Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

In reply to Irfan Khawaja. There’s also the fact that I posted it without a comment. It probably would have gotten more engagement if I had posted it with a comment. LikeLike

A couple months ago I finished reading David Friedman’s interesting political tract, “The Machinery of Freedom.” At one point, Friedman argues that the word “need” is so frequently used (and misused) within political-economic contexts, that it really makes sense to erase the word from the language of political discourse entirely. I feel similarly conflicted (though…

In reply to Roderick T. Long. And to further clarify, that means that even if our prior consent to the u.s. govt. were genuine, rather than fictive, it would not give the govt. any right to command our actions if we withdraw that consent. Prior consent…

In reply to Roderick T. Long. So to be clear, I think soldiers have the same right to disobey orders and to quit their jobs as people in any other line of work. (And so that right is limited in only the ways that the corresponding civilian rights are …

I think there’s a difference between prior consent that is invoked when the person’s capacity for present consent is impaired (they’re unconscious, or delusional, or whatever) and prior consent that is taken to override the present wi…

In reply to Irfan Khawaja. That is all quite helpful. Very brief responses. (1) Yes, this is Kant* not Kant. “Doing the right thing, but with the right sort of motivation” a pretty generic formula for specifying a right action that has mora…

In reply to Irfan Khawaja. Here is a link to Keshav Singh’s forthcoming paper “Moral Worth, Credit, and Non-Accidentality.” This will have references list at the and that includes relvant material from Arpaly, Markovitz, Johnson King,…