Mini Symposium on Truth: Sartwell and Kaufman on Theories of Truth
by Daniel A. Kaufman My discussion with Crispin Sartwell of Dickinson College on theories of truth. Originally aired on the Sophia program, MeaningofLife.TV, February 12, 2019.
Mini Symposium on Truth: Quid Est Veritas?
by E. John Winner ___ Most of what I know about logic I learned studying Aristotle, Kant, and Peirce. However, I did take an introductory undergraduate course in symbolic logic. The surprising take-away was that with a properly formed compound sentence, one could assert just about anything, and still hold the assertion, as a whole, to be true. In short, […]
Adolescent Politics
by Daniel A. Kaufman ___ The sub-heading of the late-Christopher Hitchens’ book, God is Not Great, reads: “how religion poisons everything.” Now, maybe that’s true and maybe it isn’t. I really don’t know. But one thing I do know is this: Politics poisons everything. And the reason it does is that we are not serious or mature enough to engage […]
Course Notes – Susan Wolf, “Moral Saints”
by Daniel A. Kaufman http://www.rationalites-contemporaines.paris-sorbonne.fr/IMG/pdf/Wolf1.pdf I am currently teaching Ethics and Contemporary Issues, a course devoted to ethical theories and moral controversies that is part of the university’s General Education curriculum. The opening unit is devoted to theory, and one of the essays we take up, towards the unit’s end, is Susan Wolf’s “Moral Saints,” originally published in 1982. Up […]
Oliver Mayo, Evolution by Natural Selection and Ethics: What in evolution has ethical implications?
by David L. Duffy Mayo’s book is a meditation on/updating of Ferdinand Brunetière’s (1894) The morality of evolutionary theory. [1][2] Like Christian de Duve’s Genetics of original sin and the future of life, Brunetière reckons Original Sin is explained by natural selection. [3] Mayo, however, prefers the Humean line on is-ought. This is an “outsider” book on ethics, in the […]
The Decline and Rebirth of Philosophy
by Daniel A. Kaufman My article on Philosophy’s past and future in the current issue of Philosophy Now. https://philosophynow.org/issues/130/The_Decline_and_Rebirth_of_Philosophy
Myths of Empire
by Mark English Even bad movies have their moments. The 1953 John Huston film, Beat the Devil, sustains itself well for about 35 minutes before descending into boring and predictable comedy-adventure territory. Roger Ebert thought the film had “effortless charm”. “Once we catch on that nothing much is going to happen,” he wrote, “we can relax and share the amusement […]
Thoughts on Israel and the Current “Situation”
by Daniel A. Kaufman ___ An extended (and somewhat frustrating) conversation in the discussion thread on Robert Wright’s latest video on BloggingHeads.TV finds me needing to address something I’ve been wanting to talk about for some time. [1] The subject is Israel and its “situation” and what our attitude towards both should be. Rather than put together a formal essay, […]
Some Half-Baked Thoughts on Exchangeability and Identity
by David L Duffy ___ Exchangeability is a concept that is closely bound up with ideas of individuality and identity. In probability and statistics, it is a crucial formalized idea that underlies whole areas like Bayesianism and subjective probability. [1] In the mathematical context, exchangeable events or variables can be permuted without altering the properties of the system in which […]
The Metaphysics of Liberalism
by Mark English I have long felt that there was something problematic about the modern concept of religion, but have only recently started to articulate these concerns and to draw out their potential implications for understanding the rise and decline of Western liberalism. My focus here is a particular tradition of 20th-century liberal thought. As a label for sets of […]
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