In the comments to the discussion about theism at Richard’s blog (see here), Macht is trying to defend the plausiblity of God’s existence.  Thinking about Macht’s comments led me to this argument: 1. God always acts in accordance with the correct moral code. (Assumption; a consequence of typical versions of theism.) 2. The world contains…

There’s been a fair amount of discussion recently about the conjecture that Kerry’s defeat might have been due to his lack of a compelling "story to tell" about his life and campaign.  (Timothy Burke’s post on this issue is an especially engaging one.)    The election was, of course, quite close, so slight changes to…

If you’ll be in Bangkok any time soon, please look for these stools.  (Via Cockeyed.)

I’m a bit conflicted about modifying posts.  On the one hand, I sometimes find it annoying when I come back to a post I’ve already read and the author has changed it without telling us, because I’m never sure if I’m misremembering the original.  On the other hand, when I notice slight errors in my…

An "after-school special" is/was a type of show which was shown on TV when I was a kid.  Generally, ASSes (sorry about the acronym) were designed to convince kids to do certain things.  Usually, these were things which, among adults, kids were uncontroversially supposed to do: Not lie; not steal; not cheat at school; help…

Over at PEA Soup, Michael Cholbi has a post on particularism’s apparent failure to meet the second of my two "demands."  I expect his post will generate some interesting discussion, so you should periodically check out the comment thread there.

"Freedom," like so many other philosophically-significant ideas, is an idea which most of us use to explain and describe events in our daily lives.  But freedom differs from some other such ideas in an important way: Freedom is employed in descriptions and explanations specifically concerning human beings (and, occasionally, some non-human animals).  We routinely bring…

Certain moral and political issues capture the attention and the imagination of the masses.  A partial list of those issues: Abortion, public health care, public schooling, government welfare, environmental policies and restrictions, sex and violence in the media, gay marriage, euthanasia, stem cell research — just to name a few. It’s not immediately obvious why…

When I was in high school, I was a BBSer.  Here’s a description of the origin of BBSing: With the advent of the home computer in the 1970’s there arose a hobby known as BBSing. This was the beginning of a great electronic community which met and exchanged ideas over what today is called cyberspace.…

Visit 1 or 2.