May 27, 2009
May 23, 2009
Kant, Libertarianism, and the Limits of Contract Right
By 'libertarianism' here (and in my tagline) I mean the family of broadly Lockean political theories, mostly articulated in the 20th century, which take private property to be the most fundamental concept for political theory. (Locke himself writes, "'Where there is no property, there is no injustice,' is a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid: For the idea of property being a right to any thing, and the idea to which the name injustice is given, being the invasion or violation of that right; it is evident, that these ideas, being thus established, and these names annexed to...
Continue reading "Kant, Libertarianism, and the Limits of Contract Right"
May 14, 2009
A Semantic Argument for Phenomenalism
I believe an argument similar to the following can be attributed to Berkeley, but I have too much real work to do to go find the texts to justify it right now. (Which is why we have blogs, where we don't have to adequately justify our assertions!) The meaning of a word is exhausted by the correct conditions of its application. Any speaker S on any given occasion determines whether to utter a given word based entirely on S's subjective state (i.e. factors internal to S). Speakers consistently and non-accidentally use 'plain language' correctly (i.e. 'common sense' is correct). Therefore,...
Continue reading "A Semantic Argument for Phenomenalism"
May 13, 2009
Quote of the Day: Stillingfleet on the Natural Immortality of the Soul
You [Locke] say, That all the ends of Religion and Morality are secured barely by the Immortality of the Soul without a necessary Supposition that the Soul is Immaterial. I am of the opinion that the great ends of Religion and Morality are best secured by the Proofs of the Immortality of the Soul from its Nature and Properties; and which I think can prove it Immaterial. I do not question whether God can give Immortality to a Material Substance; but I say it takes off very much from the evidence of Immortality, if it depend wholly on God's giving...
Continue reading "Quote of the Day: Stillingfleet on the Natural Immortality of the Soul"
May 7, 2009
Quote of the Day: Leibniz on Survival of Death
One of the quandaries I ran into in writing my paper on Berkeley on resurrection is the question of what the 'revealed' Christian doctrine is supposed to be. In particular, there is the question of natural versus miraculous immortality of the soul. Some writers who seek to defend the Christian doctrine of survival of death assume that it is part of the doctrine that this survival is miraculous. (For a recent example, see Lynne Rudder Bakker's "Persons and the Metaphysics of Resurrection" which appeared in Religious Studies in 2007; James Ross also brought this up in his criticisms of my...
Continue reading "Quote of the Day: Leibniz on Survival of Death"
May 6, 2009
Announcing: The Extended Cognition Blog
A fellow UCI graduate student,
Kris Rhodes, has
announced the launch of
The Extended Cognition Blog (ex-cog for short). Ex-cog will be devoted to the exploration of the extended mind hypothesis. Anyone interested in philosophy of mind should hop on over and check it out.
Continue reading "Announcing: The Extended Cognition Blog"
May 4, 2009