Yeah, and some of my best friends are moral philosophers...

Faced with a moral dilemma, would you ask a moral philosopher for advice? Actually, sharpen that a little:

If you wanted someone to aid you in making a difficult ethical decision about medical treatment for your child would you be better off consulting a moral philosopher, or a physician who has dealt with similar cases for 30 years.

Gerald Dworkin had a go at answering the question he`posed, here's Jason Stanley's reply, and DJ Velleman has a slightly different take.

Gado gets it (with apologies to Giles Foden)

YES!

Steve Tikolo (our every own Siva) destroys Zimbabwe.

UPDATE: Via Mentalacrobatics (who's to be congratulated on successfully moving house).

the craziest columnist in East Africa now has her own website.

Betty Caplan is bonkers. I know this because we've (non-pseudonymously) exchanged rude emails in the past. You might want to go over here and see what all the fuss is about.

Ex-Catholic-School boy in massacre shock.

It's difficult to belive that there won't be many more to come.

Woe to the downpressors/They'll eat the bread of sorrow !

You'd think that genocide and civil war would satisfy any government's evilness quota. You'd be wrong. The Sudanese govt. is intensifying border clashes with the Chadians as a result of its continuing attempt to cleanse Darfur of the Fur, Zaghawa, et. al. Chad's none too stable, so there's the possibility of an intra-Chadian war...You can read all about it here.

May they eat the bread of sorrow indeed. The sole good thing (maybe) about this is that it's another proof that colonial borders are no longer taken seriously - surely a sign that everyone's overcome their sovereignty fetish?

Against Factivity

Counterexamples to the following principle are invited:

S knows that p only if either p or it is impossible to know that not-p.

Masolo on African Sage Philosophy

DA Masolo's Stanford Encyclopaedia entry on African sage philosophy is now out. It's a good overview of the main positions, and has some interesting things to say about the ethnophilosophy debate.

Philosopher's Carnival

The new Philosopher's Carnival is here.

I especially liked Jonathan Kvanvig's 'indicatives and warranted assertibility', and RadGeek's nice post about the impiety paradox.

Sir Peter Frederick Strawson RIP

Obits at the Times, Guardian, Telegraph; Jason Stanley's appreciation at the Leiter Reports.

aristotle and germany

My Sloth! and the Laodiceans! - a deadly mix ! I've been turning over a potential post in my mind - inspired by one of them, but something seems to get in the way every time. This post for example, which reminded me of Aristotle's bit about contary predications only going through for the same object if the object is not actual (or something like that - I'm too lazy to look it up now) In short, on good metaphysical authority, there's no actual object that instantiates both prussian militarism and austrian cuddliness.