Santayana as pragmatist

I’m largely skeptical of placing George Santayana in the same category as other American pragmatists, but he does have his moments.  I stumbled across this great little nugget, which mirrors the late 20th century American pragmatic thinkers (and, in some ways, post-moderns): [W]e are human beings thinking in moral terms, and we give the name […]

John Dewey’s birthday…

John Dewey was born on this day (20 October, 1859).  Celebrate by trying to develop a creative new solution to an old problem. We thus reach a technical definition of education: It is that reconstruction or reorganization of experience which adds to the meaning of experience, and which increases ability to direct the course of […]

“American Philosopher”, part 2

Short film #2 in Phillip McReynolds‘s American Philosopher series offers a few pieces of information that divide up into histories of the early lives of contemporary American philosophers and the early life of philosophy in historic America. The former, tales about the temptations of philosophy in the early lives of modern thinkers, makes up the […]

“American Philosopher”, part 1

  There are a couple of nice little nuggets I’d like to pull out of this second video of American Philosopher.  First, I was excited to see the late John E. Smith join the video as an interviewee, though he seemed not to be mentioned in the teaser.  Smith was a great distiller of good […]

“American Philosopher”, part 0

There’s a new film (or series of eight rather short films, I guess) by Phillip McReynolds called American Philosopher.  You can watch the whole thing online, and it’s a pleasure that I recommend taking.  Quite frankly, it seems mostly to be a bunch of spliced-together interviews with a few major living (or recently living) academic […]

On Bullshit: Studying for the GRE

I would like to think that there is something meaningful manifest in the fact  that I happened upon Dr. Harry Frankfurt‘s somewhat-philosophical work [amazonify]0691122946::text:objectrue0a-20:::On Bullshit[/amazonify] on the same day that I started doing actual practice essays for my upcoming GRE.  Frankfurt’s piece is remarkably short, and contains a few interesting observations about the supposed nature […]

Goetz and Taliaferro’s “Naturalism”: A Little Argument with Myself

recommended listening: Low’s “A Little Argument with Myself”, from the album Trust (hear it on Youtube or buy it at Insound) I recently took it upon myself to read Charles Taliaferro and Stewart Goetz‘s work Naturalism ([amazonify]0802807682::text::::for sale here[/amazonify]).  I highly recommend the book for anyone looking for a good summary of some considerations of […]

Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature

In my attempt to learn a bit more from some “post”-analyitic philosophers, I’ve decided to begin by revisiting Richard Rorty’s Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature ([amazonify]0691020167::text::::sold here[/amazonify]).  I rather regret going back to this text before having had direct experience with the work of Heidegger in particular, but I am also displeased that I […]