I first encountered author Kiese Laymon when I read his essay “You are the Second Person,” an unapologetically bridge-burning reckoning of his encounter with a assimilationist editor who tried to deracinate his work. What stuck[…]
Category: Metaphysics
Saints and Simulators
I’m proud to announce that my new series, “Saints and Simulators,” a book-length exploration of the intersection between religion and technology, is now live at the Partially Examined Life blog. Starting from the deliberately provocative[…]
The Hidden Dragon
I hope you’ll forgive me blowing my own horn a bit. After all, it’s not every day you discover something new about something invented nearly two-thousand years ago. The photo above is of an ancient[…]
Reconstructivist Art: 1/0
Part of the Reconstructivist Art series: When Tailsteak’s webcomic 1/0 premiered in 2000, it was part of a brand-new boom in web-based daily comic strip production by a host of amateur auteurs, most with more[…]
Do you think that the following argument is a good one : X says that a certain metaphysical view is correct. X says that if this view M is correct, it should produce certain effects in the psychology of people that realize it. (Make them super-smart, or super-kind for example). It is observed that X has this type of psychology. Thus the metaphysical view M is true.
I am part of a minority of philosophers who believe that some variant on the argument you proposed can be incorporated into a strong inductive argument –in fact I’m currently at work on just such[…]