-
Parenting a Toddler: An Illustration of Wittgenstein’s Distinction Between Saying and Showing
Wittgenstein’s distinction between saying and showing can be seen, very simply, in how we raise our children. It is important. I hold it in mind at all times.
-
Why Do I Write?
Why do I write? When I say write I mean writing philosophy. I could try writing other things, I suppose, but what I have been writing up to now is philosophy. And not only writing it but also putting it online for all to see. What is the purpose of this? […]
-
Romanticism and Livestock Farming
Those who speak positively about livestock farming are often accused of having fallen into an insidious ‘Romanticism’. They view these idyllic pastoral scenes with overly-sentimental eyes, and this clouds their judgement. Is this true? If it were, it might be a problem: it is important to see things clearly – undistorted – and sentimentalism is one of the many distortions of thought that can creep in, like prejudice and other forms of bias. […]
-
Mental Health Aspect Blindness
Something I’ve observed in people’s reactions and judgements about mental health is like a kind of colour blindness. It shows itself as an inability to discern a difference between two things that are obviously different. They cannot discern the difference between someone who is lazy and someone who is dangerously depressed, or the difference between someone who is nervous and someone who is struggling with anxiety. And because they can’t discern the difference, they treat one as if it were no different from the other. […]
-
Two Philosophical Approaches
Two approaches have been pre-eminently influential in philosophy. One approach says that we should trust what we think over what we see, because our perception is unreliable: we should place ‘mind over matter’. The other approach says that we should trust what we see over what we think, because our thinking is unreliable: we should place ‘matter over mind’. Both approaches have consequences, good and bad. […]
-
Relative Moral Certainty
Many judgements about the morally impossible will remain epistemically ambiguous and subject to change over time. Many philosophers who do not share my metaethical perspective will think this is a problem for any claims about moral necessity. But I think the issue of epistemic ambiguity actually reinforces my point, rather than weakening it, because this epistemic ambiguity is always relative to something more certain. […]
-
Properly Basic Moral Belief
According to Alvin Plantinga, religious belief is properly basic because it is involuntary and it arises from a properly functioning natural faculty that, if its origin story is true, grants the belief epistemological warrant. Is there any reason to suppose moral belief, especially at its limits, is any different from a properly basic religious belief? […]
-
The Failings of Sceptical Theism
It’s very difficult to stop sceptical theism sliding into a more widespread moral scepticism. Ultimately, this would be morally paralysing. If sceptical theism says that ‘for all we know’, what seems bad is in fact for the best, then how are we to ever judge anything as bad? […]
-
The Purpose of the Problem of Evil
I think there’s something odd about discussing the weightiest matters for trivial ends. If I’m being honest, I think philosophers have lost sight of their true purpose, their ‘that for the sake of which’ they philosophise, especially about the problem of evil. Once upon a time, the purpose of philosophizing about the problem was to […]
An experiment with philosophy as a way of life
tobybetenson.com 