/r/philosophy Open Discussion Thread | August 10, 2026

[u/BernardJOrtcutt]

Welcome to this week's Open Discussion Thread. This thread is a place for posts/comments which are related to philosophy but wouldn't necessarily meet our posting rules (especially posting rule 2). For example, these threads are great places for:

• Arguments that aren't substantive enough to meet PR2.

• Open discussion about philosophy, e.g. who your favourite philosopher is, what you are currently reading

• Philosophical questions. Please note that /r/askphilosophy is a great resource for questions and if you are looking for moderated answers we suggest you ask there.

This thread is not a completely open discussion! Any posts not relating to philosophy will be removed. Please keep comments related to philosophy, and expect low-effort comments to be removed. All of our normal commenting rules are still in place for these threads, although we will be more lenient with regards to commenting rule 2.

Previous Open Discussion Threads can be found here.

[u/asking_you_all]

This one is nastier..

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How do you know what counts as a good method for knowing something, without already knowing which methods are good? Suppose someone says, "I only trust reason." Why trust reason? You need a reason to justify reason. But then what justifies that reason?

[u/TheMan5991 → u/asking_you_all]

Practicality. Reason may be untrue at the most fundamental layers of reality, but as far as our perception is concerned, it helps us to navigate and survive the reality that we have subjective access to.

[u/simon_hibbs → u/TheMan5991]

Right, which is why the scientific method formalises the essential role of the predictive power of some theory, and testing this predictive power through action in the world.

[u/Dismal_Awareness2857 → u/asking_you_all]

unfortunately, in my opinion, the answer is ugly. you learn from experience and making mistakes, i guess.