There is an argument against Kant’s moral philosophy that just won’t die. I’ve seen it show up in some surprising places: Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue, and Patricia Churchland’s Braintrust. I remember a moral philosophy professor repeating it in class once, with approval. These are all smart people but they all level a criticism against Kant that’s based…
Mycological aesthetics
I’m teaching environmental philosophy for the first time this semester. It’s part of our school’s new environmental literacy degree requirement. Just like they need general education credits, they need credits relating somehow to the environment; courses like mine are “E” courses. It’s not an environmental ethics course per se, although ethics is part of it….
The humble preface
A lot of authors write prefaces for their books which acknowledge that they may have made a mistake somewhere in the book. A historian writing a history of Queen Elizabeth’s reign puts their name on hundreds of assertions made in the book, about the queen’s feelings, about important dates, and so on. So, “I’m on…
The vice of Frankenstein
For Jack
New essay: Wilfrid Sellars, sensory experience and the ‘Myth of the Given’
I haven’t posted on here in a while, but it’s for a mostly good reason: I’ve been waiting for this to go live. I basically couldn’t write until it was up. Now it’s up! I’m free! Please read it.
Forgetting
Humans think with meat, and while meat can store a surprising amount of information (if that’s the right way to put it), its storage capacity is limited. So, we forget things. Is this regrettable but unavoidable, like the existence of pain or death? Or could it be a positive good, rather than a necessary evil?…
Clear seeing
Does scientific understanding allow humans to outrun the capacities of other creatures? Do we see the world more clearly?
The uniqueness thesis
Suppose you have a body of evidence. Maybe you’re a detective and you’ve got hours of interviews and forensic evidence at your disposal, or maybe you’re a paleontologist with lots of fossils and lessons from comparative anatomy. Now you want to know if the evidence “favors,” in any way, some hypothesis. Does the forensic evidence…
Metaphors for evidence
Every true crime freak knows that evidence comes in many degrees and dimensions. Evidence can be weak or strong; it can be overwhelming; it can be weighty or flimsy. The metaphors for evidence suggest it works like a physical quantity, like mass. One grain of rice doesn’t have much mass, but a billion has enough…