The movie Captain America: Civil War contains a battle scene that serves as a case study on the mechanics and implications of the Doctrine of Double Effect (DoDE). The DoDE was developed to determine morally permissible responses in situations that … Continue reading
In God and the Problem of Evil, B. C. Johnson offers arguments for and against the goodness of God, concluding that considerations of the latter surely cast Him as not all good. As his opening gambit, he presents a scenario … Continue reading
Regarding the operative question, I’ll discourse on the Platonic dialog Menexenus, followed by the chapter from Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich, then share my conclusions. In Menexenus, Socrates is advising Menexenus on the composition of a funeral oration. It’s … Continue reading
If determinism were true, in the radical sense that all moral choices are predetermined by hard and fast rules—on the order of the laws of physics—then free will would not exist. This is assuming the strong implication that the states … Continue reading
I’ll weigh-in on whether praise or blameworthiness can be affected by moral luck based on my 43 years of experience as director of a not-for-profit serving people who are either reentrants (from prison) or in recovery (from addiction). See https://ctoxfordhouse.org (Links to … Continue reading
The premise of determinism is that, just as the physical laws of the universe prescribe all matters of cause and effect (past, present and future), by extension, morality is predetermined. We do not exercise free will, rather, we act according … Continue reading
Concretism, ala David Lewis (et al), is the view that all objects in the physical universe stand in relationship to one another in space-time, from beginning to end. The “actual world” we experience is an “indexical” of all other possible … Continue reading
Though both are reprehensible, in my opinion, there are pragmatic instances in which lying is worse than truthful misleading. These are hinted in vernacular distinctions made between “lies” and “white lies.” In the dictionary definition, “white lies” are given to be “harmless.” … Continue reading
We consider, herein, objections to the first premise (P1) put forth in the “Experience Machine” experiment delineated by Robert Nozick in his influential treatise, Anarchy, State, and Utopia. The objections are that P1, a conditional (and the overall argument by extension) … Continue reading
The answer to the question “What is art?” is contingent on a set of aesthetic judgements. It strikes me that Plato’s notion of forms and criteria for identifying and/or judging objects to be instantiations of those idealizations is impractical. Philosopher … Continue reading