When I saw your question the phrase struck me as unknown in Plato’s writings. That doesn’t necessarily mean anything, so I did a search through all his dialogues looking for some plausible Greek analogue to “beginning of wisdom.” I did not find your quote. I did notice, in the process, that it pops up around the Internet; but then so do other sayings supposedly in Plato’s works, like “Only the dead have seen the end of war,” or “Be kind, because everyone you meet is carrying a heavy burden.” Those two don’t correspond to anything in Plato, but they are widely attributed to him.

It’s not exactly like Socrates to speak of the “beginning of wisdom,” although he does talk about summoning the soul or the intellect to think about issues, and he does speak (again, in Plato’s dialogues) as if this were the beginning of a process whose conclusion would be wisdom. I am also suspicious for the reason that “the beginning of wisdom” is a phrase we find in the Bible, specifically in the Book of Proverbs. That makes me suspect that someone misstated something in Plato in somewhat Biblical terms.

Having made all those negative points, let me say what might seem like the contradiction of my answer thus far. The thought at work in this quote does correspond to ideas in what Socrates says in Plato’s dialogues. In the Republic he says that certain experiences “summon the soul” to investigate more closely (Book 7, 523-524). These are experiences involving certain vague or ambiguous properties, like softness and hardness. If you believe that the outcome of the investigation is a definition of those properties, then in a general way Socrates is indeed describing the beginning of wisdom and linking it to the definition of terms.

Furthermore, Aristotle tells us that the great contribution Socrates made to philosophy was his quest for the definitions of terms. If any philosophical enterprise can be confidently associated with the name of Socrates, it would be that one. Again, we are in the neighborhood of the idea you asked about, even if we can’t find those exact words in Plato’s writings.

I think the answer will depend on which philosopher of math you ask. As you seem to recognize, some philosophers of math deny that numbers exist independently of us in such a way that their existence is genuinely discovered by us. Even philosophers of math who think that numbers are discovered might say that your question -- "What happened?" -- is an empirical historical or psychological question rather than a philosophical one. In any case, you'll find relevant material in the SEP entry on "Philosophy of Mathematics" at this link.

Ancient mathematicians (Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek) did not in fact discover the number zero. The discovery is thought to have been in India, which was the first place to treat zero like any other number (rather than as a placeholder), sometime between the 6th and the 10th century CE. It is thought that this advance required abstract thinking that was perhaps facilitated by Indian Philosophy. The discovery spread to the West through Arabic mathematics.

Great question! Your choice of language may depend on your philosophical interests. If you are interested in Greco-Roman and philosophy in late Antiquity and Medieval philosophy, then Greek and Latin would be excellent. If you are interested in Indian or Hindu philosophy sanscrit would be best. Your Spanish will be good for reading a very fine, dynamic Spanish philosopher and essayist, Jose Ortega Y Gasset. Spanish philosophy (that is, philosophy in Spain, not just in Spanish) experienced hard times after the defeat of democracy in 1939, but after the restoration of democracy in 1978, Spain has been a place of multiple, alternative philosophical debates. Two outstanding philosophers to consider (AFTER you have read some Ortega, who is fabulous), I suggest you consult J.L. Lopez Aranguren and J.M. Valverde.

I think your pursuit of English is a great choice. I could be wrong, but I believe that probably the most number of philosophical works available today are accessible in English, more than any other single language. This is not just do to the works that are first published in English, but due to the wide ranging works that have been and are being translated into English. English is also more easy to learn than, say, Chinese in terms of numbers of characters and punctuation. When I was in graduate school (long, long ago...), after English the languages of choice were French and German. Because life is short, and in mastering English and reading current Spanish speaking philosophy (which also is flourishing in Mexico, Central and South America; on this, see Latin American Philosophy Today, edited by Jorge J. E. Garcia), I suggest choosing French or German, depending on your interests. If you want to read Heidegger in the original, go with German, if you want to read Sartre in the original, I suggest you go with French.

Thank you for this inquiry! The idea that all our beliefs, religious or not, must have sufficient evidence is sometimes called "evidentialism." It is much debated today: some philosophers think there is no uncontroversial domain of what may or may not count as evidence nor, if we did agree on what counts as evidence, how much evidence one needs in order for a belief to be justified. I am inclined to think that all or most of our beliefs are in fact backed up by some evidence (reasons for thinking our beliefs are true), however modest and elusive. And I also suggest that the belief in God is rarely without some evidence, even if it only amounts to 'it appears to me that God exists.' But four things might be noted in reply to your question(s).

First, not all evidence for a belief need involve "physical manifestations," a "physical form," or the natural and social sciences. Part of the problem with these claims is that we do not have a clear, universal concept of what counts as physical.

Second, evidence may include the experiential or what seems manifested in one's experience. So, I suspect that for many theists, part of their evidence-base is some sense of the presence and reality of God. Appeals to experience in a philosophical argument is sometimes referred to as an appeal to phenomenology, an appeal to what seems evident in our experience. Appeals to phenomenology are sometimes used in ethics (e.g. claims are advanced that good and evil are evident in our experiences of health and harm), philosophy of mind (some philosophers seem to deny the reality of consciousness and awareness; other philosophers reply that such a denial flies against all our waking experience), aesthetics (e.g. appeal to our experience of what seems like beauty and ugliness). There are also a variety of arguments for theism based on religious experience. You may find references to this literature on the free, online Stanford Encyclopedia.

Third, a significan number of philosophers reject "evidentialism" whether in a religious or secular context. Some think that what makes a belief justified or warranted is the reliability of the belief being true, even if the "believer" has little idea of the evidence available. Some philosophers have argued for believing in God on non-evidential grounds, such as Pascal's wager (if you do not know whether there is a God, it is better to believe or assume that there is a God rather than not). In several dynamic, interesting books and papers, Paul Moser (of Loyola University) has argued for the primacy of a volitional account for believing in God. It is "volitional" insofar as Moser argues that to seek God one must be willingly open to recognize the reality of a perfectly good, loving God. Once this openness is in play, Moser believes that a yielding to this God of love will become both apparent and justified (the belief in God through this process is not at all in conflict with one's intellectual integrity). You can find references to his work by just doing a google search for: Paul Moser philosopher belief in God.

Fourth, I suggest that the term "supernatural" may not be the best to employ in connection with reflection on God. This is partly because the term does not have a consistent usage in English and some associate the "supernatural" with the superstitious. The term "theism" (coined in the 17th century in the first philosophy of religion texts in English) is the more consistent term for the belief that there is an all good, powerful, knowing, necessarily existing, omnipresent God who has created and conserves the cosmos in being.

Thank you for this inquiry! The idea that all our beliefs, religious or not, must have sufficient evidence is sometimes called "evidentialism." It is much debated today: some philosophers think there is no uncontroversial domain of what may or may not count as evidence nor, if we did agree on what counts as evidence, how much evidence one needs in order for a belief to be justified. I am inclined to think that all or most of our beliefs are in fact backed up by some evidence (reasons for thinking our beliefs are true), however modest and elusive. And I also suggest that the belief in God is rarely without some evidence, even if it only amounts to 'it appears to me that God exists.' But four things might be noted in reply to your question(s).

First, not all evidence for a belief need involve "physical manifestations," a "physical form," or the natural and social sciences. Part of the problem with these claims is that we do not have a clear, universal concept of what counts as physical.

Second, evidence may include the experiential or what seems manifested in one's experience. So, I suspect that for many theists, part of their evidence-base is some sense of the presence and reality of God. Appeals to experience in a philosophical argument is sometimes referred to as an appeal to phenomenology, an appeal to what seems evident in our experience. Appeals to phenomenology are sometimes used in ethics (e.g. claims are advanced that good and evil are evident in our experiences of health and harm), philosophy of mind (some philosophers seem to deny the reality of consciousness and awareness; other philosophers reply that such a denial flies against all our waking experience), aesthetics (e.g. appeal to our experience of what seems like beauty and ugliness). There are also a variety of arguments for theism based on religious experience. You may find references to this literature on the free, online Stanford Encyclopedia.

Third, a significan number of philosophers reject "evidentialism" whether in a religious or secular context. Some think that what makes a belief justified or warranted is the reliability of the belief being true, even if the "believer" has little idea of the evidence available. Some philosophers have argued for believing in God on non-evidential grounds, such as Pascal's wager (if you do not know whether there is a God, it is better to believe or assume that there is a God rather than not). In several dynamic, interesting books and papers, Paul Moser (of Loyola University) has argued for the primacy of a volitional account for believing in God. It is "volitional" insofar as Moser argues that to seek God one must be willingly open to recognize the reality of a perfectly good, loving God. Once this openness is in play, Moser believes that a yielding to this God of love will become both apparent and justified (the belief in God through this process is not at all in conflict with one's intellectual integrity). You can find references to his work by just doing a google search for: Paul Moser philosopher belief in God.

Fourth, I suggest that the term "supernatural" may not be the best to employ in connection with reflection on God. This is partly because the term does not have a consistent usage in English and some associate the "supernatural" with the superstitious. The term "theism" (coined in the 17th century in the first philosophy of religion texts in English) is the more consistent term for the belief that there is an all good, powerful, knowing, necessarily existing, omnipresent God who has created and conserves the cosmos in being.

There are some ethical views that would say you have a duty here. A ham-fisted version of Utilitarianism, for example, might say that you should figure out if taking the job you don't prefer would do more good overall. If so, this crude doctrine would continue, you should take that job all the same. *

This is not very plausible.

For one thing, the maxim asks us to calculate the incalculable. You might take the job you want less and end up burnt out only to leave it early. And since there are many ways of doing good, most of them outside the workplace, you might end up doing more good against the backdrop of a job that you love. You don't know how things will turn out.

More to the point: we're obliged not to do harm when we can avoid it, and it's reasonable to think we're obliged to do some positive good, but beyond that, a good deal is up for grabs. I know of no good argument against picking the livelihood we'd like, within the bounds of decency and reason, and I'd be mightily skeptical of someone who thought they had one.

There are theoretical views that fit with what I'm suggesting: Kant's understanding of the difference between perfect and imperfect duties, for example, suggests that you have no duty to choose one of these options rather than the other. But even though this may be a point in Kant's favor, we don't need Kant—nor any philosophical theory—to tell us that it's so.

--

* Please note: I'm not saying all versions of utilitarianism are crude. But I am looking askance at the idea that arguments can settle our "duties" in the kind of case you've offered.

A deep rich complicated question! A short (too short) answer would go with both, depending what you mean by 'color.' There are subjective aspects to color (perceived color), and there are objective aspects (physical properties, light properties, etc.). The big question of course is just how these two aspects are related. Are they independent in some sense, or intimately related, and if so how? Can perceived color, the perception of color, be identified with or reduced to objective properties, and if so which? There is a ton of literature on this, but you might start with the classic Larry Hardin's "Color for Philosophers."

hope that's useful -- to start

ap

A deep rich complicated question! A short (too short) answer would go with both, depending what you mean by 'color.' There are subjective aspects to color (perceived color), and there are objective aspects (physical properties, light properties, etc.). The big question of course is just how these two aspects are related. Are they independent in some sense, or intimately related, and if so how? Can perceived color, the perception of color, be identified with or reduced to objective properties, and if so which? There is a ton of literature on this, but you might start with the classic Larry Hardin's "Color for Philosophers."

hope that's useful -- to start

ap

This is a really excellent question, and a complicated issue. First coming to mind might be the ad hominem fallacy, if you take the argument to be something like "because you are a hypocrite, your position vis a vis boycotting should be rejected." But I don't think that many of the people who have raised this argument mean it in that fallacious sense (though perhaps some do). A deeper analysis might be that this isn't really an argument at all -- it's merely an attack on Hawking's character (w/o inviting others to reach any conclusion about the boycott in question). This seems reasonable: if Hawking truly is committed to some very general boycott of Israel, Israeli achievements, academics, etc., then consistency may well require that he give up his chip ... so this point calls attention to his 'boycott of convenience': portray himself as supportin a general boycott (perhaps to receive acclaim from those on that side) when he fact he doesn't. But then an even deeper analysis (perhaps intended by some of the people making the argument, though probably not that many) would be this: "How misguided it is to boycott things Israeli. For you boycott things Israeli in the belief that Israel/Israelis are somehow morally monstrous, but that belief is false: Israel/israelis does much good in the world, Israeli scientists, physicians, academics etc have done a tremendous amount to advance human progress and welfare etc etc ..." On this view the argument in question strikes me as fairly good (if complete one) ... Now I don't know if there are any names for these latter two 'kinds' of argument, so I can't answer that question -- but I presume the reason you're asking the question is because you think teh charge against Hawking is fallacious and you were seeking the name of the relevant fallacy ...

hope that's useful ..

ap