Snakes Alive

Universalism, the prevailing doctrine of the Christian Church during its first five hundred years – John Wesley Hanson Is there anything good about he...

Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity – James Tabor Heaven and Hell: A History of the Afterlife – Bart Ehrman From Plato to Christ:...

Yeah, the Buried Giant. I don't know why I typed it that way. It's alright, but I'm leaving it aside for now to finish some other stuff.

Chester Himes – If He Hollers Let Him Go Joan Didion – Play It As It Lays José Antonio Villarreal – Pocho John Steinbeck – Tortilla Flat

T. C. Boyle – The Tortilla Curtain Kazuo Ishiguro – The Buried Knight Virginia Woolf – To the Lighthouse Tommy Orange – There There

Were you asleep during the entire 2000s and 2010s? How many times have we gone over this?

But it's not novel. Surely you know this? Its banality is reason to suspect that there is some other reason you think it warrants discussion.

What's the point? Why the interest in judging the morality of Christians? Is it just a secular victory lap, mocking the old guard that the last genera...

What is the reason for this moral pearl-clutching?

I can't speak for others, but I catch the whiff of a kind of pre-bigotry on it. I feel the same way when people start insinuating, on 'rational' groun...

If the question were posed to me, I'd answer it this way: As to Christianity, you're right, its view of eschatology probably makes no moral sense, and...

That's not to say I dislike the position of 'modern, Western people,' since I'm one of them and basically agree – but we shouldn't mystify ourselves w...

I doubt it. People's own propaganda about themselves is never right.

The real answer as I understand it from 'serious' believers as opposed to (mere) apologists is that God's justifications and authority are beyond us. ...

In addition to the Derrida and Vendler, I've got the following on the list: Noam Chomsky – Cartesian Linguistics: A Chapter in the History of Rational...

Yeah, that's right. On a classical logic, it will be true just in case t (that is, whatever object 't' denotes) is in the domain. On a free logic, it ...

My understanding is that free logic has a split domain, one of existents and one of non-existents (although you can interpret the domains however you ...

As far as I know, you don't need the dual domain to have E! – you can define it in a regular old first-order predicate logic, which is pretty much wha...

Cool, I might check it out. Stevenson is mainly referenced today as an influence on a kind of non-cognitivism about moral language, so far as I know (...

Yes, although the technical innovation of free logic is not the introduction of an existence predicate (you can define such a predicate in any first-o...

Reviews of previous books: Austin's Sense and Sensibilia – Really incredible. No idea why I hadn't read it sooner. Section VII should be mandatory rea...

If you're not sore at the end of the day, you don't work.

Revisiting some Anglophone classics about language from mid-century: J. L. Austin – How to Do Things with Words J. L. Austin – Sense and Sensibilia Jo...

It's more that philosophers will read a series of books written in response to each other, and assume that what's talked about in those books must be ...

I'm wary of claims like this, since there is no a priori reason to listen to philosophers about what is or isn't part of the human condition – often, ...

Some more stuff on the way: Leonard Pitt – The Decline of the Californios: A Social History of the Spanish-Speaking Californians, 1846-1890 Gregory No...

Here's the deal with OLP, as I see it. Philosophers often think that they are arguing over the way things are. However, on closer inspection, they are...

Soon to start reading, after the last batch is done: John Fante – Ask the Dust Jack London – Martin Eden Frank Norris – The Octopus: A Story of Califo...

Across worlds, not models. A model has a set of worlds, in its frame. What do you mean, 'ordinary?' Obviously in a strict sense you cannot reconcile t...

Well, I'll word it slightly more carefully. Kripke's modal logic as it was initially presented as a propositional modal logic, and so it simply didn't...

Well, the point of a non-logical constant is that its value is invariant across worlds. You could, of course, have a modal logic where individual term...

That's right. I didn't mean to suggest that the unique existence predicate was of the same kind as the regular existence predicate (which is of indivi...

Quantifiers are (nothing but) predicates of formulae.

I don't mean 'second-order' in the sense of a second-order logic that quantifies over predicates. I just mean this: Where 'v' is a variable and 'p' is...

The unique existence predicate is second-order, and serves a similar function as an existential quantifier – so it has a different syntax, and occurs ...

Soon to start reading: Andrew Isenburg – Mining California: An Ecological History Louis Warren – God's Red Son: The Ghost Dance Religion and the Makin...

Sometimes, the exclamation point signals unique existence, as opposed to just existence. It varies.

Your standard quantified modal logic contains an infinite number of predicate symbols, which are just assigned interpretations relative to a model. Le...

It doesn't need to have a particular definition – it's just a predicate.

I don't know what you're asking.

You can define any predicate you like, necessary or otherwise. To make a predicate 'P' that is necessary for an individual a at a model, you just posi...

This depends on how you construe existence. If you just have an existence predicate, E!, then sure – you just say that E!(a), let's say, where 'a' ref...

I've already answered this a couple times. I'm not sure what you're hung up on.

The issue is also that insofar as epistemicism purports to be a description of this game, it is a false one – vague language isn't somehow secretly pr...

Ah, OK. I think I didn't pick up sufficiently on the 'pretend' part. Surely, though, pretended things aren't so? Is your position that we ought to pre...

I accept P1 because I wouldn't apply 'heap' to a single grain. You seem to think that because 'heap' has some property preventing it from being applie...

The problem is this is not true. You seem to be hung up on the false idea that a magical barrier exists preventing people from using words in certain ...

Of course, I would not reject P1, because I think using 'heap' is such a non-standard way is pointless and confusing.

All these things are a matter of adjudication. You could choose to use a word in a highly nonstandard way, and people could go along with it – but the...

Who is correct is a matter of arbitrary decision in this case, since it is a matter of arbitrary decision wether we choose to apply the word 'heap' or...