Can There Be a Science of Beauty?
Over the last decade or so, a slough of recent research, articles, and arguments have attempted to quantify the subject of beauty, to understand what it means for something to…
Morale as Commons
Imagine you're walking down a street somewhere. It's an unfamiliar area and you don't know who lives there. But while walking, you happen to pass a car, and on the…
Blue on Black: Musing on the Songwriting Process
I have a confession that I suspect will offend a sizeable portion of my audience: I never really liked Five Finger Death Punch. I should be clear: I love the…
Debating Christianity
Next Saturday (June 20), I'll be debating with Myles and SuperLutheran over at The Godcast. No doubt, we will rehash episode 119, where they attempted to take down Holy Nihilism…
On “Consumerism”
What's so bad about consumption? Everyone needs to eat to survive. In my own experience, everyone seems to like having nice things. Yet it is increasingly accepted as a kind…
The Philosopher’s Audience: A Problem
Since the beginning of philosophy, people have debated about who should be philosophizing because it is understood that the philosophy arrived at will, in some manner, reflect the nature of…
Vox Day is Wrong About American Identity
As if to prove my point about the incompatibility between Christianity and Nationalism, Vox Day has been tripling-down on his recent anti-American position: A question asked on SocialGalactic: What tribe does…
“Capitalism” Doesn’t Exist
I want to talk about a word. But first, an introduction. I've been on a Philosophize This bender recently -- it's a great podcast for nerds of that orientation, and…
The Tolerance-Error
One of the great moral paradoxes of 20th-century philosophy was the problem of "tolerance," which was most famously articulated by Karl Popper: Less well known (of Plato's paradoxes) is the paradox…
Evolution Disproves Platonism (A Hypothesis)
This is not so much an idea as the seed of an idea. Plato is a large object in Western philosophy; more needs to be said, and ideas often need…