Bas van Fraassen

The four dimensions in the 16-axis model where this thinker scores highest. People in this archetype tend to lean the same way.

• TETrust in Experience

  8 / 10
• SRSkeptical Reflex

  8 / 10
• POPractical Orientation

  7 / 10
• ESEmbodied Sensibility

  7 / 10

The six thinkers whose 16-dimensional positions sit closest to this one. Useful as next-reading suggestions.

• Bernard MandevilleTOUCHSTONE

  Fable of the Bees — private vices, public benefits.

• Dugald StewartTOUCHSTONE

  Scottish common sense made systematic — philosophy of the mind.

• Annette BaierTOUCHSTONE

  Trust as the precondition of moral life; Hume re-read for the feminine.

• Ruth MillikanTOUCHSTONE

  Biosemantics — content as evolved proper function.

• Maine de BiranGARDEN

  Effort and willing as the felt origin of the self.

• Spinozism in BayleTOUCHSTONE

  Pierre Bayle — Dictionary that armed the Enlightenment with skeptical entries.

Short exercises in the same tradition as Bas van Fraassen's thought. Each takes 5–25 minutes.

• Fallacy hunt →

  Pick a real argument from the wild and find three reasoning errors in it.

• Counterexample drill →

  Try to break a moral rule with a single concrete case.

• Steelmanning the opposite →

  Write the strongest possible version of the view you most reject.