Art

Happy Ayn Rand’s 120th Birthday

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As always, I celebrate Ayn Rand’s birthday, February 2nd, by opening one of her novels to a random page and reading a passage. Here is the passage from The Fountainhead that I read this year (Part 1, Chapter VIII). “… You don’t have to use the Ionic order, use the Doric. Plain pediments and simple moldings, or […]

Politics

What is Right?

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Since my last blog post, on October 30, I have been immersed in long-range projects in the two greatest normative domains: a project in artificial intelligence, applying my work in epistemology; and a book on ethics. While President Trump was being sworn in on January 20, I was attending a small reading group that is […]

Politics

Anti-Trumper for Trump—Again

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Four years ago, I wrote that I am an Anti-Trumper for Trump. Five months ago, I explained why “I am now an anti-Trumper for Trump in spades.” All I have to add now is to recommend this recent interview: “Victor Davis Hanson: The Final Case for Donald J. Trump.” Who will win? I think that, […]

Art

Why Theatre in Utah is So Good

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It’s About Moral Agency In 2012, when I relocated to a small Utah town from New York City by way of Los Angeles, I thought I was giving up seeing and performing in theatre. But I soon realized that I had landed by serendipity in arguably the theatre capital of the country: Cedar City, home […]

Ethics

An Objective Moral and Political Assessment of Abortion: The Pivotal Actuality is the Human Soul, When Accompanied by the Potentiality of Reason and Volition

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I am a long-time student of Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism, and I draw more heavily from that philosophy, by far, than any other for my own philosophy. Indeed, the present essay draws heavily on the ethics and politics of Objectivism. Nevertheless, I have come to disagree with Ayn Rand on the subject of abortion. […]