[003] Weekly Picks

Welcome to the third edition! I couldn't do one last week as I've been really busy. Hopefully, I'll get into the routine and do the Weekly Picks, well, weekly. To make up for the missing week, there's two hours worth of content below. The recommendations are also a little different this time, as they're less heavy …

[002] Weekly Picks

I consumed some great content this week. Granted, some of it (#2) is "great" only in a sense of provoking discussion and sharpening one's objections, rather than for its own merits. But I hope you enjoy it nonetheless: Life Sucks (YouTube): Re: Depression - The Invisible Cause? (Feb 2019) (28 min audio) I have nothing …

[001] Weekly Picks

Welcome to the first edition of Weekly Picks! At the end of every week, around Sunday, I will try to compile a list of my favorite pieces of content that I read, watched, or heard during the last several days. Much of it will be philosophical, but on occasion, I will share a good movie, …

Reasons Do Not Ground Value. They Are Derived From It

T. M. Scanlon proposes and defends a buck-passing account of value. In brief, Scanlon’s analysis takes the notion of reason as primary and explains value in terms of reasons. According to this view, “being good, or valuable, is not a property that itself provides a reason to respond to a thing in certain ways… to …

True Belief as a Means to Understanding

An essay I wrote for my epistemology class. PDF: True Belief as a Means to Understanding

“Utilitarianism Is Demanding Because The World Is Bad” – Peter Singer

Peter Singer says that utilitarianism is demanding because the world has serious problems that need to be solved. I argue that this move is not available for classical utilitarians.

Reconciling the Primacy of the Individual with the Indispensability of Society

A short 500 word (+10%) paper I had to write for "Into to political ideas" class. Copied&pasted as is.   Introduction This paper contrasts Edmund Burke’s traditionalist conservative approach, which prioritizes society, against J.S. Mill’s decidedly individualistic and liberal outlook. A potential individualistic criticism is then offered, followed by a speculation on a conservative response.   …

Democracy Is Intrinsically Flawed

Democracy can be roughly understood as a population-wide process of collective decision making, in which the decisions are made by groups, for groups, and are binding on all the members of the group. In this post, I criticize one key feature of democracy. Democracy, like many other political concepts, can be evaluated on instrumental and …