Kenny Pearce

A photo of an ice cream machine with a sign reading, "Anything is possible with ice cream." Beneath that is a hand lettered sign reading, "No ice cream".

2026 basically

A medieval illustration of a hedgehog with grapes skewered on its spines

It was believed in medieval times that hedgehogs had spikes so they could roll over fruit to carry home to their children, which is not true but is a really cute idea

White House Withholds Funding for NASA Science Missions Despite Recent Budget Bill NASA has been forced to pause funds for Chandra X-Ray Observatory and other missions until further notice.

Fucking bullshit 🔭🧪 gizmodo.com/white-house-...

OK everyone who is making fun of Kristi Noem over the blanket thing has OBVIOUSLY never had a toddler who was elevated to a Cabinet position

Christ and Horrors: The Coherence of Christology by Marilyn McCord Adams

This book by Episcopal priest&philosopher MM Adams is more evangelical ('Gospel-ish') than anything I've read by Evangelical philosophers (e.g., Plantinga, Hasker, WLC).

It's a passionate profession of faith in Christ&account of how we're trapped in evils we can't escape&Jesus is our only hope.

Hegseth's unconstitutional retaliation against Sen. Kelly was so brazen that an exasperated federal judge used more than a dozen exclamation points!

Highlights from the ruling: "Horsefeathers!" and "Please!"

"That is a troubling development in a free country!" buff.ly/YY60KWM

Husserl on Galileo and the Primary and Secondary Quality Distinction Last week’s nitpicky post (here) on Husserl’s treatment of Galileo generated a number of polarized (mostly private) emails: some felt I had been unfair to or misleading on Husserl, while others though...

Husserl on Galileo and the Primary and Secondary Quality Distinction
open.substack.com/pub/digressi...

I'm not sure exactly what order this happens in—it seems to me like commitment to mechanical/mathematized physics might come first, for both D & G, & then they might be developing this epistemology to support it. But in terms of the arguments they're making, I think the epistemology is key.

It's indisputable that that's important for Descartes. It's also pretty strongly supported by those bits from Galileo. & then, all the way back to Plato, math is the paradigm for purely intellectual knowledge. So knowledge of nature gets modeled on or assimilated to mathematical knowledge.

I'm not very confident on my reading of Galileo, because I've only read the Finocchiaro collection. (I regularly begin my early modern class with the selections from The Assayer in that volume.) But it seems to me something important that's left out here is body known by pure intellect & not senses.

This seems to correspond to a shift in how civic education was thought of in general, from the idea that a flourishing republic needs a certain kind of PEOPLE to the idea that it needs certain kinds of systems or structures, & civic education is just about understanding those.

A message I came away with (which she doesn't spell out explicitly) is that both founding era and Cold War Americans thought Locke central to education for civic life, but the former thought it was for the kind of moral & intellectual character instilled, & the latter for specific political ideas.

I just finished reading it, before writing this. I thought she was fairly convincing in arguing that the influence of the 2nd Treatise & esp theory of property has been exaggerated, but she doesn't even mention the ways Locke's other works are directly relevant to these sorts of political ideas.

JMU students host protest against ICE at Harrisonburg City Hall James Madison University students hosted a peaceful “ICE Out” protest Tuesday afternoon, walking from campus to Harrisonburg City Hall to make their voices heard.

www.whsv.com/2026/02/11/j...

a black and white image of a pirate flag with a skull and crossbones on it . ALT: a black and white image of a pirate flag with a skull and crossbones on it .

Yes, I am once again raising my flag for the Jolley/Rogers interpretation of Locke.
www.google.com/books/editio...

PHIL 390-0001: Special Topics in Philosophy – John Locke on Religion & Politics T/Th 12:45–2 John Locke has long been celebrated for his role in inspiring American Founders such as James Madison and Tomas Jefferson. While recent scholarship has questioned the extent to which Locke’s political philosophy influenced the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution, it is undisputed that Locke was one of the most widely read philosophers in America in the founding era. Furthermore, almost all of Locke’s works connect in some way with a theme that was of great importance to the Founders: religious liberty. This course will begin by examining Locke’s account of religious liberty in the Letter concerning Toleration and considering why these ideas have been controversial, in his time and in ours. Then we’ll look at how Locke’s case for toleration is bolstered by his ideas in three other areas: epistemology, theology, and political philosophy. Along the way, we’ll encounter some early critics of Locke, including Jonas Proast, Edward Stillingfleet, Mary Astell, and George Berkeley. We’ll also discuss the relevance of Locke’s ideas to US politics and law, including the Declaration of Independence, the First Amendment, slavery, and homesteading.

In honor of the Declaration of Independence anniversary, I've scheduled myself to teach a class on Locke on Religion & Politics for the fall.

I draw two morals from this story. First, we've got a great group of students. Second, if you teach metaphysics you should definitely use this case! 3/3

The question is, if you order a gun kit online & follow the instructions, when, where, and by whom was the gun made? Did the gun cross state lines?

I had great difficulty getting the students to stop debating the metaphysics of artifacts long enough to finish the meeting. 2/3

In a meeting w/ sophomore philosophy majors abut our department's course offerings, a student asked what metaphysics was & I gave a few example questions. I mentioned last year's Supreme Court ruling in Bondi v. Vanderstok.
www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24p... 1/3

Calling out fascism is not threatening to anyone but fascists.

1/ ProPublica collected handwritten letters in mid-January from children held at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, the same facility where 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos was taken.

Hundreds of kids are still detained.

We’ll let the children’s words speak for themselves. 🧵

There's a book on Arnauld's theory of ideas by Steve Nadler, one on the Port-Royal Logic (which he co-authored) by John N. Martin, and a book in French by Aloyse Ndiaye.

The Philosophy of Antoine Arnauld by Eric Stencil.

Received this today to review for JHP. Looking forward to it!

Given Arnauld's importance in early modern philosophy, it's wild that this is (AFAIK) the first book-length general study of his philosophy every published in English.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Flavor Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Flavor

I used to attend a church that liked to use goldfish crackers for communion. One time someone bought pizza flavor by mistake.

www.smbc-comics.com/comic/flavor

@smbccomics.bsky.social

A Demonstration of the Causal Power of Absences Click on the article title to read more.

For those not 'in the know', here's the paper: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Proof Without Content

Corollary to a well-known paper by Tyron Goldschmidt.
xkcd.com/3201/

1 Christology as natural theology: methodological issues 1. Introduction My topic is Christology; my thesis, the coherence of Christology; my theme, Christ as the One in Whom all things hold together. Meta-physically, Christ is the center both of Godhead and cosmos. Existen-tially, Christ is the integrator of individual positive personal meaning; psychologically, our inner teacher; body-politically, the organizer of Godward community. Christ saves us by virtue of being real and really present: Emmanuel, God with us, sharing our human condi-tion; ascended to His most glorious throne in heaven at God's right hand; in the most blessed sacrament of the altar; and in the hearts of all His faithful people. Switching from object- to metalanguage, from the order of reality to the order of theory, turn-of-the-twentieth-century Anglicans declare that Christology is the centerpiece of systematic theology, that which integrates the creed, that from which we reason up to the Trinity, down to creation, out through the Church to the world. My own conviction is that they got this substantially right. Thus, in arguing for the coherence of Christology, I will take the coherence of theism for granted. But I will not treat Christology as an optional supplement to generic - what philosophers of religion often call "restricted-standard" - theism. My contention is that, because of its explanatory power, Christology has an integrating force of its own.

Christ and Horrors offers a new surprise: somehow the opening paragraph manages to look, at the same time, like an opening paragraph of a philosophy book and like a doxology.

I’m reading Marilyn Adams' "Christ and Horrors" for the first time. While re-reading her "Horrendous Evils & the Goodness of God" I was thinking how rare it is that reading a work of philosophy (esp analytic philosophy) would lead one to admire the author’s moral character...

kyle rittenhouse showed up to a protest with an ak-47 and trump lauded him as a hero.