This is Bill Vallicella's Typepad Profile.
Join Typepad and start following Bill Vallicella's activity
Bill Vallicella
A recovering academician, I taught philosophy at various universities in the USA and abroad before abandoning a tenured position to live the eremitic life of the independent philosopher in the Sonoran desert.
Interests: Everything. <em>Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto.</em> from Terentius. "I am a man: I consider nothing human foreign to me." Nothing human, but also nothing nonhuman.
Recent Activity
About Whataboutism
(Written 21 November 2018. Edits added.) What's with all the contemporary noise about 'whataboutism'? Example 1. A lefty complains, "Trump is a liar!" A conservative responds, "What about Hillary and Bill and Obama? Are they not liars too?" Example 2. A pro-lifer argues that killing the prenatal is immoral and... Continue reading
Posted Apr 3, 2020 at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical
Comment
0
A Relativist Cannot Rationally Object to the Imposition of One's Values on Others
(Written 11 September 2016) The following argument is sometimes heard. "Because values are relative, it is wrong to impose one's values on others." But if values are relative, and among my values is the value of instructing others in the right way to live, then surely I am justified in... Continue reading
Posted Jan 18, 2020 at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical
Comment
0
Being as the Apotheosis of the Copula: Frege's Dialogue with Pünjer on Existence
Posted Nov 9, 2019 at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical
Comment
0
Potentiality and the Substance View of Persons
(Written 20 July 2015) I suspect that Vlastimil V's (neo-scholastic) understanding of potentiality is similar to the one provided by Matthew Lu in Potentiality Rightly Understood: The substance view of persons holds that every human being either has the potential to manifest any and all properties essential to personhood or... Continue reading
Posted Oct 17, 2019 at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical
Comment
0
Why Did Thomas Aquinas Leave his Summa Theologiae Unfinished?
(Written Christmas Eve, 2017) Our frenetic and hyperkinetic way of life these days makes it difficult to take seriously religion and what is essential to it, namely, the belief in what William James calls an Unseen Order. Our communications technology in particular is binding us ever tighter within the human... Continue reading
Posted Oct 9, 2019 at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical
Comment
0
The Dictionary Fallacy
What I will call the Dictionary Fallacy is the fallacy of thinking that certain philosophical questions can be answered by consulting dictionaries. The philosophical questions I have in mind are those of the form What is X? or What is the nature of X? High on the list: What is... Continue reading
Posted May 30, 2019 at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical
Comment
0
Immortality and Meaning
Some think that if bodily death spells the extinction of the person, then bodily death consigns human life to meaninglessness. For a life to have a final meaning that transcends the petty and particular meanings of the quotidian round, it cannot end in death. Or so many of us feel.... Continue reading
Posted Mar 23, 2019 at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical
Comment
0
John N. Deck's Contrast Argument against the Philosophy of Being
John N. Deck is a highly interesting, if obscure, figure in the neo-Scholasticism of the 20th century. I first took note of him in 1989, ten years after his death, when his article "Metaphysics or Logic?" appeared in New Scholasticism (vol. LXIII, no. 2, Spring 1989, pp. 229-240.) Thanks to... Continue reading
Posted Mar 8, 2019 at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical
Comment
0
Money, Power, and Equality: An Egalitarian Paradox
J. R. Lucas, "Against Equality," in Justice and Equality, ed. Hugo Bedau (Prentice-Hall, 1971), pp. 148-149: Since men value power and prestige as much as the possession of wealth---indeed, these three `goods' cannot be completely separated---it is foolish to seek to establish an equality of wealth on egalitarian grounds. It... Continue reading
Posted Mar 6, 2019 at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical
Comment
0
Is There a Right to Health Care?
(Written November 2013) Food, shelter, and clothing are more important than health care in that one can get along for substantial periods of time without health care services, but one cannot survive for long without food, shelter, and clothing. Given this plain fact, why don’t the proponents of ‘free’ universal... Continue reading
Posted Feb 16, 2019 at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical
Comment
0
Kenny, Geach, and the Perils of Reading Frege into Aquinas
(Written 23 December 2013) I have been studying Anthony Kenny, Aquinas on Being (Oxford 2002). I cannot report that I find it particularly illuminating. I am troubled by the reading back of Fregean doctrines into Aquinas, in particular in the appendix, "Frege and Aquinas on Existence and Number." (pp. 195-204)... Continue reading
Posted Feb 1, 2019 at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical
Comment
0
The Primacy of the Intentional Over the Linguistic Revisited
Posted Jan 23, 2019 at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical
Comment
0
Rosenberg's Definition of 'Scientism' and the Problem of Defining 'Scientism'
(Written 15 August 2013) A good deal of nonsense about scientism has been written lately by philosophers and scientists who, apparently unwilling to own up to their embrace of scientism, want to co-opt the term and use it in an idiosyncratic and self-serving way. Fodor is a recent example among... Continue reading
Posted Jan 14, 2019 at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical
Comment
0
"And the Word Was Made Flesh and Dwelt Among Us" (John 1:14)
Let us meditate this Christmas morning on the sheer audacity of the idea that God would not only enter this world of time and misery, but come into it in the most humble manner possible, inter faeces et urinam nascimur, born between feces and urine, entering between the legs of... Continue reading
Posted Dec 25, 2018 at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical
Comment
0
Conservatives, Liberals, and Happiness
It turns out that conservatives are happier than liberals. But why? Conservative explanation. Marriage and religious faith are conducive to happiness. More conservatives are married than liberals, and more practice a religion. Ergo, conservatives as a group are happier than liberals as a group. Liberal explanation. Conservatives are happier because... Continue reading
Posted Nov 22, 2018 at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical
Comment
0
The Divine Job Description
What jobs would a being have to perform to qualify as God? I count four sorts of job, ontological, epistemological, axiological, and soteriological, the first two more 'Athenian,' the second two more 'Hierosolymic.' The fruitful tension between Athens and Jersualem is a background presupposition. (The tension is fruitful in that... Continue reading
Posted Nov 14, 2018 at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical
Comment
0
Is It Sometimes Rational to Believe on Insufficient Evidence?
Posted Nov 14, 2018 at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical
Comment
0
Anthony Flood on Philosophy as Misosophy
Posted Nov 13, 2018 at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical
Comment
0
Evidence and Actuality: A Modal Punch at W. K. Clifford
Posted Nov 8, 2018 at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical
Comment
0
Toleration Extremism: Notes on John Stuart Mill
Posted Nov 4, 2018 at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical
Comment
0
Conscience, Brain, and Scientistic Pseudo-Understanding
One of the tasks of philosophy is to expose and debunk bad philosophy. And there is a lot of it out there, especially in the writings of journalists who report on scientific research. Scornful of philosophy, many of them peddle scientistic pseudo-understanding without realizing that what they sell is itself... Continue reading
Posted Oct 22, 2018 at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical
Comment
0
Burden of Proof, Appeal to Ignorance, Safety Considerations, and God
Posted Oct 19, 2018 at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical
Comment
0
Mary Midgley on Complaints about Clarity
Mary Midgley in The Owl of Minerva: A Memoir, Routledge, 2005, p. 13, reminisces about her headmistress, Miss Annie Bowden: I also remember something striking that she had said when I had complained that I knew the answer to some question but I just couldn't say it clearly. 'If you... Continue reading
Posted Oct 14, 2018 at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical
Comment
0
A. E. Taylor on F. H. Bradley on Religion
The following quotations are from A. E. Taylor's "F. H. Bradley" which is an account of his relation with the great philosopher, an account published in Mind, vol. XXXIV, no. 133 (January 1925), pp. 1-12. A. E. Taylor is an important philosopher in his own right whose works, unfortunately, are... Continue reading
Posted Oct 13, 2018 at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical
Comment
0
The Pig, the Fool, and Socrates
Posted Oct 12, 2018 at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical
Comment
0
More...
Subscribe to Bill Vallicella’s Recent Activity