Mock Severity

This edition of Philosopher’s Carnival is brought to you by the letter “C” and my cheesy humor.  First person to leave a comment explaining why titled this post “Philosopher’s Carnival C” gets extra brownie points.

On to more serious business, I was genuinely surprised at the quality and level of thinking displayed in these blogs!  Make the time to deeply think about each link; there is depth and insight in each one.

The Unique and the Random

Clayton Littlejohn wrote an wonderfully complex and intellectually stimulating discussion on normative judgments in his post “Justified Normative Judgments” at PEA Soup.  The discussion in the comments is particularly insightful, mostly because of the fascinating issues Clayton brings up.  e.g. “Should your conscience be your guide?”

I love philosophy humor, so it tickled my fancy when Chaospet submitted “Table for one.. or two?” A wrench is thrown into the idea that personhood begins at conception; hilarity ensues.

Now for a sharp left turn: Do we understand others by replicating their mental states?  The role and function of mirror neurons has philosophic import to many theories of human cognition.  These thoughts are pursued by Shannon Spaulding at the philosophyofbrains.com blog in her post “Are mirror neurons evidence for simulation theory?”

Meta Philosophy

Chris Hallquist writes in “How agnostic are you willing to be?” on how confident philosophers should be in light of our widespread disagreement.  In order to fully appreciate this post, read through the Phil Papers survey questions posted at the bottom of this Philosopher’s Carnival.  If you understand what each question is asking, congratulations!  You are a philosopher.

Chris Hoover over at Living via Cognition wrote about the value of exact thinking in the post “People Who Use “Extravagant” Language” and I wrote “The Unwashed Masses Have a Point” in response.   It’s meta-Philosophy for the people who like to think about thinking.

Political Theory

Continuing the thread from the previous section, Aaron Powell writes about political meta-philosophy in “Communitarianism’s Fatal Misconception.” What are we to do with fundamental disagreement in political thinking?  Aaron tackles this question in order to properly understand what he describes as Communitarianism’s fatal misconception.

Joachim considers Panpsychism in some versions of Marxist theory.  In other words: is everything that exists an experience?  Does everything that exists experience?  Jachim makes sense of these thoughts in the context of Marxist thinking in “Panpsychic Marxism?”

Consider the following “There are rational paradoxes (e.g. hedonic paradoxes) whereby achieving an end A is hindered by actively pursuing A (or A only) and can instead be achieved by instead/also pursuing end B or cultivating disposition C.”  This is exactly what Murali defends over at A Singaporean Renaissance in the post “Two Types of reasons: Prisoner’s Dilemma and the categorical imperative revisited”

Phil Papers survey questions:

A priori knowledge: yes or no?
Abstract objects: Platonism or nominalism?
Aesthetic value: objective or subjective?
Analytic-synthetic distinction: yes or no?
Epistemic justification: internalism or externalism?
Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will?
God: theism or atheism?
External world: idealism, skepticism, or non-skeptical realism?
Knowledge: empiricism or rationalism?
Knowledge claims: contextualism, relativism, or invariantism?
Laws of nature: Humean or non-Humean?
Logic: classical or non-classical?
Mental content: internalism or externalism?
Meta-ethics: moral realism or moral anti-realism?
Metaphilosophy: naturalism or non-naturalism?
Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism?
Moral motivation: internalism or externalism?
Moral judgment: cognitivism or non-cognitivism?
Newcomb’s problem: one box or two boxes?
Normative ethics: deontology, consequentialism, or virtue ethics?
Perceptual experience: disjunctivism, qualia theory, representationalism, or sense-datum theory?
Personal identity: biological view, psychological view, or further-fact view?
Politics: communitarianism, egalitarianism, or libertarianism?
Proper names: Fregean or Millian?
Science: scientific realism or scientific anti-realism?
Teletransporter (new matter): survival or death?
Time: A-theory or B-theory?
Trolley problem (five straight ahead, one on side track, turn requires switching, what ought one do?): switch or don’t switch?
Truth: correspondence, deflationary, or epistemic?
Zombies: inconceivable, conceivable but not metaphysically possible, or metaphysically possible?