A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Philosophy

  • A very brief argument for animal liberation

    From philosopher Steve Sapontzis: Very briefly, the argument for [animal liberation] runs as follows. Morality is goal-directed activity which aims at making the world a better place in terms of reduced suffering and frustration, increased happiness and fulfilment, a wider reign of fairness and respect for others, and enhanced presence and effectiveness of such virtues Read more

  • Physicalism, reductionism, and the soul

    This off-the-cuff post on atheism generated some interesting discussion with Gaius about physicalism, reductionism, and humanism, among other things. I don’t know that I can express my views on the matter better than I tried to do in this post from a few years ago discussing Keith Ward’s Pascal’s Fire. In short, we often abstract Read more

  • Varieties of atheism

    Brandon points out the problem with lumping all contemporary atheist thinkers together as “new atheists.” He highlights the work of philosopher Owen Flanagan, whose work I’m not particularly familiar with, as an atheist who doesn’t necessarily fit the new atheist paradigm. It sounds to me–at least from Brandon’s description–that Flanagan is what I would call Read more

  • Vegan versus vegetarian utopia revisited

    Jean Kazez and Scu of Critical Animal both have critical posts on this essay on veganism by philosopher Tzachi Zamir. The argument appears in a slightly different form in his book Ethics and the Beast, and I discussed it a bit here. While I, as a “moral vegetarian” (to use his terms) find Zamir’s argument Read more

  • Property and justice

    My earlier post wasn’t intended to be a comprehensive critique of libertarianism, but one interesting issue that came up in the comment thread was the justice of initial property acquisition. Libertarianism, at least in its natural-rights form, says that holdings in property are just if they are the result of just initial acquisition and voluntary Read more

  • “Reason” vs. reasons

    I want to zero in further on one small part of the John Polkinghorne interview excerpted below: I think that the fundamental question about something, whether science or religion, is not, “Is it reasonable?” as if we know beforehand what is reasonable, or what shape rationality has. The better question is, “What makes you think Read more

  • Another thought on religion and values

    In thinking about the relation between ethics and theology, it helps to distinguish the metaphysical aspects of this problem from the epistemological ones. Or, as St. Thomas would say, the order of being from the order of knowing. Value, or ethics, may depend metaphysically on the existence of God, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that Read more

  • Gary Steiner on the moral status of animals and the “intellectualist” bias

    Marilyn tipped me off to this very interesting-looking book by philosopher Gary Steiner: Animals and the Moral Community: Mental Life, Moral Status, and Kinship. Looks like the book came out in 2008, but I wasn’t previously aware of it. Steiner provides a summary of the book’s argument here . Interestingly, Steiner takes a tack that Read more

  • Carnival of the animals

    Jean Kazez is hosting a philosophy “blog-carnival” (i.e., a collection of posts) focusing on philosophy and animals. Lots of interesting-looking entries (most of which, alas, I haven’t had time to dig into). Read more

  • Creaturely goods and theistic ethics

    In comments to this post, Gaius asked some incisive questions about how a theist who accepts the general evolutionary picture of the world can avoid falling back on some form of divine command theory (also known as theological voluntarism). The problem arises because, post-Darwin, it’s difficult to attribute inherent purposive-ness to natural processes. But the Read more