Engaging with uncertainty

As humans, we are not only different, each one of us is unique in our experience, our memories and associations and the stories we share.  Dialogue can help us to connect, appreciate these differences, and even to enjoy challenges to our own thinking.  

Our specialism is placing philosophical inquiry at the heart of your project, whether you are a cultural organisation, a school or a company.

What is Philosophical inquiry?

Philosophical inquiry is thinking about thinking. It gives us a reasoning structure of premise & conclusion to step back from our experience and begin exploring different viewpoints on everything from questions of knowledge, reality, justice, language, the world and the assumptions underlying them.

I think x…because….. I agree/disagree with x because….

It requires us to slow down our thinking, moving beyond knee-jerk reactions to become aware and curious about different ways of seeing, including our own.

What do I think I know, why do I think I know it? and can I really be certain? If not, then what other possibilities could there be?

We begin philosophising from as early as 3 or 4 years old. Learning language and meaning, what is considered right or wrong, real or illusion or ‘just a dream’, pushing against limits to our free will, and the often mysterious set of rules that adults impose.  That children have the capacity to think abstractly from such a young age, gives us the opportunity to include them in philosophical conversations. 

Michael Sandel, American political philosopher suggests that philosophy begins at the dinner table. Historian Bettany Hughes suggests that philosophical inquiry itself began at the dinner table, as an ancient Greek innovation. Arising out of the ancient Egyptian custom of offering hospitality to strangers, the ancient Greeks extended this practice of entertaining strangers with food and shelter to entertaining the ideas they carried with them from foreign lands.  Conversation and inquiry into new and sometimes challenging ideas can feel risky, but around the dinner table the space was safe enough to make journeys into the unknown.  Hughes points how at a time of growing trade routes and a mix of cultures, philosophical inquiry would have played a role in peace making and peace keeping, as well as the potential it has for peace keeping today.