Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

One does not build one’s level of aversion to risk or the degree of outgoingness of one’s personality. Smith with higher risk-aversion than Jones might pursue education to have likely employment and pursue that line of employment. Jones mig…

I have been interested in this discussion of desert, although I haven’t been able to follow all of it and won’t be able to participate much. I just have too many other projects going on. Still, I want to say something about Rawls’s at…

[…] Jonathan Haidt has written quite a bit about this, notably in The Righteous Mind. There he talks about how, even today, the strength of someone’s sense of disgust plays a strong role in determining political beliefs. As summarized by David Potts: […

[…] mentioned in an earlier post, the fourth of Sher’s puzzles about desert in chapter 1 casts doubt on the legitimacy of the […] LikeLike

[…] This is a summary of chapter 2 of Sher’s Desert, keyed to session 2 of the MTSP discussion of that book. […] LikeLike

This is a summary of chapter 2 of Sher’s Desert, keyed to session 2 of the MTSP discussion of that book. As mentioned in an earlier post, the fourth of Sher’s puzzles about desert in chapter 1 casts doubt on the legitimacy of the concept. How can anyone deserve anything if our capacities for putting…

In reply to Irfan Khawaja. I took myself to be presenting (and agreeing with) the received view of the semantics of ‘the cause of event E’ (and the metaphysical upshots of this) — but not particularly arguing for it. I take the view n…

In reply to Irfan Khawaja. I don’t think that particular Objectivist premise of privileging so-called “active” properties (of consciousness, of persons) was at work. As an aside, I think the interesting thing in this ballpark is thing…