Category: Uncategorized

It is often hard to sell The Wire to people. When people hear that it is about the drug trade in Baltimore, they are likely to immediately misunderstand it. There are a few ways such a show could traditionally go. It could glorify the drug trade and gangsters, like a classic Mafia movie parading around…

A college education is usually thought to provide three main things to students: 1. Valuable knowledge about various subjects. 2. The acquisition of useful skills. 3. A signal to future employers of intelligence and a willingness to work hard. Students should study philosophy because it does a very good job at providing value relative to…

Positive and Negative Rights: When someone has a right to something, this always creates obligations in others. My right not to be killed creates an obligation in others not to kill me. My right to be compensated for my labor in accordance with the terms of a contract creates an obligation in my employer to…

The threat of the “tyranny of the majority” has been recognized as a serious problem for democratic societies since the formation of American democracy. The solution to this problem the founding fathers envisioned was to establish a set of rights as a foundation for American democracy, and to set up a branch of government whose…

What is Common Sense Philosophy? Common sense philosophy is a branch of philosophy that places restrictions on the legitimate results of philosophical investigations requiring such results to be compatible with common sense. It views the appropriate role of philosophical inquiry as the codification and gradual extension of our pre-theoretical understanding of reality, rather than as…

Currently, it is against the law for any business to engage in any practice that they believe will fail to maximize profit for their investors. In a way, this makes sense. People invest in companies because they believe that these companies will give them a good return on their investment. If companies were allowed to…

Although I have tried to explain their underpinnings in the last post, most people consider my political views to be rather extreme.  When it comes to method, however, I take a far more cautious approach.  My approach is still underwritten by general principles, however, including the following: We ought to do what works: It’s very…

Despite the fact that I am a thoroughgoing rationalist, I find myself liking a lot of experimental philosophy.  Since I’m an advocate of common sense, studies about what people actually believe seem like a good place to at least start in checking that we’re right when we claim that the folk think something is true. …

This is under construction.