The law of identity states that each thing is identical to itself and can be represented as A=A. Snow, for example, has a set of characteristics that make snow what it is. The law says that snow, by having these characteristics… Read more ›
I just came across an interesting and, as far as I know, original argument why matter is infinite from Edgar Allan Poe. The argument takes place in the course of a very philosophical and haunting dialogue he wrote called “The… Read more ›
Fake news can be defined as “a form of news consisting of deliberate disinformation or hoaxes spread via traditional news media (print and broadcast) or online social media” (Wikipedia). Many people are understandably expressing their concern, even panic, over not knowing how to… Read more ›
Most of my life I have been playing and appreciating music. Over the decades I have to admit there are times when I think music is alive. I feel the presence of a subject rather than an object. Some works… Read more ›
I take the concept of evil very seriously and have written many posts on it over the years. But some think we should abandon the concept of evil altogether. In this post I want to briefly take a look at… Read more ›
In January of 1972 BBC Two broadcasted a four episode television series called Ways of Seeing written and presented by John Berger (1926-2017). The series was subsequently adapted into the book Ways of Seeing which was published in 1973. Both… Read more ›
Classic utilitarianism, whose classic proponents were Jeremy Bentham (1789), John Stuart Mill (1861), and Henry Sidgwick (1907), is a moral theory which doesn’t consider motives and acts as having any intrinsic moral value. Rather, motives and acts can only be… Read more ›
It is easy to lose our sense of wonder for things around us. Of course, we may wonder when confronted with things out of the ordinary. But shouldn’t it be more common to wonder about, well, everything? Perhaps not. After… Read more ›
Edgar Allan Poe, 1809-1849 It is March 21, 2020 and the coronavirus is a pandemic threatening everyone on Earth. In my relative isolation of social distancing, I have had more time to read and I was drawn to a tale… Read more ›
I was recently asked to give a talk on what makes relationships beneficial. Since Valentine’s Day was approaching, I decided to offer a set of insights based on three philosophical theories of love which I cover in my philosophy of love… Read more ›
In earlier posts I briefly presented both St. Augustine’s (see here) and Leibniz’s (see here) arguments for God from eternal truth. Since I find this underrepresented approach to demonstrating God’s existence both fascinating and promising, I decided to present my… Read more ›
In the previous two posts (go here) I considered various formulations of the privation theory of evil and considered various objections to it. Now let’s consider some reasons to embrace the theory. (1) The privation theory can offer a comprehensive… Read more ›
In part one of this three part series I gave a brief overview of some influential formulations of the privation theory of evil before suggesting that we accept Peter King’s concise and convincing one in Evil: A History (Oxford, 2019):… Read more ›
Introduction In the previous post I presented some contemporary scientific views on evil and argued both for their importance and their limitations. We saw that such views can be construed as natural evil insofar as they see evil as a… Read more ›
Evil, after many years of neglect in ethics, has returned as a topic of interest since at least 9/11. One of the things that characterizes this return is the use of science. Traditionally, evil has been understood as a phenomenon… Read more ›