by Preston Stovall ___ U.S. citizens are facing a crisis in political polarization and mental health today. Over the last decade, rates of self-harm and depression have skyrocketed among young Americans. This impact is not evenly distributed across the population, however, as it is centered on heavy users of social media (“heavy use” varies from... Continue Reading →
By Kevin Currie-Knight ___ What follows is the first part of three essays on the trends of increasing political and cultural polarization as well as our diminishing willingness to tolerate opposing ideas. In a sense, these are an outgrowth of previous thoughts I’ve had about toleration and its conditions. What is toleration? What does it... Continue Reading →
By Kevin Currie-Knight ___ [The following is a transcript of the video linked at the end.] My sense is that the world today is too full of confidence in belief. It seems like today, it is imperative not only to have a belief about everything – the right politics, the right stance toward religion, what... Continue Reading →
by Daniel A. Kaufman ____ Abortion is now illegal in the State of Missouri, where I live. If my twenty-year-old daughter was to become pregnant, she would be required to carry the baby to term and give birth to it, under threat of a felony conviction. In a number of the states in which the... Continue Reading →
by Kevin Currie-Knight ___ There is a joy to not sharing one’s thoughts with others. This is an unexpected benefit I stumbled onto when I recently all but gave up social media. A story might illustrate. I made the decision in very late 2021 to radically restrict my social media use. [1] Around two weeks... Continue Reading →
by Robert Gressis, Daniel Kaufman, and Kevin Currie-Knight ___ Robert, Kevin and I inaugurate a new feature at EA: a New Years Contributors' Roundtable. Publication was delayed due to my father's passing, so please excuse the discussion's lateness. Most if not all of what we discussed remains relevant, though of course, this was recorded well... Continue Reading →
by Mark English ____ Gottlob Frege was a mathematician with strong philosophical interests and preoccupations. In an attempt to discover and make explicit the logical foundations of mathematics he developed -- almost singlehandedly -- the basic ideas of the predicate calculus. But he also had deep and compelling views on language and an appreciation of... Continue Reading →
by Daniel A. Kaufman ___ 2021 was dominated by Covid. But, competing for our attention has been the deepening and hardening of our political divisions, with Trumpers on one fringe, Social Justice lunatics on the other, and the bewildered, seemingly impotent majority of the country in between, wondering what the hell is going on and... Continue Reading →
by Miroslav Imbrišević ___ At the age of sixteen, I found the idea of being a philosopher very attractive. Much later in life, I asked myself why that was and decided that my chaotic family was to blame. Philosophy allowed me to shut out the world, but at the same time I could figure out... Continue Reading →
by Daniel A. Kaufman ___ What strikes me more than anything about our current moment is how utterly alien the dominant zeitgeist is from that of just a few decades ago. Increasingly, I find myself unable even to comprehend people’s reactions to social, political, and cultural developments, let alone identify with them. This rather abrupt... Continue Reading →
