Author: Kenneth Taylor

I want to try to dig a little deeper in this post into a question that kind of simmered beneath the surface of our discussion, but wasn’t really addressed head on. The issue has a little bit to do with identities that are regarded by those who adopt them as in some ways “non-negotiable” and as more or less direct sources of directives about how to live one’s own life, and a source of directives about how to live one’s life in relation to others who don’t share one’s identity and may even be hostile to it in some ways.

Yesterday on the show, John came up with a really nice metaphor. He compared a generation to a small strand in a long rope. Each strand is closely intertwined with a number of other nearby strands, but mostly the strands don’t make direct contact with each other. If you think of the rope as growing over time, the metaphor captures a very nice fact about relationships among the generations.

It’s amazing how divided opinions are about evolutionary psychology.    Some very fine philosophers and…

Having sat with this topic for the last couple of weeks, I’m still pretty unsettled on my own final take on things. I’m pretty convinced — I think — that criminalizing prostitution – either on the supply side or on the demand side – is unworkable. I tend to side with those who think criminalization probably makes what is already a bad situation for many much worse.

I admit to still being puzzled by the question why, when forgiveness is deserved, one can only request forgiveness and aren’t really in a position to demand it. I thought I’d ponder that question just a little bit more in this post. My hunch is that what’s wrong with demanding forgiveness, even when it’s morally deserved, has to do with what I’ll call the dialectical character of the relation between the forgiver and the to be forgiven.

Over at the blog Left2Right,  the philosopher David Velleman  has an interesting post about moral relativism.  Prompted…

Some people naively associate propaganda with totalitarian regimes. Certainly, the Nazis, the Soviet and Chinese communists, and brutal dictators like Saddam Hussein have made heavy and sometimes brilliantly effective use of propaganda. But totalitarians may not need to be true masters of propaganda, since they often merely bludgeon people into at least apparent belief and acquiescence.

Do genes make the person? If you listen to popular press reports of new genetic discoveries coming out at fairly rapid pace, you certainly might think so. Lung Cancer Gene! Gay Gene! Genius Gene! Little wonder that many people believe — or should I say fear? — that genes somehow directly and invariably determine who we are.

I’m thinking about where values and meaning come from and whether a metaphysics anything like Schopenhauer’s has the resources to make room for value and meaning. I think that the answer is yes. And I suspect that Schopenhauer fails to see this, if he does, because he buys into a commonly held, but I think deeply mistaken criticism of naturalism. I’ll call it the “you can’t get something from nothing” criticism.

Schopenhauer’s view of life certainly seems bleak and pessimistic. Consider the following description of the life of man (and animals): Willing and striving are its whole essence, and can be fully compared to an unquenchable thirst. The basis of all willing, however, is need, lack, and hence pain, and by its very nature and origin it is therefore destined to pain.

Suppose you are a Martian Anthropologist, on a scientific expedition to planet Earth. Your goal is to understand the alien Earthling practice of holding people morally responsible for their actions. There are no such practices on the planet Mars. Let’s grant for the moment that your advanced Martian Science has once and for all established the truth of determinism or its functional equivalent.

In my pre-show reflections,  I tried to isolate what exactly was being claimed by those who worry…

I have to admit that when John Perry first suggested that we do a show on the emerging field of neurcosmetology, I was a little hesitant. I had never even heard of the subject until John brought it up. As John mentions, if you Google neurocosmetology all that comes up are links to our own web page announcing the topic. And to top it off, google asks if you don’t really mean”neurocosmology.”

There is, I think, such a thing as beauty that haunts. This is the beauty of movies like Requiem for a Dream. Imagine a work of art dedicated to doing nothing but portraying the psychology of evil, not in such a way as to praise or condemn, not to represent it as other, alien and incomprehensible, but merely to make us see it as it is.

During our episode on Religion and the Secular State Robert Audi claimed that some religions are non-dogmatic He might be right about that, I am not sure which ones he had in mind. On the other hand, John was pushing the line that many of our “secular” beliefs have pretty much the status and function of dogmatic religious beliefs. At least for some people, he might be right about that.

Since lots of beautiful things don’t have skin, whoever first said that beauty is only skin deep was clearly mistaken. When I was a kid, by the way, we used to continue “…but ugliness is to the bone.” Of course, the speaker was probably being metaphorical. Perhaps he or she was trying to say that beauty is the least of the virtues that a thing can have. But is it really an apt metaphor?