You can download and read or share a .pdf of the complete text of this essay HERE. Nagel & Me: Beyond The Mechanistic Worldview Nine Years After Nine years after, I think it’s safe to say that Thomas Nagel’s 2012 book, Mind and Cosmos[i] was extremely controversial, both inside the intellectual hothouse of professional academic … [continue reading]
Author Archives: Robert Hanna
Analytic Metaphysics as a Copernican Devolution in Philosophy.
Analytic Metaphysics as a Copernican Devolution in Philosophy Human reason has this peculiar fate in one species of its cognitions that it is burdened with questions which it cannot dismiss, since they are given to it as problems by the nature of reason itself, but which it also cannot answer, since they transcend every capacity … [continue reading]
A Theory of Human Dignity, #19–The Moral Comparison Between Real Persons And Non-Person Animals.
This long essay, “A Theory of Human Dignity,” presents and defends a general theory of human dignity, with special attention paid to spelling out its background metaphysics, formulating and justifying a basic set of dignitarian moral principles, and critically addressing hard cases for the theory. “A Theory of Human Dignity” is being made available here … [continue reading]
The Question That Quine Refused To Answer.
The Question That Quine Refused To Answer In 1998, at The World Philosophy Congress in Boston, W.V.O. Quine, the leading Analytic philosopher of the second half of the 20th century, was asked by a New York Times reporter: “what have we learned from philosophy in the twentieth century?” Quine replied: “I should have thought up … [continue reading]
A Theory of Human Dignity, #18–Pain and Suffering.
This long essay, “A Theory of Human Dignity,” presents and defends a general theory of human dignity, with special attention paid to spelling out its background metaphysics, formulating and justifying a basic set of dignitarian moral principles, and critically addressing hard cases for the theory. “A Theory of Human Dignity” is being made available here … [continue reading]
What Was Analytic Philosophy?
What Was Analytic Philosophy? Contemporary Analytic philosophers like to self-present as normative models of clear-&-distinct thinking, talking, and writing, and also as veritable cognitive engines of critical, cogent, and incisive reasoning: that’s their self-advertised philosophical stock-in-trade. Hence it might come as an ironically amusing surprise to you to learn that the term “Analytic philosophy” itself … [continue reading]
A Theory of Human Dignity, #17–Real Persons and Different Species.
This long essay, “A Theory of Human Dignity,” presents and defends a general theory of human dignity, with special attention paid to spelling out its background metaphysics, formulating and justifying a basic set of dignitarian moral principles, and critically addressing hard cases for the theory. “A Theory of Human Dignity” is being made available here … [continue reading]
A Theory of Human Dignity, #16–Non-Human Animals and Their Associate Membership in The Realm of Ends.
This long essay, “A Theory of Human Dignity,” presents and defends a general theory of human dignity, with special attention paid to spelling out its background metaphysics, formulating and justifying a basic set of dignitarian moral principles, and critically addressing hard cases for the theory. “A Theory of Human Dignity” is being made available here … [continue reading]
A Theory of Human Dignity, #15–Post-Persons.
This long essay, “A Theory of Human Dignity,” presents and defends a general theory of human dignity, with special attention paid to spelling out its background metaphysics, formulating and justifying a basic set of dignitarian moral principles, and critically addressing hard cases for the theory. “A Theory of Human Dignity” is being made available here … [continue reading]
The Paradox of Distributive Social Justice.
The Paradox of Distributive Social Justice Distributive social justice is the set of moral, social-institutional, and/or political principles, processes, and structures that determine the distribution of benefits and burdens in capitalist, liberal, democratic nation-States. In their Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on “Distributive Justice,” Julian Lamont and Christi Favor quite correctly although somewhat tautologously note … [continue reading]