Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

In reply to Irfan Khawaja. It belatedly occurs to me that I read Henry IV in high school, but the experience clearly went in one side of my head and out the other. LikeLike

In reply to djr. Gotcha on Shakespeare. How do your students respond to Shakespeare, by the way? Any thoughts on the value (or not) of having high school students read Shakespeare? I read Shakespeare in high school–Romeo & Juliet, Othello, Ha…

In reply to djr. In thinking about your first paragraph, I not only think you’re right, but think that you’re on to something important that helps resolve my initial puzzle. This sentence is what does it: I take it that the distinction ce…

[…] see also Roderick Long, Advocatus Diaboli, and my and others’ […]

In reply to djr. (1) In my last too-off-the-cuff comment, I failed to grasp and rebut the crucial point you made: in justifying our actions to others we are, indeed, doing something like demonstrating adequate orientation toward the interests of both t…

A healthy, nutritious diet is much more expensive than a calorie sufficient one. As a result, three billion people cannot afford a healthy diet.

In reply to djr. Thanks, David. That is helpful. Most of what you say rings true. Scanlon does a good bit of compare-and-contrast with Rawls in WWO and does view their two views as related sorts of accounts of slightly different topics (roughly: Scanlo…

In reply to Roderick T. Long. Yes (reply to Roderick). The full Scanlonian contractualist formula includes reference to the shared aim of cooperating on basically moral terms (and as well specifies that the terms of justification, and the objection or …

In reply to Roderick T. Long. I agree with your quibble, Roderick. I was aware of this problem (that quick-inference is not really what is going on in the relationship between resentment and judgment that resentment is the appropriate response to such-…