Survey on the Good and Meaningful Life (Results)

My class on the meaning of life did something novel this semester--we collected the public's responses to a set of 21 questions about the good and/or meaningful life.  First, an explanation of what the point was. Then I'll tell you the results.

THE POINT
Primarily, the idea was to "problematize" the appeal to intuitions in our readings.  Here's how it goes. An author is defending an account of

Survey on the Good and Meaningful Life

Results of the survey will be here tomorrow!

Evil Achievements

Gwen Bradford's article on evil achievements (also available online) is just one of the goodies in the latest issue of tpm.  The issue includes a forum on disagreement with articles by Catherine Elgin, Russ Shafer Landau, Graham Oppy, Cain Todd, and Jennifer Lackey.  To pick out just a few more tasty items: Jennifer Saul has an article on women in philosophy, there's an interview with Frank

Entification

Over Thanksgiving I got to thinking a lot about entification, for a lack of a better word. We take a lot of long walks when we're in Central Pennsylvania, and what's a long walk for but to get some things figured out? Plus, you have a captive audience.  In this case, mostly my son, who has an amazing tolerance for discussing strange things.

So, entification. I've been reading The Metaphysics of

Save me

I've become obsessed with the movie Magnolia, the soundtrack, and this song by Aimee Mann.  Enjoy!

Are we more than animals?

I am overwhelmingly unconvinced by an argument in Lynne Rudder Baker's book Persons and Bodies, to the effect that we are not just animals. She writes--



The argument seems to be:  (1) A human organism is just a survival machine.  In fact, all organisms are mere survival machines, "if evolutionary biology is correct" (p. 12).  But (2) a  person is more than a survival machine. Most importantly

Is Richard Dawkins an Asshole?

It seems to me that Aaron James captures at least a lot of what it is to be an asshole in this three part definition from his book Assholes: A Theory.  An asshole...



Now, a book about assholes would be no fun if it included no examples, and James doesn't disappoint.  But I do wonder about some of his examples.  Is he really applying his own definition when he identifies Richard Dawkins as a

Pictures at an Arboretum

Don't miss the Chihuly installation at the Dallas Arboretum, if you happen to live in the area.








 

Bill and Lou

Spencer Lo has a very readable and thorough editorial on the controversial oxen here.  Is it particularly wrong for Green Mountain College to eat these two animals, as opposed to eating two other animals? In terms of harm done, it's better than eating two factory farmed animals, and roughly the same as eating two anonymous humanely farmed animals. So not particularly wrong.  It's strange,

Assholes: A Theory

I'm currently reading and very much enjoying Aaron James's book Assholes: A Theory.  It's that rare thing--a philosophy book that's laugh out loud funny. Eric Schwtzgebel has a post about the book, and I see James has an asshole blog.  What fun!  I think my next TPM column (an arts column) is going to be about assholes I have known and (not) loved--especially at live music venues.  So far I've

"Obama Won and I Helped!"

I've always been intrigued by the voter's paradox: the difficulty of explaining why you should vote, if there's just about no chance you will cast the deciding vote.  One way to go is to give up the idea that we vote to have an impact.  We can just capitulate and say the only reason to vote is for the enjoyment of being with our neighbors and participating in democracy.  Or some such. But that

Looper, Explained

Wow, this is great!

More Proud Mama

Credit: Becky Groves

Tying up Democrats in Red Tape

One of the most maddening Republican political strategies these days is trying to increase the difficulty of voting.  If you make voter registration more difficult or require picture IDs, for example, some people won't make it over the hurdle.  Those who fail tend to have lower socio-economic-status and more often vote Democratic.  The argument on the other side is that it's not difficult

Survey on the Good and Meaningful Life

In the class I'm teaching, we're doing a bit of "X-Phi" on issues having to do with the good life and the meaningful life.  It would be wonderful if you would take our survey AND spread the word, wherever you hang out -- Facebook, Twitter, your own blog, whatever. Here's the link-- https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/moljk

THANK YOU!

Update 5:21 -- The comments here, at Pharyngula, and at Twitter