Links

* In Who Can't Be Rational?, Aaron Cobb argues that, on the assumption that belief should be proportioned to evidence, one can't be externalist, fideist, or pragmatist. I'm sympathetic to the argument, but I don't think there are degrees of belief, and if there were there's no obvious reason to think that they could be put in clear proportional relation to degrees of evidence, and if they could it would clearly be irrational to follow the maxim of proportioning (the degree of) belief to (the degree of) evidence, because that would mean not being certain of things about which any rational person is certain. I am in agreement with Newman on that regard. But it's an interesting argument. (HT: FQI sidebar)

* Besides discussing infinite regress over at Clark's, I've contributed a bit to the discussion of Pascal's Wager over at Richard's.

* At "Ralph the Sacred River," Ed Cook discusses Sufjan Stevens and a Biblical Image.

* Miriam Burnstein at "The Little Professor" notes examples of how we insist that everyone who isn't us must be unhappy, in Agony! Misery! Woe!.

* Timothy Sandefur at "Positive Liberty" tells us what he likes about the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.

* Will Confucianism be making a comeback in China? And will any of those involved ever answer Jonathan Dresner's important question? We shall see....

* Jamie at "Ad Limina Apostolorum" is in Cologne for World Youth Day.

* A search recently came upon an old post in which I had put up the following mnemonic rhyme:

Sir, I bear a rhyme excelling
In mystic force and magic spelling
Celestial sprites elucidate
All my own striving can't relate.
Or locate they who can cogitate
And so finally terminate. Finis.

I had put it up as a riddle, asking what it was a mnemonic for; and nobody took me up on it, so I thought I'd put it up again. The reward for the answer: the satisfaction of knowing the secret of the rhyme.