine phenomena. Therefore, the word \"natural\" must be defined here as \"strictly scientifically natural\", suggesting that atheism is a strictly scientifically natural belief (excluding divinity not only pragmatically but substantially), whereas religion, limited to strictly scientific investigation, is \"natural\" because of its natural effects, but points to something outside of strictly natural explanations. The word \"unnaturalness\" applied to religion by [konrad szocik](/users/76d3c51025e2ea94f969165c2ad98be7) signified the opposite of only a strictly scientific \"naturalness\". A more appropriate word than \"unnaturalness\" would be \"supernaturalness\". This word is more proper to the object of study (religion) and is not contradictory to \"natural\" but suggests explanatory plausibility \"outside\" or beyond the structure of nature, suggesting reality beyond nature. Here is where theology might begin to have significant input.","created_at":"2015-04-10T18:35:46.345Z","updated_at":"2015-04-12T06:01:06.958Z","zenodo_id":26806,"doi":"http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16762","subject":null,"tags":["religion","atheism","science","philosophy","evolution","biology","morality"],"vote_count":0,"view_count":1,"score":0.1,"deleted":false,"muted":false,"tweeted":false,"attachment_file_name":null,"attachment_content_type":null,"attachment_file_size":null,"attachment_updated_at":null}]