Robert B. Talisse is Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of Democracy and Moral Conflict (Cambridge 2009). He is co-author, with Scott F. Aikin, of Reasonable Atheism (Prometheus 2011). Email: robert.talisse [at] vanderbilt.edu. Scott F. Aikin is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of Epistemology and the Regress Problem (Routledge 2010). He is also co-author, with Robert B. Talisse, of Reasonable Atheism (Prometheus 2011). Email: scott.f.aikin [at] vanderbilt.edu
by Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse Most are already familiar with many of the thoughts driving the Ancient Paradoxical ethical tradition. Surely we’ve all either thought and endorsed or at least heard someone express thoughts along the following lines: It’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game. It’s…
by Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse An existentialist, a modal realist, and an eliminative materialist walk into a bar; the bartender looks up at them and says, “Is this a joke?” It should come as no surprise that a discipline that was founded by an ancient Athenian urging us all to “know thyself!”…
by Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse Robert Nozick closes The Examined Life with a story of how he, when eighteen or so, “carried around in the streets of Brooklyn a paperback copy of Plato’s Republic, front cover facing outward.” He’d hoped someone might notice and “be impressed, (and) pat me on the shoulder…
by Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse Citizens in the United States generally cannot explain the fundamental workings of the Constitution, and cannot explicate the American jurisprudential tradition regarding the freedom of expression. Few citizens can recite the freedoms guaranteed in the First Amendment. Indeed, research routinely reveals stunningly high levels of ignorance regarding…
by Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse In the wake of the first Presidential Debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney, two assessments have come to be widely accepted. The first is that Mitt Romney handily won the debate. The second is that Mitt Romney’s key claims in the debate were demonstrably inaccurate. Neither…
Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse According to a prevailing conception among political theorists, part of what accounts for the legitimacy of democratic government and the bindingness of its laws is democracy’s commitment to public deliberation. Democracy is not merely a process of collective decision in which each adult citizen gets precisely one vote…
Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse Democratic politics is all about argument. Hence, with the US election season upon us, expect commentators from across the spectrum to begin offering familiar lamentations regarding the sorry state of our popular political discourse. Often these critiques express a yearning for a mostly fictitious past in which opposing…
by Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse The theistic argument from beauty is an instance of a broader class of arguments for God’s existence known as teleological arguments. The basic form of this kind of argument is as follows: 1. The universe (or parts of it) exhibit property X. 2. Property X is usually…
by Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse The Problem of Hell is familiar enough to many traditional theists. Roughly, it is this: How could a loving and just god create a place of endless misery? The Problem of Hell is a special version of the Problem of Evil, which is the general challenge that…
by Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse In last month’s post, we argued that value pluralism is the view that there are objective and heterogeneous goods, goods that are distinct and irreducible. To hold that there are distinct and irreducible goods is to hold that there is no summum bonum, no ultimate good that…
by Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse The commentary stimulated by our November post helps to confirm our view that pluralism is a paradigmatic halo term. Many of the respondents clearly want to claim the term for their favored purposes; but the details concerning the term’s meaning are as yet uncertain. Of course, most…
by Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse As we have noted previously on this blog, Christmas is a drag. The holiday’s norms and founding mythologies are repugnant, especially when compared to its more humane cousin, Thanksgiving. The story of the nativity doesn’t make much sense; moreover, it seems odd to celebrate an occasion that…
by Scott Aikin and Robert B. Talisse Some terms come with a built-in halo. We use words like inclusive, liberation, empowerment, and diversity to characterize that which we aim to praise. For example, when a murderer gets off on a technicality, we say that he has been released rather than liberated. A club that welcomes…
Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse The Presocratic philosopher-poet Xenophanes famously noted that if horses could draw, they would draw their gods as horses. The same, he holds, goes for lions and oxen. What is the intended critical edge of such observations? Suppose it’s true that horses would draw their gods as horses. So…
by Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse Some philosophers are nearly unanimously considered great. Plato, Aristotle, and Kant make the short list. But that happy unanimity does not persist when the question is which is right. Of these three, at most one is. Likely none is. And so it is appropriate to ask: How…
by Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse Early in the 20th Century, the British philosopher G. E. Moore noticed that sentences of a certain form have a quite peculiar feature. Consider: I believe it is Tuesday, but today is Monday. Today is Monday, but I do not believe that. I believe that today is…
by Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse Being a responsible believer requires one to have reasons for one’s beliefs. In fact, it seems that having reasons for one’s beliefs is a requirement for seeing them as beliefs at all. Consider the conflict in thought that arises with assertions like the following: I believe I…
by Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse Properly run argument requires that we give reasons that provide support for the truth of our conclusions, that we do our best to be clear, and that we stay focused on the issue at hand. But it is possible to succeed in these ways and yet fail…
By Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse Pragmatism is widely regarded as the Unites States’ only indigenous philosophical movement. Founded by a quirky and largely isolated genius, Charles Peirce, pragmatism was introduced as a method for clear thinking which insisted that all words and statements be understood in terms of concrete experience. It was…
Scott F. Aikin and Robert B. Talisse Mary Warnock’s Dishonest to God: On Keeping Religion Out of Politics (Continuum, 2010) is an ambitious book. In it, Warnock distinguishes religion from morality, demonstrates the dependence of religious reasoning on moral reasoning, and argues that religious perspectives are nevertheless crucial for social and political life. We have…