Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

In reply to boydstun. This linked new paper concerning the Walsh paper is entirely different from the old one (written in 2010) I had posted earlier in this thread. Plus the new paper treats as well the Comment paper of Miller on Walsh’s paper, H…

In reply to Irfan Khawaja. If the focus is on the broad Enlightenment program for human improvement, then all of the main ideas that inform the Enlightenment blueprints and strategies for human improvement are what is important. This would include both…

In reply to mlyoung57. I mentioned that I disagreed with Bouie on details. The detail is his treatment of Locke. Locke’s views are, I think, highly problematic–much more problematic than many instinctive Lockeans have taken them to be. But …

In reply to mlyoung57. I think Bouie’s point is that racism just is one of the core ideas of the Enlightenment. It’s not a misapplication of some other Enlightenment idea; it’s a distinctive feature of Enlightenment thought on its own…

In reply to Irfan Khawaja. More to the specific disagreement with my final paragraph: by ‘the ideas of the Enlightenment’ one might mean the core universalist, liberal ideas of Enlightment thinkers. Pinker is well-aware that Locke and Kant …

In reply to Irfan Khawaja. That’s super-interesting. I’ll have to give Fredrickson a read. Bouie’s description is consistent with core Enlightenment ideas simply being put to bad use in the service of making racism into a rigorous the…