How do we knowwhat we know?
Ancient questions.
Immediate consequences.
For more than two thousand years, philosophers have examined how human beings acquire knowledge, exercise reason, and form judgments about the world.
Today, artificial intelligence can interpret information, synthesize evidence, construct arguments, and influence decisions. It can also shape what we encounter before we begin forming judgments of our own.
These are questions about the foundations of human understanding. AI makes their practical implications harder to ignore.
For business leaders, executives, boards, and others responsible for consequential decisions, those implications are increasingly immediate.
Most conversations about AI begin with capability: what it can produce, how quickly it can work, and which tasks it can perform. But its growing role in selecting information and shaping the accounts on which we rely raises a deeper question.
Does AI change the conditions under which we acquire knowledge, arrive at understanding, and exercise judgment? Which of our long-held assumptions still stand?
The thinking behind the inquiry.
Neil Sumaru is a political scientist by training, specializing in political philosophy. He studied under Professor Leon Harold Craig, whose teaching introduced him to a rich intellectual tradition and an enduring way of reading, questioning, and working through arguments.
As artificial intelligence begins to influence how we encounter information, develop understanding, and form judgments, Neil is revisiting the intellectual tradition that shaped his thinking, asking which assumptions about knowledge, reason, and judgment continue to hold under these new conditions.
Virtue Is Knowledge invites others to follow that continuing examination through lectures, essays, and dialogue.
Follow the questions.
See where they lead.
Subscribe on Substack to follow the inquiry through essays, lectures, and conversations.
From Aristotle
to the age of AI.
Our inquiry begins with Aristotle and an examination of the relationship between human beings and the things they make.
From there, we follow the arguments and discoveries of thinkers such as Galileo, Bacon, Hume, Nietzsche, and Leo Strauss, tracing the changing ways we have understood knowledge, reason, science, and judgment.
Along the way, we examine what those ideas might reveal about artificial intelligence, and what AI may cause us to reconsider about them.
An invitation into the argument.
The inquiry invites you into the ideas themselves: the questions being asked, the arguments being made, and the reasoning through which different understandings of the world have emerged.
For executives, board members, and others responsible for consequential decisions, examining how knowledge and judgment are formed offers a way to consider these same questions within their own operating environments.
For everyone else, the invitation is equally relevant. The ability to question assumptions, examine arguments, and reconsider what we believe we know extends into every part of human life.
Levuka Executive Academy
Hosted at Colorado State University’s campus in the beautiful Pueblo Mágico of Todos Santos, Mexico, Levuka Executive Academy offers in-person leadership retreats for executive teams, boards, and peer groups. Each gathering makes room to examine the questions, assumptions, and consequential decisions facing the participants.
The next question awaits.
New lectures, essays, and reflections will continue the journey. Join Neil for what comes next.