Video: The Invention of the Written Word and Plato’s “The Myth of Theuth”

Perhaps some readers will be interested in this lecture on Plato’s delightfully memorable telling of The Myth of Theuth” from the Phaedrus dialogue. It was recorded for the sake of my students in a Critical Thinking course at Alaska Pacific University. I welcome any comments or thoughts on the subject. Warmly, Max

Miscellany: roses and “roses,” Aristotle, coronavirus

I appreciated your portrayal of the manner in which we may be inclined to employ our intellects to slice a concrete being up into conceptual abstractions. As an example: it is an abstraction to imagine the rose irrespective of the thorny stem from which it grows. So “abstraction” means that we represent one aspect or…

Miscellany: On objective love, philosophy of science, and other subjects

On objective love One thing I hope that last week’s readings and discussion can do for us is to awaken our minds to the love that weaves through the world and surrounds and envelops us in its invisible filaments. If I can recognize this love, even if I first see it only as it is…

Miscellany: On Love

Love seeks to understand, but in a way that is different from the analytical or scientific connotations we might associate with that term. Analysis attempt to arrive at understanding through breaking something into its components parts, and thus everywhere we “murder to dissect,” to quote the poet Wordsworth, or “unweave the rainbow,” as Keats so…

Video Lecture: Love and Wisdom in Plato’s Symposium Dialogue

Some readers may be interested in a lecture on the relation of love and wisdom in the Symposium dialogue. It was recorded for the sake of my students in a Critical Thinking course at Alaska Pacific University. I welcome any comments or thoughts on the subject.

Miscellany: “Happy is he who knows the causes of things”

Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas… fortunatus et ille deos qui novit agrestes.   “Happy is he who can learn the causes of things… also fortunate is he who knows the gods.” —Virgil, Georgics One way to think about the two forms of understanding is that human understanding begins from effects and attempts, piecemeal and…

Video Lecture: On Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”

Perhaps some readers will be interested in this lecture on Plato’s iconic parable from Book VII of Republic. It was recorded for the sake of my students in a Critical Thinking course at Alaska Pacific University. I welcome any comments or thoughts on the subject. Warmly, Max

Miscellany: infants, pigeons, “critical thinking”

On the nature and emergence of critical thinking: One method, or organum, by which to inquire after the essence of something is by via negativa—by inquiring after everything that it is not. In this way, we can seek to understand the essence of thinking that is not critical but naïve. The infant provides perhaps the…

Miscellany: on the notorious “Trolley Problem,” ethics, and the equivocations of happiness

On the notorious “Trolley Problem” thought experiment in ethics Brief editorial: The only proper sacrifice is made on behalf of oneself and never on behalf of others. That is the constitutive difference between sacrifice and scapegoating. The Trolley Problem and its variants illuminate the latent inclination to “play God,” as it were, which may also…

Elements of an Ethics Textbook (5): Virtue Ethics

Together with utilitarianism and deontology, virtue ethics presents the final category in the triumvirate of the most common classifications of ethical theories. Having fallen into the shadow cast by the novel Enlightenment theories of Kant, Bentham, and Mill for several centuries, virtue ethics has nevertheless experienced something of a revival in the latter part of…

Elements of an Ethics Textbook (4): Deontology

Whereas utilitarianism, at least in its classical formulation, presents a strictly consequentialist approach to ethics, deontology offers a very different view. Unlike consequentialism, which measures the moral worth of an action by the fruits that follow from it, deontology considers only the motive of the action itself. Deontology, thus, can be starkly contrasted with utilitarianism,…

Elements of an Ethics Textbook (3): Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is the best known species within the genus of consequentialist theories of normative ethics. Consequentialism, in turn, is often employed as a synonym for teleology within the context of normative ethics. While there is some relation between these terms, I think that it is a mistake to use them interchangeably. The reason I think…

Elements of an Ethics Textbook (2): Normative Ethics

Was the United States justified in dropping an atomic bomb on the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945 on August 6 and 9, respectively? Some have argued that it ensured a more immediate ending to hostilities and thus led to a lower number of deaths than would have hypothetically resulted had WWII…