At the Conservative Philosopher, there’s a short post by Keith Burgess-Jackson (KBJ) called "Bush-Hatin’ Paul."  (I’d link to it, but they don’t seem to have enabled permalinks at CP.)  KBJ’s post is related in an interesting way to my recent post about the demi-fallacy I’ve dubbed "begging the question against oneself." Just so you don’t…

I decided my armchair wasn’t getting me very far in thinking about this Turkey question I’ve been posting about, so I e-mailed a Turkey expert and asked him to suggest references.  Here’s his list:  1.  Mustafa Aydin & Cagri Erhan ed ‘Turkish-American Relations’ (Routledge, 2004).  This is the only book dedicated to the subject in…

Some arguments are bad even though they’re sound and valid.  "George Bush is a loon; therefore, George Bush is a loon."  Assuming George Bush really is a loon, this argument is both sound and valid, but it’s still a bad argument; it begs the question.  Rule: Always form your argument from premises your opponent is…

Some philosophical views are supported by reasons which, when made explicit, can be strung into a valid argument, of finite length, from premises which are comprehensible to people with no prior philosophical training.  (In fact, I think these are the most interesting kinds of philosophical views.)  The intro course I’m imagining would be devoted to…

This post from Noam Chomsky is old, but perhaps worth revisiting.  Chomsky says: The US interest in having Turkey join the EU goes well beyond issues of its resources, etc. Turkey has been a close ally of the US since World War II, serving both as part of the encirclement of the official Cold War…

Good point.

What would something with "infinite value" be like?  Pekka’s comments to my recent post on theism got me thinking about this question.  I don’t have an informed answer, but I do have an uninformed one.  I’m putting this one below the fold.

A while back, the thesis called "Dreier’s Conjecture" was discussed at length in a series of posts by Doug Portmore from PEA Soup.  (If you haven’t already, I suggest you read Doug’s posts, which are located here, here and here, before and/or instead of reading this one.) In the first post, Doug offers the following…

If the dramatic stories about the election in Ukraine have been interesting to you, you might like to look at the photos and commentary posted to this blog.

Here’s another Nina Hagen song.  Please leave a comment if the link doesn’t work for you.