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    Category: Jon Cogburn

    • Does anyone remember this?

      My generation inherited from the Baby Boomers the bizarre idea that one of the most important things about you was the bands you like. This is actually not that weird, since it's just one more instance of the late capitalist Boomer belief that people are to be classified in terms of what they consume (as…

    • Leiter, Schliesser, and Feminist Philosophers on Protecting Lisbeth fundraising campaign

      Especially given the amount of sock-puppetry and trolling by anonymous internet voices prior to the point where most philosophy blogs started pre-moderating, I was extremely uncomfortable with anonymous people recently making public allegations against a semi-anonymous perpetrator, and then an anonymous person soliciting money.* I also know that I'm not the only person troubled by…

    • Reformation Theology

      Guilt. Grace.

    • Professors’ non-existent privacy rights

      FIDLAR song NSFW, so whole post is after the jump.

    • Mark Okrent interview (hat tip Graham Harman)

      Very nice Mark Okrent inteview here, which includes this gem: My single most important commitment in this area is that the intentionality of action is fundamental, and the intentionality of cognitive states, including conscious states, is to be understood in relation to this fundamental intentionality of action. Action, as action, always is directed towards some…

    • More Neil deGrasse Tyson awfulness

      When Tyson laughs as he dismisses philosophy as "pointless" he reminds me nothing so much as a high school bully who has just visited an indignity on his victim. And, as in high school, nobody much seems to mind. I don't know why this kind of thing is so popular among physicists who don't know…

    • Voltaire’s Prayer

      We had a big internal debate at newapps a while ago about the use of snark and each of us individually resolved to try our best to avoid it from that point on out. First, it's too easy to be mistaken about when it might be justified. Second, even if might be in principle justified…

    • new philosopher’s metablog (hat-tip Spiros)

      Long-time Philosophers Anonymous discussion contributor Glaucon SonofAriston has started a Philosophy Metablog* here. The purpose: Don't like their comment policy? Think blogger x is a doofuss? Tired of threadjacking to air your grievances about other blogs? Here's a blog for you. It will be interesting to see if this works as a pressure valve for…

    • Is there a recieved view about Evans’ argument against ontic vagueness?

      My co-writer* Joshua Heller is currently working on a project connections between vagueness literature, literature on semantic underdetermination, and new work on metaphysical indeterminacy.** One thing we're both interested in exploring the next few weeks is the extent to which Evans' argument against ontic vagueness applies to either semantic underdetermination or metaphysical indeterminacy. But I'm…

    • Sunday School lecture on PC(USA) General Assembly confessional issues

      Today I'm lecturing on issues relating to the adoption of a new translation of the Heidelberg Catechism and the possible adoption of the Belhar Confession into the PC(USA)'s Book of Confessions. In preparing for them I had to study a fair amoung of neo-Calvanist Kuyperian Apartheid theology (which, if Belhar is correct, is heretical) as…