Electric Agora (archive)

Tag: Bernard Williams

  • Truth Rediscovered: A Humanistic View of Rationality

    By Jay Jeffers ___ The Buddha said, “Three things cannot long be hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.” Or maybe he didn’t. Scholars would have to chime in on the popular interpretation through the lens of history, linguistics, and the like. Either way it’s a vivid quote. The real problem isn’t whether or…

  • three lectures on ethics and animals

    by Daniel A. Kaufman ____ Three lectures from my Ethics and Contemporary Issues course on the subject of animals and ethics.  I cover material from Peter Singer, Cora Diamond, and Bernard Williams. First Lecture: Peter Singer on Our Ethical Obligations to Animals https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYe6z7EUXaQ&list=PLYpFt8HxKBGvo2CSBGfHUx2_sm6zcZMvg&index=8&ab_channel=AravisTarkheena Peter Singer, a contemporary philosopher at Princeton University, is most famous for…

  • Crispin sartwell: humans are animals. get over it.

    by Daniel A. Kaufman ____ On the latest episode of Sophia, Crispin Sartwell and I talk about Crispin’s article for the New York Times, “Humans are Animals: Let’s Get Over It” (2/23/2021).  https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/23/opinion/humans-animals-philosophy.html Topics include: Humanism and its roots; Racism; Hume’s Naturalism; and Normativity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnvzCH1PqGM&t=26s&ab_channel=ElectricAgora 0:00​ Crispin and Dan catch up after a hiatus 7:50​…

  • Prolegomena for a Pluralist Metaphysics: One More Thing (Some Stuff about God and Intelligibility)

    by Daniel A. Kaufman ___ Of all things the measure is man, of the things that are, that they are, and of things that are not, that they are not.    –Protagoras 1. A common mistake that people (and philosophers, especially) make is to look for intelligibility in the wrong place. This is made worse by…

  • Prolegomena for a Pluralist Metaphysics: Philosophy, Science, and “Common Sense”

    by Daniel A. Kaufman ___ As these prolegomena begin to wind down, I want to step back and speak a bit more generally about the conception of philosophy – and of inquiry more generally — from which they spring. Sellars, of course, in the opening paragraphs of “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man,” gave…

  • Metaethical Thoughts

    by Daniel A. Kaufman ___ My recent dialogue with Spencer Case has gotten me thinking more about where I stand metaethically speaking. I think the discussion annoyed him, which upsets me, because I love having Spencer as a new interlocutor and friend, and I know I can be somewhat of a pit-bull in live debate…

  • Meaning, Hummus Masabacha, and Def Leppard

    By Daniel A. Kaufman ___ Bernard Williams is one of the top 5 greatest post WWII philosophers.  Here is a new website devoted to collecting everything available by and about him. https://sites.google.com/site/bernardwilliamsphilosopher/home Rare and very high quality live footage of Def Leppard, from 1983, when they were still a hard-rocking NWOBHM band. (Concert split into…

  • How To Write Like an Analytic Philosopher

    by Paul Austin Murphy ___ There certainly is a specific prose style when it comes to much analytic philosophy. Of course there’s a general academic prose style (or prose styles) too. The analytic philosophy prose style can therefore be taken to be a variation on that. Academics will of course say – and justifiably so…

  • Bernard Williams, Blackadder, and Latkes

    by Daniel A. Kaufman Terrific piece on the philosophy of Bernard Williams https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/bernard-williams-ethics-human-point-view/ Bad Religion, Live in 1989 (Complete show) Talk Talk, “Life’s What You Make it” Live in 1986 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzUkRwmvbNQ Hilary Putnam on Naïve Realism and Qualia Comprehensive Documentary on the Incomparable Black Adder Chanukah May be Over but Here’s a Great Latkes Recipe…

  • Course Notes – Bernard Williams, “The Human Prejudice”

    by Daniel A. Kaufman http://www.nyu.edu/classes/gmoran/WILLIAMS.pdf The last unit of my introductory level “Ethics and Contemporary Issues” course is devoted to the question of moral concern for non-human animals.  We begin with excerpts from Peter Singer’s Practical Ethics, then move on to Cora Diamond’s “Eating Meat and Eating People” (which I discussed in a This Week’s…