Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

In reply to Irfan Khawaja. Happy Thanksgiving, by the way LikeLike

In reply to Roderick T. Long. If you’d said out loud in 1986 that we were “drifting toward war,” people would probably have laughed at you, despite the aid we were giving to the contras or the Afghan mujahidin. Five years later, we we…

Although this song predates (1986, so just barely) the first Intifada, and most of the imagery in this video references either Vietnam or Latin America (with the flute music definitely being a nod to the latter), the line about picking up a brick or a …

In reply to Roderick T. Long. I can see it now: “Beavis and Butt-Head Visit the Occupied Territories,” with videos by Guns N Roses, Judas Priest, Rammstein, et al. It’s always fascinated me that the video for “Welcome to the Jun…

In reply to sean samis. Responding to Sean, Nov. 24, 11 am. Some of what I’m going to say repeats what I said in a comment to Roderick. I think we need to get the overall logic of our disagreement clear. David Potts’s version of Aristotle&#…

In reply to Roderick T. Long. I figured as much. But my point is that while DP’s worries about the soundness of Aristotle’s argument focus on premise (1), you could just as well worry about premise (2). As stated in DP’s argument abov…

In reply to sean samis. Shouldn’t “creation” also be put in scare quotes? Surely physics doesn’t prove that the universe was “created” in any familiar sense of “created”? There’s a great deal more e…

In reply to Roderick T. Long. (Responding to Roderick) I don’t know if your 11/24 7:09 pm comment is addressed to Sean or to me, but I wasn’t likening Aristotle’s unmoved mover to the Big Bang. I was invoking the Big Bang singularity …

In reply to Michael Brazier. 1) The orbits of planets around stars, and stars around galactic centers, are perfectly natural motions. Aristotle’s use of “natural” was defective.The continuous alteration of inertial movement of bodies by gravitati…

This Data Review presents published estimates of the global death toll from air pollution and provides the context that makes them understandable.