Papers on Famous Confused Philosophers
- The Cartesian Circle Persists
- A paper for a graduate seminar on Descartes, about the 'Cartesian
circle.' Explains why attempts to save Descartes from the charge of
circularity fail.
- On Objective Being in the Intellect
- Another seminar paper on Descartes. This is about what Descartes
means by something's 'existing objectively in the intellect' (as when
he says the idea of the sun is "the sun itself existing in the
intellect").
Could he mean it literally?
- Aristotle and Incontinence
- A lowly undergraduate paper, but still good. Why Aristotle
fails to solve the problem of weakness of the will.
- An Examination of Aristotle's Ethics
- A somewhat unsympathetic exposition of the Nicomachean
Ethics.
- Problems from Kant
- An even less sympathetic overview of Kant's project in the
Critique of Pure Reason.
- A Critique of the Kantian Ethics
- The least sympathetic of all, exposition of the Foundations
of the Metaphysics of Morals.