Best-Of
Most blog posts are either collections of links, commentary on other people’s commentary, or pictures of the author’s cats. This page collects some of the more interesting, substantive, and original posts which have appeared on Winter’s Haven — for all of you who don’t have time for the cat pictures.
- Another School Shooting — Written in the wake of the massacre at Northern Illinois University, this post discusses how gun politics has become intwined in the social identity of many groups, why this is ridiculous, and how it has retarded progress on this issue.
- Pure Math, Applied Math, and A Priori Proofs — Why math alone can’t prove any synthetic statements.
- Equality Under The Law — You’ve undoubtedly heard that everyone is “equal under the law”; just what does that mean, anyway?
- Expertise and Moral/Epistemic Culpability — An interesting discussion (make sure to read the comments!) on whether it’s sensible to condemn dumb people for pushing bad ideas.
- Libertarianism, Consequentialism, and Deontology — There’s quite a variety of libertarian philosophies out there; one of the most fundamental divisions in libertarian thought is between consequentialists and deontologists.
- Egalitarianism And The Decline Of Religious Belief — In which I smack down Phil Zuckerman’s hypothesis that the difference in religiosity between Europe and America is due to the former’s egalitarian welfare states. Or rather, the evidence smacks that hypothesis down.
- Analyzing the Word “Knowledge”: Why Bother? I think that philosophers have been engaging in a foolish and long-running battle of words over the term “knowledge”.
- WaMu Suffers Least Damaging Fraud in Bank’s History — Actually, this is a personal story, not a brilliant piece of philosophy, but it’s an amusing story (in retrospect).