Larry Solum has a typically insightful post responding to Matt Evans’s criticism of Richard Dawkins for proposing a naturalistic ethics. I think Larry’s criticisms are spot on, but for my money much too tentative.
Over the past few weeks, many analytic philosophers — including my wife and several of her colleagues — have received a free copy of a book called The Elements of Mentality: The foundations of psychology and philosophy by David Hume. Not, you understand, the David Hume who wrote A Treatise of Human Nature, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and other well-known books. He has been dead for some time. This David Hume, as is discreetly noted on the inside back flap is a pseudonym. Why pick “David Hume” out of all possible noms de plume? I suppose it can’t hurt to have your book shelved along with ones written by the most influential English-speaking philosopher in the past three hundred years.
Dan Drezner’s “post”:http://volokh.com/2003_07_20_volokh_archive.html#105917081573152949 on the agreements and differences between Josh Marshall and Steven den Beste has stirred up quite a debate, including posts by “Kieran”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/000297.html , “Kevin Drum”:http://www.calpundit.com/archives/001760.html and “Tim Dunlop”:http://www.roadtosurfdom.com/surfdomarchives/001388.php . My tuppence worth: Dan has identified some interesting points of agreement between Den Beste and Marshall, but I still don’t buy Dan’s arguments about the justifications for the war, or its likely consequences.