Omaha on Studio 360

Check out this neat segment from the always great Studio 360.

New and Updated Papers

Over at the papers page of this site I have posted a new paper and two updates on older papers. The new paper is “The Respect Model of Freedom of Expression”. I wrote about the issues discussed in this paper here and here. The updated papers are “Changing Places: The Personal Reason Requirement and Patient [...]

On being in a position to know

Those of you who have been following my rationality posts in the past few weeks  know that the notion of being in a position to know is central to my analysis of substantive rationality. Up until yesterday, I thought that it was fairly obvious what this notion is. However, now I am not quite sure. [...]

Scanlon on Substantive Rationality, part two

After some conversations with various people, it has become clear that my two cases involving Lois outlined in this post are not very good in pumping the right intuitions. In fact, now I am unclear whether Lois really is in a position to know that she has a reason to stand still. In fact, I [...]

We’ll go to…

I have decided to accept my offer from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
… Omaha (Lincoln) to work and exploit the booming music scene, and humility.

In Memoriam: Kurt Vonnegut

Although I am painfully late about this, I still would like to pay my respects to a truly great writer. Galapagos, Slaughter-House 5, and Cat’s Cradle are all on my top 20 favorite book list of all time. He was a brilliant man who will be sorely missed.

Reflections on Nebraska

I got back last night from my visit to the University of Nebraska. Overall, I really enjoyed my visit. The grad students were very nice and very helpful. I specifically thank Cullen Gatten, Steve Swartzer, Bill Bauer, and Tim Loughlin. My biggest regret is that I didn’t get to meet a lot of the faculty [...]

First Carnival of Citizens…

…is here. Check it out, especially my contribution. Moreover, submit to the next one! This is a great idea, and it is a shame more people aren’t participating. Tisk tisk!
Edit: This is the first CoC in this format, which is alternatively called Citizens’ Symposium.

Filling Rationality’s Conceptual Space

As it often is, I have started to question some implicit assumptions I made while writing the first draft of my paper on analyses of ‘rational’ and ‘irrational.’ One such assumption concerns what an adequate analysis is meant to capture. The way I see it as follows: there is a fairly broad conceptual space that [...]

More on substantive rationality

In the comment thread to my reductivist moral responsibility post, Cullen said the following about my view (which is partially presented in my Scanlon and Substantive Rationality post), “However, the view you present assumes that reasons for action and rationality do not come apart, which is something you’ll have to argue for. Some people (Parfit, [...]