Ours is the age of meliorism as blindly unquestioning as medieval fatalism. Meliorism is the belief that the world tends to improve and that humans can aid its betterment. The improvability of the world cannot be justified by reason (e.g., see Rescher's essay ( Read more... )

I was asked, what use is theological philosophizing for science? In most cases, it is of little use (as little as most of other things), but there were some notable exceptions. Perhaps this usefulness depends on who is philosophizing. If it is an average person, the result may not be impressive. However, if it is someone like Robert Boyle, it is ( Read more... )

This work contains hardly any original facts in regard to man. The conclusion that man is the co-descendant with other species of some ancient, lower, and extinct form, is not in any degree new. <> Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; <> we must, ( Read more... )

For all debauchery of the ancient world nothing in our past appeared as pathetic as billions of lonely people masturbating before computer screens. Pornography is the uniquely modern Western invention -- and an unusual one. We do not perceive its strangeness perhaps because porn had been around for 500 years. Before privacy emerged in the late ( Read more... )

In 1300 AD cruelty meant a very particular thing: the opposite of clemency. What we presently call cruelty was called brutality, and there was a clear distinction:

...cruelty is nothing else than sternness in the exaction of penalties. Rational abatement of penalties is an act of equity, but the sweetness of disposition that prompts such abatement ( Read more... )

This week I was surprised to learn that Kant and Adam Smith opposed (excessive?) charity. In fact, neither one of them made such arguments. Adam Smith gave away most of his wealth; his entire estate after his death was estimated at less than 1/2 of his annual income; he was an amazingly generous man. What did they really think about charity ( Read more... )

Here is one of the first US progressives sermonizing in 1909:

...The prevailing preconception of the reformers, that the existing evils and abuses have been due chiefly to the energy and lack of scruple with which the business men and politicians have taken advantage of the good but easy-going American, and that a general increase of moral energy ( Read more... )

...a mathematician is in much more direct contact with reality [than a physicist]. This may seem a paradox, since it is the physicist who deals with the subject-matter usually described as ‘real’; but a very little reflection is enough to show that the physicist’s reality, whatever it may be, has few or none of the attributes which common sense ( Read more... )

...Epicurus' view on the problem of evil was that there were gods, but that they were neither willing nor able to prevent evil. This was because they lived in a perfect state of ataraxia (serenity); it is not the gods who are upset by evils, but people. Epicurus conceived the gods as blissful and immortal yet material beings made of atoms ( Read more... )

Once upon a time there was a philosopher trying to solve a difficult epistemiology problem: how does a sheep know that there is a wolf standing in front of it? There is sensory input, but how does this input becomes a wolf? The Philosopher believed that animals, unlike us, do not have reason, so this integration cannot be the function of their ( Read more... )