The Continuum Hypothesis and Mathematical Platonism

Does the fact that an apparently straightforward mathematical proposition can be neither proved nor disproved show something deep about the nature of mathematics?

To be a little superficial, the Platonist position in philosophy of mathematics is that the number 17, and all of its friends and relations down to distant cousins, exist quite independently of us. Mathematical truth is discovered in something closely analogous to the way rare jungle fauna are discovered by exploring zoologists. The truths of mathematics are not invented, stipulated, or constructed, not directly, not indirectly, not even very indirectly.  

Jefferson Davis and the Moral Right to Abolish Slavery

Here is a meditation on the question whether Lincoln was, or you would be, morally in the right in using unlawful force against the institution of chattel slavery.

Groundhog Day: The Movie as Metaphysics

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A Notice Theory of Just Punishment

Here is a draft of a long simmering paper examining the circumstances in which the offender's knowing that he would be subject to a severe penalty before electing to commit a crime makes just the imposition of that penalty.

A Textualist Approach to Legal Interpretation

Here is a draft of a paper on legal interpretation that is similar to origanilism in emphasizing the meaning of the text as enacted, but differs from standard forms of originalism, especially with respect to normative words and phrases in the text and in disavowing as determinative drafter and legislative or ratifier expectation and intent. The first section by itself might be of interest if you are a little uncertain about the difference between ambiguity and vagueness, or types of ambiguity, or what problems of interpretation there are beyond ambiguity and vagueness.

A Short Story, Philosophical Only at the Edges

This represents most of the fiction, at least what I knew at the time to be fiction, that I have authored. Comments appreciated, including where, if anywhere, I might get it into print.

Is the Moving Now an Illusion if God is Omniscient?

Could it be that what is, for better or worse, called “the moving now” is an illusion, or, to put it a little more cautiously, could it be that at the deepest level description of reality there is no point in time that has the special status that we think this very moment has?

One widely held form of theism is committed to the  proposition. It is a usually unnoticed corollary of the combination of two widely held theological positions.