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Long ago, someone gave me a lifetime subscription to Typepad. I used it for a while, and then I stopped for a while, and then I started again. I like the ritual of producing a blog post every Sunday. But now Typepad is dying. I suppose I ought to treat this as an opportunity to…

I'm listening to Ethel Cain's Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You. I am thinking about Ethel Cain's interest, in much of her work, in the uses of Christianity by ordinary people who think of themselves as sinners. And this makes me think about Sinead O'Connor, who is among the artists I appreciate. So, here's my…

Basl and Coons memorably worry about inferential movements from ought to is. Such movements constitute attempts at what they call moral science. There seems to be something fishy about such inferences in general, and they want to explain why. *** Here's an argument that Basl and Coons don't discuss: A theistic moral science argument(1) If…

According to a view I find appealing, when somebody does something wrong, there are three particulars involved. There's the particular agent who's done the wrong thing; there's the particular action that they've performed; and then there's the particular wrongness of the action. That particular wrongness is a trope, according to the view I'm gesturing toward.…

In Mere Christianity, CS Lewis writes: Reality, in fact, is usually something you could not have guessed. That is one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It is a religion you could not have guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universe we had always expected, I should feel we were making it…

Bret Stephens says: [T]here is a glaring dissonance to the charge that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. To wit: If the Israeli government’s intentions and actions are truly genocidal—if it is so malevolent that it is committed to the annihilation of Gazans—why hasn’t it been more methodical and vastly more deadly? Why not, say,…

Let's say an Occasionalist picture is any picture where (a) there is some agent S, and (b) there is some object O, and (c) S and O cannot directly interact (S cannot influence O, and O cannot influence S), and (d) O is explained by X (e.g., O is grounded in X, or caused by…

My opinion is that we should be faithful vegans: We should consistently and constantly follow veganism's rules. On an alternative view, we should be economic half-vegans. An economic half-vegan is someone who follows this rule: The economic rule: Avoid decisions that send the sorts of economic signals that cause producers to do bad things to…

My Dad was pretty choosy when it came to ideas. If you wanted to persuade him of anything that he didn't already believe, you'd usually have your work cut out for you. But when he did find an idea he liked, he'd tightly embrace it. And his loyalty to the ideas he chose to embrace…