Scaffolding

One way to address my worry that philosophy classes inadvertently teach students that reasoning skills are useless is to better scaffold courses, beginning with puzzles that are clearly solvable using reasoning.

Keeping Students in College

I've learned a lot about things that help retain college students this past year as a first-year advisor.

Paucity of Evidence for Causal Closure

The widely-held assumption of causal closure of the physical world may not have much evidence supporting it.

Natural Law's Broader Project

One way of understanding natural law is that its project is less about defining ‘law’ than about considering the legal system’s role within social, practical reasoning.

Fake-Data Simulation

Fake-data simulation is an extension of abductive reasoning, specifically exploring the implications of various competing hypotheses.

Indexicals & the Origins of Language

 A crucial step between one-dimensional communication that animals and computers can do and the "speech triangle" of human language may be utilizing indexicals, literally pointing to focus joint attention.

Contingent Racial Capitalism

 One way Marxists and critical race scholars may talk past each other is in conflating whether capitalism and racism are necessarily linked and whether they are merely actually, historically linked.

Deference and Meritocracy

I may need to figure out the tension in my thoughts on deference to experts and criticisms of meritocracy.

Guess Culturist

 I grew up in a Guess Culture, and am biased against members of Ask Culture.

How Hard Is Morality?

Being moral is not hard in the same way calculus or rock climbing is. It's maybe hard in the way dieting is, or, more apt, inconvenient in the way walking 10 miles instead of driving is.

Good Faith

At the start of disagreements it's important to establish good faith before almost anything else.

Anti-Staff Bias

 As a faculty member, I have inherited an anti-staff bias.