Philosophy tip: If you want to use the word “better,” you have to pay for it (by specifying its norms). Being like “more people in a world is just better… uh… normlessly!” is straight up goofy.

New post at the Stan Stack, where we explore why some dudes try to structure metaethics on "having reasons" and why they lack good reasons to do so. open.substack.com/pub/stanpatt...

Lance Bush @lanceindependent.bsky.social and I wrote a takedown of "intuitions" as a normatively-laden concept deserving justificatory weight out of the gate. It's past time to give that notion the heave-ho. open.substack.com/pub/lanceind...

From its description, "1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology is a constantly growing collection of over 200 original essays on important philosophical topics. These essays are introductions rather than argumentative articles." However, Nathan Nobis recently wrote this article:

An indictment of the terms "reliable" and "unreliable" in serious attempts at philosophy, and problems with "-ible/-able" terms generally. open.substack.com/pub/stanpatt...

Latest philosophy post up at the StanStack. I don't post these very often, driving scarcity & value. #philsky #philosophy open.substack.com/pub/stanpatt...

Everyone's Problem

"If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves on behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday." - Isaiah 58

Turns out, you can show that goodness is bad using pure Facts & Logic. No "feelies" here! open.substack.com/pub/stanpatt...

Two years ago a 50-year-old mystery in Conway's Game of Life was solved. A pattern was discovered that cannot be generated by anything except for itself -- there's no way to procedurally build it within the ruleset. conwaylife.com/forums/viewt...

Check out my chat with Dr. Lance Bush about how many boxes to take in Newcomb's Paradox. #philosophy #philsky www.youtube.com/live/pNwGnxd...

When we see what sorts of human foibles Newcomb's Paradox "trolls," it helps us unravel other thought experiments that continue to haunt philosophers even though they should have been dissolved long ago. #philosophy #philsky open.substack.com/pub/stanpatt...

After several months, a new article is up at the StanStack. There's a lot here; I hope you get something out of it. #philosophy #philsky stanpatton.substack.com/p/minmaxing-...

We aren't used to talking in the most philosophically safe & coherent framings. This is an issue because "philosophical intuition" probably = "how we're used to framing things."

It is not important for responsibility that you can *actually* do otherwise, only that you could do otherwise *under a counterfactual*. Whether a "yes" is inculpating depends on the job or jobgiver(s). Responsibility was never some ontological property. It's just a component of stewarding practice.

"This is not a picture of screw X" is how building this bunk bed is going.

If someone is using straight bivalent deduction to persuade you of something, watch out. There's a weird trick that religious (and anti-religious) apologists and other attention-grabbing folks do all the time: #philosophy #philsky open.substack.com/pub/stanpatt...

Out: "Is Die Hard a Christmas movie?" In: "Is most philosophical chatter variations on ‘Is Die Hard a Christmas movie?’?” #philsky #philosophy open.substack.com/pub/stanpatt...

You can ride a bike without a helmet. It takes extra time to find and don the helmet, and it feels awkward. Riding without that bulk is quicker and more comfy, even if it invites big risks. Framing "potential" as a property of an object is like riding without a helmet.

"Does this person worship the same God as that person?" has a boringly definitive answer, but definitive answers kill conversations, and dead conversations tell no tales.

"Evidence" does not have a tight meaning, so people will hop from neutral to arbitrarily laden meanings of it. All polysemy is an opportunity for rhetoricians.

A new way to approach Newcomb's Paradox that makes it more intuitive that the only rational choices are "reject the scenario" or "1-box." #philsky #philosophy

In epistemology, raise one eyebrow super high whenever you see a syllogism that treats the word "reliable" as if it is a "yes or no" thing, with a single probabilistic threshold to "count."

I wanted the commemorative boot glass but also the stout they limit to 8 oz pours...

Q: "If beauty is not an objective feature of things, and is instead in the 'eye of the beholder,' is a thing not beautiful prior to me discovering it?" A: This puzzle, driven by the hybrid subjective & objective nature of beauty, value, etc., is solved by hypothetical framing: "If I had seen it..."

Virtue ethics is evocative, and feels purely objective at first glance. But here morality's stance-dependence just manifests as semantic quibbles about what acts qualify under the virtue & vice labels.

Some feel that nominalism trades away our meaning in order to be truer to reality. But unless our nominalism holds tight to meaning, we won't be true to ourselves. #philsky #philosophy open.substack.com/pub/stanpatt...

Touching leaves these days.

Metaphysical impossibility just means something is ruled out per some lexicon. The so-called Hard Problem does not mean the mind is a "different substance," nor does it mean consciousness is "fundamental," nor does it rule out physical causal closure.

This Glider Gun & its function are greater than the sum of its parts*. This Glider Gun & its function are exactly equal to the sum of its parts†. * If the parts' identities are stripped of their relative locations. † If the parts' identities include their relative locations.

I am still seeing people use passive "is fitting," "is permitted/permissible," is obligated/obligatory," "supposed to," "is allowed/allowable," " is compulsory," "is required," etc. in serious defenses of moral stance-independence so I gotta, once again, tap the sign.

Philosophy's biggest problem, polysemy, can be explored with fun little riddles like this one, from my latest on the StanStack: open.substack.com/pub/stanpatt...

In philosophy, watch out for any word that ends in "-ible/-able"... it's often smoking gun for reification, perhaps even DOUBLE reification: youtu.be/GfLS28jOzf4?...

Evaluative reification -- the green drivers evaporating from mention -- is not really a mystery. It's explainable and folks do it all the time, even for stuff that's obviously not purely objective.

Even if determinism is true, we have self-determination. But "self-determination" needs to be defined according to what actually happens inside when we ponder & commit.

"Midstream bivalence" is a way we inadvertently launder our stained seemings & wrinkly likelihoods into clean overconfident takes. Here's how it works. #philsky open.substack.com/pub/stanpatt...

Deciphering this surprising title will help us avoid a very common trick folks employ in metaethics. Latest from the StanStack: stanpatton.substack.com/p/its-stance...

Hey all, let’s do some community-building. Introduce yourself & something about yourself. A few ideas… What line of work are you in? What was your favorite subject in school? What skill do you enjoy practicing or want to improve? If you’re an artist please share some of your work. I’ll start…

Reframing metaphysical issues in terms of H-Recipes puts a host of evergreen debates to bed, and is prophylaxis against reification (which corrupts every philosophical branch it touches).

Stare at this chart until you become immune to philosophers using "is justified" in an absolute sense. Epistemology is about striving for truth. Whether a given method is the best way to the truth in some context is contextual, and sometimes we don't know what context we're in.