Philosopher's Carnival is Here!

Saint Valentine’s Day fell toward the end of the submission period for this carnival and since that’s the anniversary of my first date with my wife I baked up a baker’s dozen (that’s 13 for me and you) of little philosophy love-muffins for you to celebrate with me.

1. Kenny Pearce starts us of thematically with a doxastic theory of love. "In honor of Valentine's Day, I would like to present today a philosophical theory of love." This post proposes a theory of love according to which love consists in a deeply internalized belief in the intrinsic value of the beloved, and discusses precisely what this theory entails. A second post discusses how this view can account for the distinction between the three traditional types of love (philia, eros, and agape).

2. Brit Brogaard at Lemmings notes that William James had no love for the APA when it started, but was apparently wooed, becoming the organization’s 6th president. History lovers will love this history of the APA.

3. At her love-bird Joe Salerno's blog Knowability guest blogger Bryan Frances here helps those who would love to have a good job determine whether they are showing enough love for their disciplines. He gives an interesting (and unendorsed) theory that most ordered pairs are star-crossed lovers. The center of this love-muffin is more sour than sweet: most active philosophers lack good sense! You should consume this love-muffin with a grain or two of salt and, if you can, chew it with your tongue planted firmly in your cheek which is, I'm sure, somewhat how Bryan wrote it. ;-)

4. Clayton Littlejohn of Think Tonk has, as usual, no lost love for traditional epistemology. In this post he argues that, perhaps like true love, justified false beliefs are a myth. Cupid's arrow missed commentators Tony Booth, Brad C, and Russell Blackford though, who, like the present author, find internal matters more apropos to normative evaluations than mere external circumstances.

5. Lovers often feel each other's pain, but Tanasije Gjorgoski at A Brood Comb here wonders if cyborgs could literally feel each other's pain.
"Two cyborgs, Michael and Ethan walk on the surface of a distant planet after a fight with alien troops. Michael notices that Ethan’s finger has a hole in it.-Does it hurt much? - asks Michael.Ethan unscrews his finger, and hands it to Michael, who replaces one of his own fingers with it.-Gosh, that hurts a lot - says Michael.-Thanks for sharing my pain. - says Ethan. -Now give it back to me."

6. It seems the Scottish world is in love with the epistemology of John McDowell (can anybody explain this to me?!), and Avery Archer at The Space of Reasons here makes an interesting argument that McDowell's content-externalism actually allows him to be a kind of internalist (satisfying a definition scarcely different from Conee and Feldman's mentalism). It seems to me that this is robbing Peter to pay Paul since whatever "access" we have to externalist-styled "mental states" is necessarily opaque.

7. Jesus said that the whole of the Judeo-Christian worldview comes down to loving God with all your being and loving your neighbor as yourself. The latter part is pithily summed up in the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Louis William Rose here at the Florida Student Philosophy Blog defends this august principle from charges of vacuity leveled by Dr. Bernard Gert, Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy at Dartmouth College. [Bleg: someone once pointed out to me that if you take of the reflexive bit "unto X" you get Kant's categorical imperative. Does Kant himself say this or did someone famous say this?]

8. Speaking of God and love, is the good good because God loves it or does God love it because its good? Alan Rhoda--the Alanyzer--finally solves this dilemma!

9. I personally love thinking about Modus Ponens: it's so basic, yet so puzzle-inspiring. Franklin Scott at What is It Like to be a Blog? has here an interesting post on conditionals and English grammar. Good stuff. [Note: Brit also recently discussed this at Lemmings. And Matthew Mullins makes brief comments here.]

10. Beauty is a common inspiration for love and Bryan Norwood at his blog Movement of Existence has an interesting post here on the mathematical structure of beauty in architecture and the natural world and the relevance of such to the Teleological Argument for the existence of God. Bryan is an undergrad in both Philosophy and Architecture and found his illustrations very nice.

11. Collaboration is is the foundation of any good relationship and Trusted Advisor sprung a new principle on me: Kant's Horizontal Imperative. It apparently has almost ubiquitous relevance.

12. In the spirit of brotherly love I want to note my buddy Jon Matheson's post on our UR blog regarding "meaty justification". He draws an analogy between validity and soundess on the one hand and propositional and doxastic justification on the other hand. I think it's high time that the degree of "meatiness" of justification move into the main focus of epistemology.

13. My discussion of evidentialism with Jason Baher at JanusBlog is along the same lines as Jon's thought.