Cancelled in L.A. (Updated)

I had been invited to speak later this month at St. John’s Seminary in Los Angeles. I have now been informed that the event is being cancelled, due to complaints from unnamed critics who find me too controversial. Meanwhile, the always controversial Fr. James Martin will be speaking this month at the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress, on the theme “Hope on the Horizon: LGBTQ Catholic Update 2026.” It appears that, for some in Archbishop Gomez‘s archdiocese, Fr. Martin is welcome to speak about that topic to educators of Catholic youth, but I am not welcome to speak to seminarians about how to defend the Church’s teaching on the soul’s immortality.

UPDATE 2/19: An update on what happened, to counter various unwarranted speculations I’ve seen here and elsewhere. My understanding from official sources is that my social media activity was judged to be controversial, and in particular that the archbishop had received complaints from some who had concerns about my having been critical of Pope Francis. No specific views or remarks of mine were cited. My understanding from other credible sources is that the complaints came, specifically, from a number of older priests in the L.A. area who had seen an announcement about the talk that had been sent to parishes. (This makes sense given that the talk was cancelled very soon after it was announced – within a day or so – and the print and online announcements were highly unlikely to have been seen before that time by many except people with some connection to or special interest in the seminary.)  That is all I am able to say at this time.

No, AI does not have human-level intelligence

In an article at Nature, Eddy Keming Chen, Mikhail Belkin, Leon Bergen, and David Danks ask “Does AI already have human-level intelligence?” and claim that “the evidence is clear” that the answer is Yes.  (Though the article is partially pay-walled, a read-only PDF is available here.)  But as is typical with bold claims about AI, their arguments are underwhelming, riddled with begged questions and other fallacies.

Defining “intelligence”

Naturally, before we can establish that AI has genuine intelligence, we need to make clear what it would be for it to have intelligence, and how we could go about determining that it has it.  The first is a metaphysical question, the second an epistemological question.  Our authors make no serious attempt to answer either one.

Van Fraassen on microscopy

Philosopher of science Bas van Fraassen is well known for defending the “constructive empiricist” position that the success of a scientific theory does not compel us to believe in the existence of the theoretical entities it posits.  In his view, a scientific theory aims only to be empirically adequate, in the sense of correctly describing the world of observable things.  When a theory is successful insofar as it makes accurate predictions or opens the door to technological advances, this gives us reason to believe only that it is empirically adequate, not that it tells us anything about a realm beyond what is observable.

Scientific realists take the contrary view that the success of a theory does give us reason to believe in the theoretical entities it posits.  Among other arguments, they sometimes appeal to the idea that entities that at one time were unobservable later became observable with the rise of new technologies, such as telescopes, electron microscopes, and ordinary microscopes.  This shows, they argue, that the boundary between observable and unobservable entities is not sharp enough to justify skepticism about the latter.

Socratic politics: Lessons from the Gorgias

Almost forty years ago, the liberal pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty published an essay titled “The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy.”  I recall hating it immediately, from the title alone.  The sentiment was appalling coming from anyone, but especially from a philosopher.  Philosophy aims at the true and the good, democracy merely at what the majority happens to want.  That can sometimes be false and very bad indeed – and in one notorious case it was the execution of Socrates, the model for all philosophers.  How could philosophy not have the priority?

Prioritizing democracy

But what exactly is it for either to have “priority” to the other?  What Rorty had in mind is this.  The liberal democratic tradition has pushed religion ever further out of the public square.  Theology is now widely regarded as a purely private interest whose claims have no bearing on the political order.  But for centuries, liberalism took philosophy to retain political relevance.  In particular, liberal theorists took their favored polity to require philosophical foundations – in Locke’s natural rights theory, Mill’s utilitarianism, or whatever.

Church history does not support Trump’s expansionism

Some Catholic voices online have been suggesting that the example of Spanish colonialism justifies the Trump administration’s expansionist foreign policy – including the threat to take Greenland by force.  Catholic podcaster Matt Walsh, with whom I recently had a lively exchange about these matters on Twitter/X, appeals to Catholic colonialism and also claims that a war to secure resources is "totally legitimate."  Others appeal to the Crusades, or to ancient Israel’s conquest of Canaan.  In a new article at First Things, I argue that all of these arguments are fallacious.  They ignore crucial moral and theological differences between the cases.  Church history provides no support for Trump’s jingoistic expansionism.

Pope Leo XIV on politics and the death penalty

From a couple of posts today at Twitter/X, commenting on Pope Leo’s address to the diplomatic corps at the Vatican:

A marvelous address by @Pontifex that condemns the pathologies of both the woke left and the jingoist right. Against the left, he denounces “the so-called ‘right to safe abortion,’” warns of “a subtle form of religious discrimination against Christians” by which they are “restricted in their ability to proclaim the truths of the Gospel for political or ideological reasons,” and decries “a new Orwellian-style language…which, in an attempt to be increasingly inclusive, ends up excluding those who do not conform to the ideologies that are fueling it.” Against the right, he warns of “excessive nationalism," affirms "the importance of international humanitarian law," and notes that “a diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force… peace is sought through weapons as a condition for asserting one’s own dominion." And he decries the fact that on every side of our political culture and social media, “language is becoming more and more a weapon with which to deceive, or to strike and offend opponents” rather than used “to express distinct and clear realities unequivocally.”

(From Twitter/X)

Review of Gorman

Readers who have access to the journal The Thomist might be interested in my review of Michael Gorman’s terrific book A Contemporary Introduction to Thomistic Metaphysics, which appears in the January 2026 issue.

Interview on the Venezuela situation

In an interview with Edward Pentin published at his Substack, I discuss just war doctrine, the Venezuela situation, and the false choice between globalism and jingoism.

On Searle at First Things

On the Editor’s Desk podcast at First Things, Rusty Reno and I discuss John Searle and his place in contemporary philosophy. (The take-off point of our discussion is my recent article on Searle in the magazine.)

Some basic principles of masculinity

From Twitter/X today, inspired by an excellent article by Justin Lee: