My recent reading includes HORACE GREELEY, a biography of the famed editor-publisher of that name, written by James M. Lundberg of the University of Notre Dame. Much about Greeley I am just learning as I go along. Greeley was born in February 1811, in New Hampshire, though he did most of his growing up in Vermont. He went to New York City to seek his fortune in 1831. So it wasn't "go west young man" for him -- it was head south. Like a lot of young men from the provinces who have headed toward the nearest metropolis over millennia, he had a high opinion of himself and big plans to effectuate that opinion. It took him a decade to find his footing and to create the vehicle with which he will be forever associated. Greeley created the New-York Tribune in 1841. (Yes, the hyphen was standard then). This was a vehicle for a reform-oriented Whiggery associated also with William Seward and Thurlow Weed in the context of New York state's politics and beyond it that of the...
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What does a philosopher mean when he appeals to the "intuitive" nature of a premise? Does "X is intuitive" just means "X seems plausible and the non-X views I have considered seem implausible"? Four authors, led by James Ladyman, a few years back (2007) wrote a book called EVERYTHING MUST GO: METAPHYSICS NATURALIZED. They complained that most metaphysics of late, especially within the analytic philosophical tradition, has been worthless. I recently read a review of this book in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, posted there in 2010. It paraphrased the key sentiments of the authors in this passage. Look at any well-written paper in analytic philosophy and you will see arguments aplenty; if the author has not done your work for you by making a list of numbered premises, he or she has probably done enough that you could make such a list without having to exercise too much creativity. The arguments may very well be valid: you will be convinced tha...
The fire at Notre Dame cathedral strikes me as cataclysmic. I've never had the honor of a visit to Paris. But I have a family connection. My grandfather Comstock (who passed away in the 1990s) worked for years on a never-completed book that would have told the story of the great Gothic Cathedrals of Europe from the point of view of architecture-as-engineering. The fundamental idea was to be that engineers solve problems, and that the solutions to one set of problems invariably raise new problems, requiring a new round of solutions, etc. So the engineers' history of any subject is a history of this back and forth. Architecture is a form of engineering, and the creation of large sacred light and air-friendly spaces is one example. Sacred though the goal was supposed to be, the path can be understood in secular terms, as problems and solutions and new problems. Further, we can understand the great aesthetic appeal of cathedrals through understanding their history in this...
Brian Leiter's blog informs me that the American Academy of Arts and Sciences recently elevated seven philosophers to the elite honor of membership in said Academy. Sadly, I only recognized one of the seven names on the list. With all due respect to the other six (my ignorance is my problem, after all, not theirs), I will say a few words now about that one, Robert Audi, a professor at Notre Dame (go Irish). Not only does Audi teach philosophy there, he formerly held a chair in the Notre Dame Business School. Audi, whose image you see here, has distinguished himself in epistemology as an advocate of fallibilistic foundationalism. He developed this view in response to the epistemic regress argument. What is all that? Glad you asked, dear reader. We typically seek to defend and justify our beliefs by reference to other beliefs. I believe that the sun will rise in the east in the morning because I believe that the earth will continue to rotate in the same direction that it al...
We still have eight Justices on the US Supreme Court, so there will surely be further cases this term where we will see the court equally divided. Of course, even with a nine Justice court there are such moments, as when one Justice recuses himself for whatever reason and the non-recusing justices split evenly. But one case in 1939 stands out as an oddity. All nine Justices participated in a case concerning the very controversial matter of the child labor laws (this was two years after the "switch in time" and the consequences of that '37 jurisprudential shift were still being worked out). The Justices decided that the case involved three distinct issues of law. They then voted 5-4 on one of those decisions, 7-2 on the second, (so plainly nine Justices were each voting) and then declared themselves "equally divided" of the third issue, so they took no position on it. This has left historians scratching their heads ever since. Presumably one of the nine d...