1. Greasy spoons and Gricean maxims. (via Gerald Dworkin)
2. The regress problem for consequentialism, robot version.
3. “In a deeper and more troubling way, it is canny and subversive artifice, spiced with a moralistic claim to personal liberation. A tattoo is a personal statement but also an anthropological position that accords with the prevailing transvaluations of our time.” — from “A Theory for Tattoos.”
4. Data on the use of “he” and “she” over time in Philosopher’s Index abstracts, as analyzed by Eric Schwitzgebel at The Splintered Mind.
5. The philosophical origins for parts of the U.S Constitution, particularly the proscription against cruel punishments in the 8th Amendment, may be in Italy.
6. Marina Warner, former professor of creative writing at University of Essex and current chair of the Man Booker Prize, writes about resigning from higher education, “where enforcers rush to carry out the latest orders from their chiefs in an ecstasy of obedience to ideological principles which they do not seem to have examined, let alone discussed with the people they order to follow them.” Additional piece here.
7. Political epistemology gets a special double-issue of Critical Review.
8. The latest episode of the BBC’s Philosopher’s Arms is on trolleyology.
9. PhD(isabled) is “a space for PhD students with disability or chronic illness to share their experiences.” The latest post is by a grad student in a philosophy program.
10. 8-Bit Philosophy takes a clip from True Detective as an opportunity to illustrate Nietzsche’s idea of eternal recurrence.
11. By Bentham.