Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

In reply to Michael Brazier. Well, that’s the thing. The list of virtues you gave – “respect for property, truthfulness in one’s public statements, probity in business” – is one that MacIntyre, and any pre-modern moralist, would consider comically inco…

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In reply to Roderick T. Long. Just think—if you’d picked the right ISME to attend this year, you’d be on your way to Turkey next week. That, or in front of your computer at home. LikeLike

In reply to Irfan Khawaja. I attended a couple of the IS Military E conferences when they were held in San Diego, mainly as an excuse to get to San Diego. But I found them emotionally wearing. LikeLike

In reply to Irfan Khawaja. Hm. One of the main theses of Whose Justice? Which Rationality? is that a certain amount of begging the question is in fact unavoidable for any tradition of enquiry. While one argues for particular conclusions from the centra…

In reply to Michael Brazier. Actually, his earliest publications date from the late 1990s, although his publication record doesn’t really get going until 2002. Here is its last page at his Harvard website. LikeLike

In reply to Irfan Khawaja. Joseph Henrich’s career as an author only started in 2004, so there aren’t very many of MacIntyre’s works that could have been influenced by Henrich. He may have read Henrich, but we’d have no way of k…

In reply to Irfan Khawaja. Some of your examples are ill-chosen. The divine right of kings was an innovation of the 17th century, created to justify Louis XIV. Racism (as a systematic theory – not a simple distrust of foreigners, which is immemor…

In reply to David Potts. “Fourth, and most important, you are mistaking me if you think I am attributing to MacIntyre the idea that personal and family relationships are the basis of the prosocial virtues.” I did not suppose that, no. It is…