Philosophy

A collection of 266 posts

Constitution

Verbose Stoic and the Right to Bear Arms

Verbose Stoic (VS), who comments here and with whom I almost always have disagreements (or who has disagreements with me), and always in a thankfully civil fashion, has taken me to task in a recent post of his own at his blog here. This time, it concerned the recent argument

homosexuality

Washington Post Piece On A Limitation of Classical Liberal Discourse

This is an unfinished piece by Jeremiah Traeger, who used to write here, that I just found in the "Drafts" section. This is obviously somewhat out-of-date and not wholly topical, but it may be of some use. Who knows where he was going with it, but here it

abstracts

Your Foundations Are Wrong; Your Conclusion Is Wrong. Just Stop It.

I wish people would read what I write and then interact with it, rather than just posting the same erroneous conclusions on my threads. It's really frustrating, because I have debunked their position until they can show me I haven't. Here is Person223's latest

Arts

Why I Am Atheist and Not a Theist

I wish people would read what I write and then interact with it, rather than just posting the same erroneous conclusions on my threads. It's really frustrating, because I have debunked their position until they can show me I haven't. Here is Person223's latest

humanism

Humanist Morality (I)

I am insanely busy just now - as ever - so here is an extract from Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now. It has been a very enjoyable book, despite disagreeing with a couple of sections, such as his IDW-style attacks on the left for cancel culture-type things. I'

abstracts

Ontology, Essentialism, Faulty Foundations and, Well, Racism.

Make a cup of tea: it's a big one. But a necessary one. I have let a thread flow on Emma Raducanu and subtle racism exhibited, unsurprisingly, by the British media. Enter stage right a bunch of race realists racists. But here's the thing. You may

evangelicals

Biblical Hermeneutic Circularity

Hermeneutics - interpretative methods and theory, particularly regarding the Bible - is fraught with issue. It depends where you start off. For Christians, they often start off with the idea of making the Bible say what they want it to say. This underwrites their confirmation bias. Let's look

cognitive biases

On Refusing Epistemic Interaction: Dealing with People Who Won't Accept Facts

I recently produced a piece or two on the ontology of abstracts and the epistemic barrier. But let's now get psychological. Go read them for the foundation. One thing that came up in conversation between two commenters is the idea of interacting with people who do not want

abstracts

Breaching the Epistemic Barrier

I recently wrote an important piece explaining the foundations to my entire worldview. Go read it. I'll remind you of the impressive infographics I got my design department to put together: fallibilism? This is a great comment. So let me expand. It's ALL about epistemology. When

abstracts

The Foundation to My Whole Worldview

In a sense, this is about the most important piece I can write because out of it comes my whole philosophy. What you are about to read pertains to any abstract object: morality, meaning (of life or words), maths, purpose, and so on. I am just about to release a

conceptual nominalism

Responding to Breuer on Conceptual Nominalism

Luke Breuer kindly responded to my request and provided a critique of my position of conceptual nominalism recently. I hope to look at his claims and analyse them in my reply here today. I have a forthcoming book that sets out my position with a lot more depth and clarity

reason

Taking Feser to Task on Human Intellect

Here is a guest post from author Gunther Laird, who takes aim at Edward Feser and his Thomistic philosophy. Please grab Laird's excellent book that takes Feser head on. In the meantime: The fact that so many intellectuals don’t share their peculiar ideas has been a thorn

conceptual nominalism

Luke Breuer Takes on Conceptual Nominalism

I have a long history in my writing and philosophy here and elsewhere of adhering to a position called "conceptual nominalism". If you want more details, check out: * Philosophy 101 (philpapers induced) #2 - Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism * The Pertinence of Nominalism to Religious and Philosophical Debates

Crime & Punishment

Chauvin, Causality and JL Mackie's INUS

You could be mistaken for thinking that this post was about free will. It can be, but I am more concerned with the general idea of causality in the context of Derek Chauvin's court case to decide whether the death of George Floyd was homicide or not. [caption

Deep Dive

Stepping in the same river twice?

Here's another guest piece from contributor Dana Horton. Don't forget that you can submit potential guest posts to me - click on the contact link above. I am always running a series of deconversion stories and am particularly interested in your accounts of leaving religion. Thanks

evolution

Survival of the Fittest: Tautologous and Unfalsifiable?

Yesterday, I ran a piece on the idea that you often hear from creationists that "survival of the fittest" (SoF) is a tautology that carries no meaning. I hopefully dealt with this in some way in that previous post. However, I would like to take the opportunity to

Consciousness

Idealism Is More Parsimonious?

Holy crap. So we are now positing that the entire universe “suffers” from a multiple personality disorder because we need to solve a non-problem that we created ourselves out of stubbornly postulating that there is something special and quasi-magical about consciousness. — Massimo Pigliucci Recently, I have been looking into idealism

Epistemology

Materialism As a Position of Faith

I am, brought on by a section on phenomenology in a forthcoming book, looking back into the school of philosophy known as idealism. It's been a long time since I have written and researched on this particular subject and I am enjoying it immensely. What are phenomenology and

Consciousness

Other Minds and Problems with Idealism

Time to get back to some philosophy. Today we will be briefly looking at the position of idealism as developed by many German philosophers, but including the famous Bishop Berkeley and then taken on by Moravian philosopher Edmund Husserl and other Continental philosophers. Defining our terms Here are some pretty

causality

Analysing Breuer's Account of Free Will

Thanks to Luke Breuer for producing his piece on free will the other day and how he thinks you can shoehorn in some level of freedom in a very deterministically constrained reality. First and foremost, please read my piece "Free Will: “We are influenced, but not determined” – the 80-20%

Aquinas

Debunking Natural Law Theory - The Unnecessary Science: A Useful Summary

This is the summary of a book by Gunther Laird (criticising natural law theory) that I recently edited. The summary has been written up by the author for your delectation. While The Unnecessary Science: A Critical Analysis of Natural Law Theory [UK] is written with an eye to philosophy, by

Aquinas

Actuality, Abortion and the SCOTUS

Here is a guest piece from author Gunther Laird, who recently wrote The Unnecessary Science: A Critical Analysis of Natural Law Theory (UK), which I edited and consulted on. Please grab a copy! This piece is particularly pertinent given what is going on in the Supreme Court right now.  Actuality

Consciousness

Let’s All Not Look at the Moon and See What Happens

Here's another guest post from Dana Horton - thanks! Let’s All Not Look at the Moon and See What Happens (5 minute read) Last week we speculated on whether the Universe came from an explosion, a creator, or an emanation. This week let’s take up whether

logic

Philosophy 101 (philpapers-induced) #12: Logic: classical or non-classical?

Having posted the Philpapers survey results, the biggest ever survey of philosophers conducted in 2009, several readers were not aware of it (the reason for re-communicating it) and were unsure as to what some of the questions meant. I offered to do a series on them, so here it is

kalam

Free Will & the Kalam: Causes & Reasons

I recently posted on the Kalam Cosmological Argument and how it isn't compatible with libertarian free will. Luke Breuer took issues with what I said, transcribing my video (now in italic)  in his comment: Jonathan, you seem to be conflating causes and reasons: But basically someone who is