Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

[…] effort into “something,” except that that something consists of many things. I am, say, putting effort into cleaning an OR. Cleaning an OR has many different goals. So if I’m putting effort into “cleaning the […]…

Chapter 4 of Sher’s Desert, “Desert and Diligence,” explores the thesis that diligence, or conscientious effort, is a fundamental basis of desert claims: Whatever else we think, most of us agree that persons deserve things for sheer hard work. We believe that conscientious students deserve to get good grades, that athletes who practice regularly deserve…

Well, a couple of quibbles though. By “a system that gives greater weight to the wise during voting,” does Jason really mean “a system in which voters give greater weight to wise candidates,” rather than “a system that gi…

In reply to Irfan Khawaja. That’s helpful, Irfan. I agree that I need something better than ‘having feature F’. Maybe ‘having virtue-feature F’ or ‘having agential feature F’? Part of the problem is that, if yo…

In reply to Irfan Khawaja. That said, your modified analysis is definitely superior to the original one. LikeLike

I guess my problem here is that your heavy reliance on an unanalyzed conception of “the appropriate” renders the analysis circular and/or uninformative. It just passes the buck to an account of appropriate reactions. But that essentially pu…

Jason’s Brennan’s self-parodic idea of a parody, titled “I Am Immune to Criticism” (my italics): I’ve decided to copy-cat a style of argumentation which is prominent among democrats and socialists in the philosophy literature. This move will now render me and my work immune from criticism. By epistocracy, I henceforth mean not only a system…

So here’s the changing story on COVID boosters over about two or three weeks of August, mostly drawn from The New York Times: The same government that confidently believed that the Afghan government would hold out against the Taliban is now telli…

I’m deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Albert Pelham, President of the Montclair, New Jersey chapter of the NAACP, and Executive Director of the Montclair Neighborhood Development Corporation. This article just below nicely summarizes his many achievements as a civil rights activist and “social justice warrior.” I didn’t know Albert well, but he…