The King and the Poison

In a far away land, it was known that if you drank poison, the only way to save yourself is to drink a stronger poison, which neutralizes the weaker poison. The king that ruled the land wanted to make sure that he possessed the strongest poison in the kingdom, in order to ensure his survival, in any situation. So the king called the kingdom's pharmacist and the kingdom's treasurer, he gave each a week to make the strongest poison. Then, each would drink the other one's poison, then his own, and the one that will survive, will be the one that had the stronger poison.
The pharmacist went straight to work, but the treasurer knew he had no chance, for the pharmacist was much more experienced in this field, so instead, he made up a plan to survive and make sure the pharmacist dies. On the last day the pharmacist suddenly realized that the treasurer would know he had no chance, so he must have a plan. After a little thought, the pharmacist realized what the treasurer's plan must be, and he concocted a counter plan, to make sure he survives and the treasurer dies. When the time came, the king summoned both of them. They drank the poisons as planned, and the treasurer died, the pharmacist survived, and the king didn't get what he wanted.
What exactly happened there?

The treasurer drank some weaker poison before the meeting. Then he brought water instead of poison. He would then drink the pharmacist's poison, which would be stronger (than the one he drank before he went). When the pharmacist realized his plan, he decided to bring water as well. The treasure drank pharmacist's water (so it had no effect) and died. The king didn't get any poison, because both the pharmacist and the treasurer brought water.

The Value of Philosophy

Philosophy is valuable for being a source of knowledge and understanding. It proves that a deeper reality exists. We run through the time, our life is shut up within the circle of the privacy. But in fact life streams around reason and thought.


The value of philosophy is its uncertainty, unascertainable knowledge. The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the cooperation or consent of his deliberate reason. To such a man the world seems to be definite, finite, obvious; common objects rouse no questions, and unfamiliar possibilities are contemptuously rejected.


Philosophy enlarges our conception of what is possible, understanding of the world, expands our intellectual horizons; it keeps alive our sense of wonder by showing familiar things in an unfamiliar aspect and develops our perspectives. Philosophy can not give us any definite answers, because such answers can not be known to be true, but it is valuable because of the questions. Life is focused on self-reflection and ethical issues. For a philosophic man the world is open, infinite, strange, and the life inclusive, free and calm.


"The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt."  Bertrand Russel

Pojman L. 2004: Introduction to Philosophy, Oxford University Press

The Role of Reason in Philosophy

Philosophy is the art of rational thinking. It is the contemplation or study of the most important questions in existence, with the end of promoting illumination and understanding, a vision of the whole. It uses reason, sense, perception, the imagination, and intuitions in its activities of clarifying concepts and analyzing and constructing arguments and theories as possible answers to these perennial questions.

Though theologies and religions typically do not claim to be irrational, there is often a perceived conflict or tension between faith on the one hand, and reason on the other, as potentially competing sources of wisdom, law and truth.

Reason itself is not enough to make understand the origins of the universe and so it should be complemented by other sources of knowledge. Reason is the method of thinking in an organized, clear way to achieve knowledge and understanding.  

Pojman L. 2004: Introduction to Philosophy, Oxford University Press

Alfred Tarski - a man who defined truth

One of the greatest logicians of all time. Born at the beginning of the twentieth century, studied mathematics and philosophy at the University of Warsaw. He got a doctoral degree and taught mathematics.  

His work on the concepts of truth and logical consequence is the foundation of all rational thought - modern logic, influencing developments in mathematics, philosophy, linguistics, and computer science. His most important achievement in logic is his formulation of the semantic method. Semantics is the study of the relations between terms (words or sentences) and their objects. Pursuing his researches in semantics, Tarski furnished significant definitions not only of the term "logical consequence" but even of the term "definability." His paper "The Semantic Conception of Truth and the Foundations of Semantics" (1944), had considerable impact on epistemology outside mathematics and logic, and is regarded as one of the major versions of the correspondence theory of truth.

His books included Introduction to Logic (English version, 1941), Undecidable Theories (with others, 1953), Ordinal Algebras (1956), The Theory of Modules (editor, with others, 1965), and Cylindric Algebras (with others, 1971). He contributed more than 100 articles on logic and mathematics to professional journals during his career. 

"It is evident that all these results only receive a clear content and can only then be exactly proved, if a concrete and precisely formulated definition of [true] sentence is accepted as a basis for the investigation."

"Snow is white" is true if and only if snow is white

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy