Competence and the condemned

I recently returned from an NEH-sponsored seminar on punishment at Amherst College. I learned an enormous amount and am full of ideas for papers on punishment. One moral issue surrounding punishment that has not received enough attention from moral philosophers is the somewhat perverse insistence […] Read More

Gender, Philosophy, and Blogging

Brian Weatherson points us blogaholics to Julie Van Camp’s piece on the female-friendliness of the Philosophical Gourmet Report and philosophy graduate departments. (The piece is in the Spring 2004 APA Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy.) She notes a broad phenomenon that many of us find […] Read More

Mackie and disagreement

I recently completed an independent study with a student interested in Mackie’s error theory, and we spent a good deal of time discussing Mackie’s argument from relativity or disagreement. For those unaware, the late Australian philosopher John Mackie favored an error theory of morality, according […] Read More