Edward Feser

"One of the best contemporary writers on philosophy" National Review

"A terrific writer" Damian Thompson, Daily Telegraph

"Feser... has the rare and enviable gift of making philosophical argument compulsively readable" Sir Anthony Kenny, Times Literary Supplement

Selected for the First Things list of the 50 Best Blogs of 2010 (November 19, 2010)

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Can machines beg the question?

I thank Robert Oerter for his further reply to my recent comments ( here , here , and here ) on his critique of James Ross’s argument...

Friday, October 25, 2013

Some varieties of bullsh*t

Harry Frankfurt’s famous essay “On Bullshit” first appeared back in 1986 and was republished a few years ago in book form . Though it...

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Do machines compute functions?

Robert Oerter has now replied to my most recent post about his criticisms of James Ross’s argument for the immateriality of the inte...

Friday, October 18, 2013

Oerter on indeterminacy and the unknown

I thank Robert Oerter for his reply to my recent comments on his criticism of James Ross’s argument for the immateriality of the int...

Monday, October 14, 2013

Some questions on the soul, Part II

In a recent post I responded to a reader’s question about the Aristotelian-Thomistic understanding of the soul. Another reader asks ...

Thursday, October 10, 2013

Oerter and the indeterminacy of the physical

Many readers will recall some worthwhile exchanges on causality and motion that I had some time back with physicist Robert Oerter. (Y...

Friday, October 4, 2013

Why Is There Anything At All? It’s Simple

Note: The following article is cross-posted over at First Things . I thank John Leslie and Robert Lawrence Kuhn for their gracio...

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Leslie and Kuhn reply

Back in July my review of John Leslie and Robert Lawrence Kuhn’s anthology The Mystery of Existence appeared over at the First Thing...

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Philip Kitcher, bait-and-switcher

Here’s a thumbnail history of philosophy and science since the early modern period, in three stages. First, the Aristotelian-Scholast...

Thursday, September 26, 2013

Natural law or supernatural law?

When you blur a real distinction between any two things A and B, you invariably tend, at least implicitly, to deny the existence of ei...

Friday, September 20, 2013

Some questions on the soul, Part I

In a recent post I spoke of the soul after death as essentially the human being in a “radically diminished state.” The Aristotelian-...

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Midwest Studies in Philosophy

My article “The New Atheists and the Cosmological Argument” appears in Volume 37 of Midwest Studies in Philosophy . The theme of the...

Saturday, September 14, 2013

Man is Wolff to man

As a follow-up to my series of posts on the critics of Thomas Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos , let’s take a look at philosopher Robert Paul ...

Monday, September 9, 2013

The return of final causality

I commend to you the late historian of philosophy Paul Hoffman’s paper “Does Efficient Causation Presuppose Final Causation? Aquinas...

Friday, September 6, 2013

Churchland on dualism, Part V

Paul Churchland has just published a third edition of Matter and Consciousness , his widely used introductory textbook on the philosop...

Saturday, August 31, 2013

A gigantic book royalty check from nothing

Robert Lawrence Kuhn and John Leslie have written up a gracious and substantive reply to my recent First Things commentary on their ...

Monday, August 26, 2013

Hitting Bottum

By now you may have heard that Joseph Bottum, reputedly conservative Catholic and former editor of First Things , has assimilated to t...

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Out on the links

I called attention recently to the special issue of the National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly devoted to the theme “Critiques of the ...

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Mad dogs and eliminativists

As an epilogue to my critique of Alex Rosenberg’s paper “Eliminativism without Tears,” let’s take a brief look at Rosenberg’s recent ...

Sunday, August 18, 2013

The director as demiurge

I’ve been reading Ian Nathan’s book Alien Vault , an agreeable account of the making of Ridley Scott’s Alien . “Making of” books and ...

Thursday, August 15, 2013

Eliminativism without truth, Part III

Now comes the main event. Having first set out some background ideas , and then looked at his positive arguments for eliminativism a...

Monday, August 12, 2013

NOW AVAILABLE: Aristotle on Method and Metaphysics

Aristotle on Method and Metaphysics , an anthology I've edited for Palgrave Macmillan’s Philosophers in Depth series , is now avai...

Thursday, August 8, 2013

Eliminativism without truth, Part II

We’re looking at Alex Rosenberg’s attempt to defend eliminative materialism from the charge of incoherence in his paper “Eliminativism...

Monday, August 5, 2013

Eliminativism without truth, Part I

Suppose you hold that a good scientific explanation should make no reference to teleology, final causality, purpose, directedness-towa...

Saturday, August 3, 2013

Links not to miss

I’ve been out of town for most of a week. Regular blogging will resume shortly. Until then, some reading material from around the we...

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Fifty shades of nothing

Note: The following article is cross-posted over at First Things . Nothing is all the rage of late. Physicists Stephen Hawking ...

Monday, July 22, 2013

Review of George

My review of Robert P. George’s recent book Conscience and Its Enemies: Confronting the Dogmas of Liberal Secularism appears in the ...

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About Me

Edward Feser: I am a writer and philosopher living in Los Angeles. I teach philosophy at Pasadena City College. My primary academic research interests are in the philosophy of mind, moral and political philosophy, and philosophy of religion. I also write on politics, from a conservative point of view; and on religion, from a traditional Roman Catholic perspective.

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