by Daniel A. Kaufman ____ Recent exchanges with Robert Gressis and Spencer Case have led me to think a lot about obligation and objectivity. My focus thus far has been on the question of force, and my main goal has been to show that accounting for it is not made easier – or facilitated in any way, really – by […]
by Daniel A. Kaufman My dialogue with Robert Gresis on the “morality everywhere” problem, and my discussion with Nathan Eckstrand on his essay suggesting humanities professors should go on strike.
by Mark English ___ My intention here is to recapitulate a couple of points arising from recent discussions with a view to clarifying my own position on the nature of the past, before briefly addressing some broader questions relating to realism and culture. Is it acceptable to distinguish between, on the one hand, an account of the past (whatever kind […]
My dialogue with Crispin Sartwell of Dickinson College on Kant, Quine, and Davidson. Originally aired on MeaningofLife.TV, May 6, 2019.
by Daniel A. Kaufman __ My title is derived from a comment made by our own Mark English, in a recent discussion on his excellent essay on history. The thought his comment expresses is mistaken, but in the best sort of way, for explaining where it goes wrong helps us to understand something essential – and difficult – about history. […]
by Daniel A. Kaufman ___ Last Sunday, after the most harrowing several days of our lives, I told my sixteen (nearly seventeen) year old daughter, Victoria, the following: “You can do everything right. And things can still go horribly wrong.” It is an important point and one I had been repeating again and again to myself, as I needed to […]
by Bharath Vallabha Nowadays when racism is reflexively brought up as an explanation for social phenomena, I cringe. The person who raises it usually does so excitedly, as if they have penetrated to the heart of the issue. But most of the time I find they are confusing passion for clarity and skipping over all the interesting questions. Fixating on […]
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 […]
by Daniel A. Kaufman My friend and colleague Elizabeth Foreman has introduced a new version of an agent-centered moral philosophy, according to which the relevant locus of moral assessment is our attitudes, which can be either morally “appropriate” or “inappropriate,” depending on certain “normative facts” about their objects. Her main interest in developing this account is to deploy it in […]
by Daniel A. Kaufman http://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/readings/ross.pdf School is back in session, so it’s time, once again, for Course Notes. This semester I am teaching two sections of Ethics and Contemporary Issues, a course that is part of the General Education curriculum, and Aesthetics, an upper-division offering that runs every Fall. I have made a significant change to the first section of […]
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