Everyday Philosophy A friend who shares my fate of being a graduate student in philosophy was recently regaling me with tales of what teaching undergraduates was like. She informed me that an increasing number of them at her university were “both utilitarians and relativists”. She said it laughing, because this quite a mean feat. The…
Everyday Philosophy What’s the point of philosophy? I don’t mean to offer a justification for my own attempt to get a career out of it. When it comes to academic philosophy the standard reaction – “sure there’s no jobs in that” – could best be described as “harsh but fair”. No, I mean, what’s the…
Everyday Philosophy Do we live in a simulation? No, of course not. Would it matter if we did? Of course it would. The great philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein had a particular view of what philosophy was really about. He saw it as a kind of therapy for confusion. Rather than seeking to answer deep questions about…
Everyday Philosophy Modern academic philosophy is divided into two broad camps or traditions: ‘analytic philosophy’ and ‘continental philosophy’. They each have their own stereotypes. Continental philosophers, the heirs of Sartre, Nietzche, Heideggar, and Camus, are stereotyped as being interested in big, existential questions – but writing about them in ways that range from ‘poetic’ to…
Everyday Philosophy If you think about the intellectual virtues needed to be a good philosopher, or just a good thinker, ‘humility’ doesn’t immediately spring to mind. The way philosophers conduct themselves may have something to do with this, but it’s also just not the most intuitive or obvious answer. ‘Curiosity’ comes to mind before it…
Everyday Philosophy What do St Thomas Aquinas’s position on divine command theory and factory farming of animals have to do with each other? Plato’s Euthyphro dilemma asks whether things are good because God wills them, or whether God wills them because they are good. Divine command theory takes the first position: that the only thing…
Everyday Philosophy How open-minded should a Christian be? On the one hand, open-mindedness is generally a good thing. Being open to the possibility of learning new things, and to the possibility that one is mistaken, is a mark of a healthy mind. It’s also a sign of humility. Openness to being wrong is an acknowledgement…
Everyday Philosophy There’s a standard bit of ethical terminology that gets thrown around a lot in Catholic circles: the difference between moral questions that involve ‘intrinsic evils’ and moral questions that involve ‘matters of prudential judgment’. This comes up a lot in politics: support for certain things like abortion and euthanasia are supposed to be…
The idea that you can’t say anything meaningful about what you don’t understand has a lot of intuitive appeal. If, after all, you know nothing whatsoever about the thing you’re talking about, then you can’t say anything whatsoever about it either. Imagine overhearing the following exchange: “I just happened across a Fringle.” “Oh cool! What’s…
Everyday Philosophy There’s an interesting tension in Catholic moral thought. On the one hand, we have the prevalent idea that living well as a Catholic is not a matter of rule-following. The last few popes have spoken extensively about how authentic faith is not about obeying a set of rules, but a relationship with God.…