Leiter

NewApps drives out another old-timer but, in the process, continues to be a source...

...of unintentional amusement. (You have to wade into the comments--and read the "response" by Ed Kazarian of Rowan University--to get the full flavor of this bizarre display.) (It is a testament to the abysmally low level of the discourse at NewApps that Jon Cogburn (not exactly my favorite blogger there) comes off looking like the paragon of rational virtue--he even got a shout-out from the wild Meta blog, Apparently, this latest incident has led Cogburn to quit NewApps too!)

A couple of posts down the page: "Another scalp for the Israel thought police".  And a few before that, "The Case Against Free Speech".  Earlier agreement with Tushnet on the need for hate speech laws. So absurdly conflicted.

Cogburn's post is a discussion of "ableism". It's not very interesting.  There are a few posts on his own blog. The first ends with this

We want our kids to be as able as possible, but also love them infinitely just the way they are. This is a difficult normative space to be in, and I can't pretend to have anything philosophically helpful to say with respect to it.

When formal logic fails Cogburn he falls back on formal faith. He's a Presbyterian. "I pray to God that she grants me the grace to start being an agent of her grace." When formal logic fails Leiter he contradicts himself.

I'll do this again because it's the simplest way

There’s a difference between caring for someone, in the sense of emotional attachment, and being attentive to them, to their wishes or their pain. Pain itself is lonely and expressions of sympathy are often theater used to hide incomprehension and fear.
I’m watching the old watch their friend die. They have become professionals at this. They are honest actors: the most aware both of the distances between people, and the similarity of their experience.

"Moral responsibility is hard to describe because it’s hard."

New tag: Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom