I’ve been playing Handel’s Messiah a lot lately. My two 10-year-olds have been suffering terribly over this. It's not just bad music...

Answer: A nice book review in the Waikato Times (New Zealand)-- Deep thinking, yet not too weighty The Weight Of Things: Philosophy and t...

It's the last night of Hanukah. The nine candles on the menorah are burning brightly. We've had multiple celebrations over the las...

After six months, why not a name for this blog, aside from my own? Remember when color TV was a novelty? Every show (just on NBC?) was ...

I keep reading that the movie The Golden Compass suppresses the anti-religious message in Phillip Pullman's books, but the movie has pl...

Let’s have some more philosophy for kids. The last installment of this occasional series was for age 3 and up. This is for age 8 and up. H...

I've read a lot about atrocities in the last year, and I'm struck by the difference between the different genres that deal with them...

I have a Writer’s Choice essay at Normblog today, I’m happy to report. It’s about the novel Never Let Me Go , by Kazuo Ishiguro. (I als...

I just spent a few days in Washington D.C., mainly visiting the U.S. Holocaust Museum . What an amazing place--both extremely informative an...

I got an inside look at American patriotism when I went to a Veteran’s Day program at my kids’ elementary school last week. The school ha...

Long lost section from the Summa Technologiae today at Talking Philosophy .

The lowest form of debate is one where both sides cite luminaries who take their position. You're an atheist, so you go on and on about...

It’s a tricky thing bringing a debate to a conclusion without discord. You can “agree to disagree,” but that leaves you and your opponent ...

Does religion create a sense of wonder, and does science destroy it? That's what Mark Vernon says today in The Guardian : In the scient...

A type of dilemma comes up over and over again. On one side there’s the value of pursuing, stating, or implementing “truth.” But on the ...

In a discussion at Talking Philosophy a few days ago there was some talk of the “small virtues.” It’s tricky coming up with examples. P...

No, that's not a giant pink marshmallow in the sky in the new header. It's Denali at 11 pm, just after sunset. The landscape seems ...

The first work of philosophy I ever read is Jean Paul Sartre's article "Existentialism is a Humanism. " That was a long time a...

I’m not sure it makes sense for kids to get all tied up in knots about the traditional problems of philosophy. I mean, do kids need to wor...

My book explores all sorts of dimensions of the "well lived life" but I wonder from time to time whether I overplayed or underplay...

Alright, so maybe animals have episodic memory (see earlier post )—thoughts about the past. Just maybe, we don’t know. But do they have ...

The topic for my ethics class last night was living with disabilities. I have a chapter on the subject in my book and I just finished readi...

Philosophers and psychologists are forever casting about for some way of filling in the blank: “Humans are the only animals who can ______...

My son was home sick for two days this week, which turned out to be educational (for me). One day we watched Martha Stewart carving pumpkin...

Are we lucky to be alive? Thoughts about this question and faith today at Talking Philosophy .