April 8, 2016 by Gordon Hawkes
Someone asked me the other day what I thought about the Jian Ghomeshi case. Jian Ghomeshi, if you aren’t familiar, is a Canadian radio personality who was charged with sexually assaulting women. His accusers described him suddenly turning violent, yanking their hair, slapping them. What was not in dispute in the case was that Ghomeshi […]
March 7, 2016 by Gordon Hawkes
There is a straightforward objection to any denial of the law of noncontradiction: A denial of the law of noncontradiction is self-refuting because one must presuppose the truth of the law of noncontradiction in order to deny it. That is, to deny the law of noncontradiction is to allow that it is both true and […]
October 27, 2015 by Gordon Hawkes
This is the second in a series of posts answering the most common objections to substance dualism (see the intro here, and the first response here). I will argue that an appeal to Ockham’s razor does not, at present, carry any weight against substance dualism, and the principle is only relevant as a hypothetical qualifier […]
October 7, 2015 by Gordon Hawkes
For many who’ve taken philosophy courses at the university level (let alone those who teach philosophy), substance dualism appears to be a theory with, dare I say it, no substance. It’s not a “live option.” But, to extend the pun, I think it’s the dismissal, not the theory, that lacks substance. In the introduction to this series of posts, I […]
September 22, 2015 by Gordon Hawkes
On Friday of last week, the state legislature of California passed a bill to allow assisted suicide. If Governor Jerry Brown signs the bill into law, California will become the fifth state in the Union to make assisted suicide legal. How do advocates of assisted suicide justify allowing doctors to assist people in killing themselves? […]
March 14, 2015 by Gordon Hawkes
Comments Off on The Intellectual Life, by A. G. Sertillanges (1)
I am currently reading through, The Intellectual Life, by A. G. Sertillanges, a French Dominican monk from the early twentieth century. The book is a masterpiece. If I were to recommend only one guide to graduate students—no, to anyone who takes thinking seriously—this would be it. Obviously, Sertillanges writes from a Roman Catholic perspective, and […]
January 30, 2017 by Gordon Hawkes
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