Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

I have decided to complete this study “Dewey and Peikoff on Kant’s Responsibility” and do it now (before completing my work of the last several months comparing Dewey and Rand/Peikoff/Kelley concerning logic, perception, conception, and foundations). I…

In reply to Irfan Khawaja. To clarify one thought: so my point is that while neither virtue nor epistemic justification are necessary/sufficient for flourishing or knowledge, they come by sustained, counterfactually stable engagement to approximate bei…

In reply to mlyoung57. I actually have the draft of a paper in my files that directly answers the question you’re asking. What I do in it is to draw an analogy between virtue and flourishing (on the one hand), and epistemic justification and know…

In reply to mlyoung57. I get that there are legitimate questions to be discussed about the value of virtue with respect to the pursuit of valuable states of affairs. What I would dispute is that Davis himself was discussing that topic. It’s not j…

In reply to mlyoung57. If I took your comment at face value, nothing would differentiate Stephen’s “review” from Rand’s “review” of Rawls. You say Stephen makes “relevant distinctions.” So does Rand. She …

With the proper qualifications and caveats, to say things on a blog about a book from reading only some of it (here, what is available through Amazon’s “see more” feature) seems fine. Stephen makes good efforts to add the proper quali…

We agree about the moral tin ear in missing what Della and Jim value most (and the value in this). Regardless of what one thinks about Jim’s attachment to the heirloom watch and Della’s attachment to her long hair (and the value in this), t…

In reply to mlyoung57. I think that over-complicates a relatively simple issue. “The Gift of the Magi” is a short story about six pages long. Despite the narrator’s somewhat moralistic presence in the story, it’s a story, not a …

Davis’s focus is on how agent-relatively valuable (meaningful, important) the things given up or gotten are. Your point, I think, speaks to the value of the valuing and willing (as in “the good will”). Della and Jim value each other&#…