Really good philosophising requires something more than a razor-sharp brain, something that is sometimes called subtlety of mind, a philosophical sen… - Julian Baggini

When you have strong desires to believe something, it is always possible to convince yourself that a decisive argument against one node wasn’t decisive after all, or that you have found a reply to it. Mending and making do can enable one to think a web of belief still holds together, even after a good critic has ripped it to shreds. But the fact that we know reason will not convince everyone is beside the point. Whether an argument is sound or whether it is persuasive are two different questions. It should come as no surprise that good rational arguments often fail to persuade people. The case for reason is not that it is always psychologically efficacious but that it genuinely helps us towards the truth. However, just as you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink, so you can lead a mind to reason but you cannot make it think.

If the house on the lake can become a new iteration of a philosophical retreat, that would pay homage to its first owner much more than any number of selfie-snapping visitors could.

Only our most intimate friends know our deepest flaws, and in the same way the greatest skeptics about reason should be those who seek to defend it. If we do not debunk the grandiose myths of reason then its enemies will do so far more destructively. My positive case for rationality therefore requires taking us through four key myths of rationality, all of which can be traced back to Plato. These myths are: that reason is purely objective and requires no subjective judgement; that it can and should take the role of our chief guide, the charioteer of the soul; that it can furnish us with the fundamental reasons for action; and that we can build society on perfectly rational principles.