For a long while now, philosophers have had what I consider damn-near-unassailable reasons for rejecting the idea of a radically free will: It’s one of the few areas in philosophy where there seems to be something approaching a genuine consensus on a once contentious metaphysical issue, even if the details remain much disputed. But, perhaps […]

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Dana Goldstein has a post up in response to my piece from last week on the new Democratic enthusiasm for “moderation” on abortion. I think a lot of her objection is far more to my tone than the substance of what I was saying: If you’re focused on making the argument that there’s nothing morally […]

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Matt McIntosh over at Catallarchy serves up a question that I think is supposed to count in favor of psychological egoism: Now say some clever scientist, considering him a danger to society, knocks out our sociopathic subject and plants a small device in his head — call it the Artificial Conscience ââ??¢ — that will […]

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I’m pretty sure I’ve written about this here before, but since this view seems to be conventional wisdom to a lot of smart people I know, it probably won’t hurt to repeat myself and reiterate what I just wrote in the comments to this post over at TAPped. Responding to Sen. Jim Talent’s position that […]

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A line of argument in the new Dawkins book struck me as curious: He’s going off on the notion that morality requires religion, and tries to make a distinction between “absolutist” ethical systems, which he allows also includes Kant and other deontologists along with most monotheistic religions, and what he regards as a healthier, non-absolute […]

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One more thought from the Dworkin panel mentioned in the post below. Apparently, in Dworkin’s new book, he lays out a case, grounded in human dignity, for a strong presumption against the use of torture—so strong that it should be thought of as a kind of “trump,” obviating any kind of cost-benefit calculation on a […]

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Well, I’m late to the papal party, but with the consolation that I can at least outsource some of what I might have said earlier to fellow Wagnerite Jacob Levy. Conrad has one of his characters in Heart of Darkness opine that Kurtz “would have been a splendid leader of an extreme party– Any party.” […]

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I’ve been reading with great interest the flurry of work produced in the last five or six years by a burgeoning group of “Social Intuitionist” scientists and philosophers who are using cutting edge findings from neuroscience and innovative fMRI experimental techniques to proble the neural bases of human moral reasoning. One of the most interesting […]

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Yglesias registers one of his favorite complaints in reply to a recent Jonah Goldberg column: That the political liberal ideal of “bracketing” religious arguments, or arguments otherwise linked to a particular comprehensive doctrine, is misguided because it just pushes people to offer “bad faith” arguments for their views. Which is funny, because over the course […]

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Ross Douthat has some thoughts in reply to last week’s posts by “Mittens” Yglesias and myself about abortion and the conditions of personhood. (Old-timers may recall a long debate on just this topic I had with Eve Tushnet back in—oy, has it really been that long?—August 2002.) Now, Ross says that “any serious pro-lifer” would […]

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