Arbitrary Marks

And why did my informal fallacy bingo cards not make the Leiter Reports, huh? Okay, maybe not getting into the Baltimore Sun has something to do with it…

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I’ve been a bad philosophy blogger. But just in time for tonight’s presidential debates, I give you:
Informal Fallacy Bingo!
You and your friends can download this free PDF and play bingo during tonight’s debates. Just put an “X” over the spot where the speaker commits one of these errors. For advanced players, confident in their ability [...]

To create a massive brain. Functionalists of the world, be afraid. Be very afraid.

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Philosophers of language will appreciate this one. I recently had a Fregean moment when I realized that Hannah Montana is Miley Cyrus. Yes, make fun of me in the comments all you want. I had heard about the Miley Cyrus photo and knew she was some Disney star. And I’d heard about Hannah Montana. But somehow I never connected the two together.

(In this moment I also got a glimpse of my future self as a parent, struggling to keep up with my kids’ pop culture consumption…apparently reading science and philosophy blogs, listening to NPR and reading The Atlantic Monthly isn’t going to cut it.)

As a plot mover, the Joker was less an agent of chaos and more like the TA for a freshman philosophy course, leading everyone through twisty little exercises in artificial circumstances that present the poor student with difficult choices. (link)

I’m not sure whether I should take that as a compliment or an insult.

Now I have to go back and read Jeremy Bentham to figure out just where he diverged from John Locke. Or I could just read Wikipedia.

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Actually, it isn’t God, its iGod. I took a bit of a break from prepping for my Newberry Library class tomorrow night and thought I’d ask iGod if he understood Pseudo-Dionysius. You’d think he might, since the guy is going on about names for God.
The dialogue is below the fold. And it will explain the [...]

Jesus and Mo have discovered Al Plantinga and the results are, as usual, hysterical. Maybe, like Richard Dawkins, my temporal lobe is just not sensitive enough to the magnetic vibrations of the Almighty?
My Newberry Library course began this past Thursday and I have a phenomenal group of 18 people who signed up to slog through [...]

I like to think of myself as a geek. I’m still not quite thirty, live in a relatively hip section of the city, follow Lost and The Office, and, well, I’m not entirely ignorant about pop culture. But I will not text.

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Unitarian Universalists are known for anachronistically “claiming” famous people as part of their own. Well, a few days ago, I discovered a legitimate UU who I think we should be advertising (or should be advertising for us)–Catie Curtis.  If you haven’t heard her song, “People Look Around“, you should check it out. She’s a wonderful [...]