In this post I’ll offer a few reasons to be pessimistic about the possibilities for experimental philosophy.  I should admit at the outset that I am not very well familiar with experimental philosophy.  Corrections of any wildly false claims made below would be much appreciated. Consider the following scenario.  Suppose claims 1, 2 and 3…

Which, if any, of the following claims are true? (1) Conservatives are able and willing to reasonably disagree with their opponents.  Liberals cannot stand to have others disagree with them; liberals will do anything to compel assent. (2) Conservatives don’t really want to find consensus on issues; they just like to argue, and they engage…

The new Philosophers’ Carnival is up at Studi Galileiani.  Looks like a lot of good stuff.  I’m amused by the summary of my post on Dreier’s Conjecture: Staying with moral theory, Andrew Sullivan at E.G. considers Dreier’s Conjecture; namely, that non-consequentialist approaches can be reduced to consequentialism. Sullivan disagrees that the distinction between the two…

From Ebert’s Glossary of Movie Terms: We’re Alive! Let’s Kiss! Inevitable conclusion to any scene in which hero and heroine take cover from gunfire by diving side-by-side into a ditch, and find themselves in each other’s arms, usually for the first time. Cf. HIGH ROAD TO CHINA. There is usually something bad about concluding a…

This site looks interesting, although I haven’t had time to really explore it yet.

Connard points out that Islamist terrorists have finally captured G.I. Joe.  This is a sad day for the war on terror/war on Cobra. Here are some pictures of Cobra Commander.  Here is a picture of someone else. 

My last post on this topic left some threads hanging.  In this post I’ll try to pick up some of those threads.  Ideally you will have read the previous post before reading this one, but if you’re already familiar with this topic you might not really need to do that. Recall that, according to Dreier’s…

Andrew Sullivan claims he’s going to put the "Dish as you’ve known it" on hiatus for a while in order to work on longer projects.  Sullivan is one of my favorite bloggers and I’ll miss his regular on-line presence, if he does indeed stick to his plan.  Sullivan’s is the first blog I ever read. …

I greatly admired the hand-held camera-work in this movie, which in English translation is called "The Son."  I was brought so far into this movie’s world by some of the opening scenes that when I became bored with some later scenes, it did not even occur to me that I had the power to turn…

Here’s an interesting post from Dworkin over at Left2Right.  In the course of the post, Dworkin considers the claim that "argument is only useful if there are common premises that both parties share."  (Obviously, the two "parties" here are the person giving the argument, and the person hearing the argument.)  Let’s call this the "principle…