A common line of argument against normative anti-realist views—views that deny the existence of stance-independent moral truths—involves proposing thought experiments featuring people with wildly eccentric psychological characteristics. Goff describes a common example, which I will call the grass counter, in his book Why? The Purpose of the Universe1:

Ima…

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, one of my favorite philosophers today, wrote an article summarizing his argument from phenomenal realism—the view that qualia exist—to moral realism, the view that there are stance independent moral truths. By my lights, his argument fails.

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Goff first introduces inverted Ian:

I have an imaginary friend called Inverted Ian. Ian lives in a strange para…

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On April 23, 2026, Uncertainty (a podcast hosted by ) released a debate between and David Enoch. Lance is psychology professor at Cornell University who primarily researches the psychology of metaethics and empirical issues in experimental philosophy. David Enoch is a philosopher at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he primarily works in moral, political…

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Right now, I am the most open-minded I have ever been in my entire life—I’ll explain why.

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I got into philosophy in high school. One of the philosophical issues I became involved with relatively early on was the philosophy of free will. At some point, I stumbled across arguments by back when he was still Cosmic Skeptic. His thought was that, trivially, e…

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wrote an article called I Was Wrong About Illusionism (And You Probably Are Too).

He opens:

To begin with, I’m not an illusionist.

This is good.

So, you’re NOT about to hear some glowing report about how I’ve converted to illusionism, and how, if you wish to avoid an eternity of fiery confusion, you should join me in the ranks of the zombified (more on tha…

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One of the reasons studying philosophy is important is that it makes you realize how poor ordinary, untrained dialectical tactics are.

This might be my most liked note on Substack (I’m not sure; I didn’t verify it).

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Obviously, this note was so popular because everyone has come across this phenomenon: failing to understand analogies. The typical str…

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from The Analytic Christian recently wrote an article—Is Studying Philosophy of Religion a Waste of Time?—defending the philosophy of religion from charges of futility. Hampton represents the pessimistic view with the following argument, which he calls the “waste of time argument” (WTA).

1. Intellectual endeavors are a waste of time if they don’t lead to d…

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As I mentioned in notes a few hours ago:

This is somewhat of a recent development. Even when I came to the conclusion that physicalism is false months ago, I still took the view seriously. After all, my transition to rejecting physicalism was considerably reluctant. No longer so—unless anything important changes, in my ongoing investigation of conscious…

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wrote an article titled “The Mathematical Impossibility of the Philosophical Zombie.” I began writing a response to an earlier version of the article, but it has since been substantially revised. She seeks to defend the thesis that philosophical zombies (p-zombies henceforth) are (mathematically?) impossible, yet, aside from other mistakes, none of her…

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Recently, someone who sounded like Donald Trump called into C-SPAN under the name “John Barron,” an alias Trump has used in the past on several media occasions. This person was not Donald Trump; in fact, he is one of my friends on Discord who is rather adept at putting on the Donald Trump accent.

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C-SPAN later confirmed what should have been obvious:

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Illusionism is the radical view that phenomenal consciousness does not exist. Phenomenal consciousness is the collective name for any state that has qualia—i.e., the essentially private, qualitative properties putatively instantiated by experiences, or states for which there is something it is like to be in them, in the conventional Nagelian sense1.

I am …

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Aside from one post on July 7th, I undertook Fireside as a long-term project with my November 29th article on illusionism. By that point, 2025 was already on its way out, yet I published four articles between then and December 31st. As of writing this article, Fireside has 92 subscribers and several relatively popular pieces. B…

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Moral realism is the view that there are stance-independent moral truths. Moral realism strikes me as totally absurd, but that’s beside the point today, since I will take on the rather daunting task of assuming moral realism is true—that there really are these purported facts. The fact is, I truly do not care in any way about supposedly stance-independe…

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Moral realism is the view that there are stance-independent moral truths—that is, truths about what is morally good, valuable, obligatory, and so on, that do not depend for their truth on the attitudes of agents or observers. Moral realism strikes me as totally absurd. But quite apart from the plausibility of the view itself, it is—at least in my experi…

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Normative Realism is the view that there are stance independent normative truths—truths about what is good, bad, valuable, obligatory, sublime, etc.—that do not depend on the attitudes of agents or observers1. I find the name choice of this view, Normative “Realism,” to be frustratingly ironic, as I submit that Normative Realism removes what makes normat…

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I decided to post a series of blog articles to document my ever-progressing thoughts in the philosophy of mind. Doing this, I judge, will be considerably useful in the long run and serve as something that several people in similar enough positions can identify with. Maybe, over time, strangers on the internet can help improve my thoughts on several impo…

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Could the past stretch back forever? I think so. In fact, every argument I have seen against this idea has been, by my lights, seriously flawed.

Dr. Joshua Rasmussen (@worldviewdesign) has recently developed a novel argument against the possibility of an infinite past. To say the least, I don’t think the argument succeeds.

His argument centers on a seri…

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