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Philosophers' Carnival 149

Welcome to Philosophers' Carnival 149! The Philosophers' Carnival is a monthly showcase of the best philosophical blog posts.

First up is Derk Pereboom's "The Free Will Debate and the Limits of Philosophical Method" at Flickers of Freedom.

Glenn Carruthers explains delusions of alien control and their relevance to the theory of agency at Philosophy of Brains.

Speaking of mind and action, I should note an important event in 'virtual philosophy' in the past month: the Fifth Online Consciousness Conference.

Also in philosophy of mind, we have Richard Brown's discussion of phenomenal concepts at Philosophy Sucks!

Our final philosophy of mind entry is Eric Schwitzgebel's discussion of self-knowledge at The Splintered Mind. (In case this post leaves you confused about geography: it appears from Wikipedia, that not only is Armadillo not the capital of Texas, but 'Armadillo' is not the name of a city in Texas. At least that's what I gather from the fact that searching for Armadillo, Texas lands you on the page for Amarillo.)

Turning now to other topics, we have Wes Alwan's review of Thomas Nagel's Mind and Cosmos at The Partially Examined Life.

John Danaher discusses a different Nagel (Saskia) who argues that the possibility of technological self-enhancement will lead to too much choice, and thereby have a negative effect on our well-being, at Philosophical Disquisitions.

Noah Greenstein suggests a novel way of classifying ethical theories.

Wolfgang Schwartz proposes an expressivist analysis of probability statements in physics.

Also on the topic of probability in science, Alexander Pruss discusses infinite multiverses and probabilistic reasoning at The Prosblogion.

Also on The Prosblogion, Ryan Nichols discusses sociological and psychological factors which predict especially widespread bias in philosophy of religion.

Ex-apologist discusses a recent article by Daniel Howard-Snyder criticizing Plantinga's Free Will Defense against the Logical Problem of Evil.

My own contribution, "Berkeley, Analogy, Matter, and God," highlights some connections between Berkeley's polemic against matter and an early 18th century debate about religious language.

Relatedly, there has recently been some blog discussion about John Toland, an undeservedly obscure Irish thinker whose incendiary book Christianity Not Mysterious (1696) helped launch the Locke-Stillingfleet correspondence, and also had a significant influence on Berkeley's intellectual development (or so I claim). Our entries on Toland are Eric Schliesser's discussion of Toland's account of the 'genealogy' of the idea of the immortality of the soul at NewAPPS, and Stewart Duncan's post on Toland's view of the epistemological role of testimony at The Mod Squad.

That's it for this month. Next month's Carnival will be hosted at The Splintered Mind. You can submit your favorite posts here.