Hello everyone, I'm Stephen West. This is Velocifize This. Thank you to everyone who keeps the show

going through Patreon. Really appreciate everyone that still supports. Thanks for all the contributions

on the website and for getting merch at VelocifizeThis.org. Today's episode is part one in a miniseries

on Ralph Waldo Emerson. I hope you love this show today. So something that's been hammered

home on this show pretty regularly in the past. Maybe a little bit too much at times. It's

something that at this point seems like it's become a bit of a philosophical truism. It's the

realization that you can never really know anything for certain. Now, who really cares when anybody

says something like this? Like, what are they even saying? Are they certain that we can't know

anything for certain? This is a line that when it's said in polite conversation, can seem to some

people like this sort of dusty old undergraduate credo. An idea that at best is pointless because

it's really not saying anything. And at worst, completely deletes the possibility of a discussion

right at the outset. Then again, there are other people out there that would see this statement

as something that is undeniably true, something that's necessary for any level of nuance thinking.

And that if there's a mistake being made here, the mistake lies in the person who hears that you

can't know anything for certain and then decides to sit around and do nothing because, hey,

you can't know anything for certain anyway. Guess I'll grab me a bag of skeptical Cheetos and

just call it a life. See, there's a lot of discussion among fans of philosophy about what the value

of philosophy is in today's day and age. Why is philosophy even important in modern times?

And there's a lot of answers to this, but one of the ones that's the most popular is that philosophy

is a bit of a baptism by fire. Philosophy is not about slowly discovering the truth about existence

by reading what wise people said 600 years ago. Philosophy is more about taking you down a peg or two,

humbling you. You know, that classic philosophy meme, the never-ending cycle between you think

...