Electric Agora (archive)

Tag: values

  • Philosophical Questions and their Answers

    By Daniel A. Kaufman ___ It seems that many – most? – philosophers think that what philosophy is about is arriving at true positions on subjects ranging from morality, to knowledge, to reality, and the like. They think there is a determinate answer as to whether moral realism or anti-realism is true or whether the…

  • Traveling Light

    by Mark English ___ I am in the process of reorienting my life. Over the years I have been caught up, as everybody is, in various projects, commitments, entanglements and responsibilities (or perceived responsibilities). Some of these commitments limited my opportunities for extensive travel, or at least the sort of travel I desired. In recent…

  • COVID-19 and the Question of Competing Values

    by Daniel A. Kaufman ___ **Note: This essay goes up in the midst of another wave of Covid-19 in the US. In some places, it is a first wave and in others, a second.  Regardless it rightly disturbs us, and I think many will be tempted to dismiss what I say below, as if it…

  • Random Reflections on Intellectual History, Abstraction and Social and Political Values

    by Mark English Complexities Terms like “pragmatism” as it applies to philosophy and the history of ideas – most isms really – are intrinsically vague and useful only to the (necessarily limited) extent that they help to bring out persistent or more fleeting strands or commonalities in thinking within or across populations. Even the views…

  • Some Things We All Should Agree On

    By Daniel A. Kaufman ___ Sometimes it is useful to try and identify a number of things that everyone should be able to agree on.  To the extent to which our moral and political positions may depend upon complex tangles of presuppositions and reasoning, we may not notice that a position we take involves presuppositions…