In a free market with multiple businesses and good economic conditions most people can get what they want even if they don’t get every thing they want. If you like stainless steel appliances, it’s easy (lots of people want them), but even if you want pink appliances you can get them. That’s how a free market works. Choice tends to increase over time as economies and demand grows. The important point to note is that if someone has pink appliances, it is likely that they wanted them. In other words, in a free market economy you can often tell what someone wants from what they in fact have. However, what…
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On Meaningless Waffle
Waffle is speech or writing that appears thoughtful at first glance, but has no discernible content. The New Civics Statement is waffle: The New Civics initiative starts with the assumption that a central aim of civic education is to prepare young people to act with civic purpose and to do so effectively and with good judgment. Like others, we presume that individuals must be educated for citizenship and that schools have a historic mandate to develop young people’s knowledge, skills, and dispositions for responsible citizenship. At the same time, we expand the scope of civic learning for civic action beyond the school; as community organizations, political parties, and many other groups…
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Tri-unity
Christian theism is, at least in part, a set of statements or propositions believers take to be true. The study of the coherence of Christian theism is the consideration of the coherence of that set of statements. It is not a study of whether or not those statements are true but whether or not if they are true there is any explicit or implicit contradiction within or implied by that set of propositions. A contradiction is a relationship between propositions such that if it is the case that p, then it cannot also be the case that ~p. It is commonly suggested that among the set of propositions Christian theists…
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Why Correct Answers Do Not Entail Knowledge
It is tempting to say the following: S can answer a question correctly only if S knows the answer to the question. However, we should resist the temptation. Consider the following: When I was about 11years old I was sitting in a classroom, my gaze fixed firmly on the cricket pitch outside and paying no attention to what my teacher was saying. Then I heard my name. “Ben, can you tell us where the ship sprung a leak?” my teacher asked. Now everyone’s gaze was fixed on me. “Hull” I said without a pause. “Yes, well done Ben” my teacher replied and carried on talking. Now the backstory: When the…
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Does Speech Have Rules?
Elizabeth Warren has been silenced in the Senate for impugning a fellow Senator. The rule tells Senators that criticizing the motives of a fellow Senator on the floor of the Senate is not allowed. Under Rule 19, Senators are not allowed to “directly or indirectly, by any form of words impute to another Senator or to other Senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a Senator.” Now, having a rule for speaking in the Sentate makes sense. Imagine if there were no rules in the Sentate! But, what about the rest of us? Do we have any rules to follow? Perhaps someone might think that what matters is what…
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Notes: Does God Have a Nature?
When we say that God is good or that he is all-powerful we are predicating something of a subject as we are when we say “Socrates is wise.” On a realist view, the predicate is a property that is instantiated by the particular. “Wise” is a property of Socrates and, as such, and given realism, the property of is what is referred to by the term “wise.” To say that God is wise, or good is to say that God has the property of wisdom or goodness. If there are such things, as realists suggest, then they must exist in order to be referred to. In common parlance, such things…
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Sermon: Psalm 44
Have you ever had a winning streak? Squash player, Jahangir Khan, once had a 555 game winning streak. From 1981-1985 he never lost a single game! Once in 1982, he won the International Squash Players Association Championship without losing a single point. When you are on a winning streak—everything seems to be going perfectly—you do everything you can to stay on it. Winning streaks are marked by attention to doing the same thing, an attempt not to jinx the outcome: In this pursuit of perfection, nothing was ever left to chance – Borg’s Wimbledon routine was the same every year: the same hotel in Hampstead, the same locker, the same chair, the…
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Your Rights: Acquired or Essential?
Do you acquire the rights associated with personhood or are they essential to you? Consider rights in general, the right to vote, for example. You didn’t always have this right. You acquired it. So, perhaps personhood is like the right to vote. You acquired it at some point in your development. The right to life goes along with being a person. If you are a person, anyone who kills you has committed a moral and legal wrong. Most pro-choice arguments talk about this right as if it is acquired at some point in the womb. Prior to counting as a person, however, it is morally justified to kill the entity…