Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

In reply to Michael Brazier. Let me just deal with the involuntary servitude issue. Your analogy ignores the disjunctive nature of the formulation I used. This is what I said: Regardless of which side one is on in the abortion debate, fundamental righ…

In reply to boydstun. She doesn’t explicitly demand that prayer should be stopped as a matter of law, but she clearly does want it to stop. I don’t see any reason why it should. Again, this form of prayer is no more offensive or problematic…

In reply to Michael Brazier. As I say, I don’t agree with John’s idea that we should heap scorn on gun owners. But I’m also unsympathetic to the whining of gun owners themselves about the reception they’re getting from defenders…

In reply to Irfan Khawaja. In general, I don’t think public campaigns based on the appeal to scorn are a good idea, or a winning strategy. There’s too much of a danger there of poisoning the well, and consequently, of making rational discourse on the s…

I agree with 99% of that, except the tactical strategy at the very end: Of course, none of this is possible while the filibuster curse endures. More fundamentally, we need a cultural shift, or even a crusade: We have to start heaping scorn on “g…

In reply to radgeekdotcom. Very well, let’s look at organisms more closely related to humanity than plants. It would be quite impossible for anyone to claim that a bird’s eggs are part of the bird, as they’re not even physically conne…

In reply to Irfan Khawaja. I did not see her trying to get that sort of public praying stopped as a legal matter. I just see one sort of Christian taking issue with another sort—the parading pharisee sort—she finds reprehensible and showing a different…

John Davenport has a piece on gun violence and gun regulation in Salon, “An endless arms race: How to fight the NRA’s absurd solution to mass shootings.” As we celebrated Independence Day, there was no independence from the scourge of gun violence and the toll it is taking on the American psyche. The shooter who…

In reply to boydstun. I read that essay this morning on the way to work. It struck me as both self-indulgent and factually challenged. Factually challenged: as far as the facts of the case were concerned, the coach was not holding anyone “hostage…