Year: 2008
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Why Community Service?
by Jason Stotts I saw a sign today that asked “Why Community Service?” and then proceeded to list all sorts of superficial reasons why one might want to engage in community service. This is to be expected, however, as they could not list their true reason. Just imagine seeing this on a poster: Why Community…
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The World as it Isn’t
From time to time I will be putting up material that was originally written for my forthcoming book, but which was cut for various reasons. This section was cut after a restructuring rendered it unnecessary. However, I rather like it and couldn’t bear to see it go to waste. ~Jason ————————————- The World as it…
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Homogenesis
by Jason Stotts We are our choices. Every last one of them. We are both the chooser and the results of our choices. Every choice we make, and our reasons for doing so, become our character. We are, in the purest, truest sense, beings of self-made souls and it is up to create our lives…
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Emotions in the Service of Life
by Jason Stotts Perhaps the single most important feature of emotions is that one now lost to us. Emotions have become afflictions that we bear: they are beyond reason, beyond understanding, and beyond our ability to control. Emotions do not, however, have to be this way. Emotions, proper emotions, allow us to experience the reality…
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Divine Purpose
by Jason Stotts Everyone needs something to believe in. It is a fact of human nature that we seek to know, to understand, to have meaning in our lives. We search for this meaning, some of us spending their entire lives trying to find it. We have created gods to give us meaning; we have…
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The New Atheists?
by Jason Stotts Following the marvelous essay by Greg Perkins at Noodlefood about “The New Atheists” v. D’Souza, I thought I’d chime in and write a critique of my own. For right now, I’m going to leave aside the problem that the New Atheists don’t offer anything to believe in and focus on the problem…
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The Greatest Ethical Problems
by Jason Stotts In the first chapter of my book on Sexual Ethics, I am planning to discuss a small number of great problems for philosophy. I am not going to criticize particular philosophers, but rather particular problems or conceptions of ethics that have stymied the field. Thus, for an example, the first problem I…
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Life and Values Elaborated
by Jason Stotts I recently wrote a short piece called “Life and Values” where I argued the following: 1. Values are that which contribute to one’s life; disvalues are things that harm or retard one’s life. 2. In order to say that you value X, you mean that you judge that X will improve your…