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Supertramp, Egg Salad and Darwin

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by Daniel A. Kaufman A terrific takedown of the current, narcissistic “self-improvement” madness. https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/08/why-are-modern-men-obsessed-with-self-improvement/ High quality video of Supertramp playing live in 1979. My dialogue with Justin Weinberg of the Daily Nous on the current state of Philosophy. http://meaningoflife.tv/videos/40774 A deliciously vicious dustup between Patricia Churchland and Colin McGinn.  Plus more from Marcia Cavell and McGinn. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/06/19/brains-and-minds-exchange/ https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/07/10/blind-to-mind/ The best […]

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Essay

Wittgenstein, Russell, and Lawrence

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by Mark English I recently wrote a piece in which I looked at the views of some 20th-century thinkers on language, metaphysics, science and philosophy. My main focus was on the logical empiricists and Ludwig Wittgenstein. In his youth, Wittgenstein worked with Bertrand Russell and then subsequently with the Vienna Circle before taking a rather different direction from the late […]

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Announcement

Shifting Focus

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Daniel Tippens How will you look for it … when you do not know at all what it is? How will you aim to search for something you do not know at all? If you should meet with it, how will you know that this is the thing that you did not know?  Plato, Meno ___ As readers know, I […]

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Essay

The Enlightenment Wars

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by David Ottlinger There was a time, I remember it distinctly, when I felt that having opinions on the Enlightenment put me very much in the minority. As an undergrad, in the late aughts, I read a great deal of Locke, Rousseau, Tocqueville and especially Kant. I and my fellow students in the philosophy department found these figures exciting and […]

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Essay

Notes on Metaphysics, Language and Religion

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by Mark English Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein were diametrically opposed in their respective attitudes to science and religion. They had many other profound disagreements, but they were united in one respect at least. They both rejected the metaphysics of Idealism. Metaphysically speaking, Russell was mainly concerned to counter idealist notions and to defend a science-friendly and empirical view of […]

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Essay

How Racism Abroad Exposes Domestic Racism

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By Nathan Eckstrand George Yancy’s April 29th article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, “The Ugly Truth About Being a Black Professor in America,” (1) quoted numerous threats Yancy received in response to his earlier New York Times op-ed, “Dear White America” (2). The Chronicle’s May 3rd follow-up confirmed that many see racism in higher education, by quoting examples sent […]

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Essay

The Circle of Quality and Expertise

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By Daniel A. Kaufman ___ My daughter Victoria just finished two weeks of a classical voice program at NYU.  It was her first taste of the really big leagues.  Until now, she has excelled in our small city in southwest Missouri as well as statewide.  She is the top singer in her high school and has received the highest score […]

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Course Notes

Course Notes – Susan Sontag, “In Plato’s Cave,” from On Photography (1977)

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by Daniel A. Kaufman http://classes.dma.ucla.edu/Winter17/173/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/document-2.pdf Half of my upper-division course in Aesthetics is devoted to criticism, but given the impossibility of doing any justice to the history of the subject in such a short time, I focus on two major critics from the last century: Clement Greenberg and Susan Sontag.  In the case of Greenberg, we read “Avant Garde and […]

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