Student, to me:

Dude, my generation’s acid is like your generation’s acid…on acid!

And you thought “OK, boomer” was a cutting generational comment. The comment came up (in case you were wondering) during a discussion of Martin Seligman’s critique of psychopharmacology in his book Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being (pp. 47-48). I don’t remember the exact route by which we went from anti-depressants to acid, but whatever it was, it had a well-conceived pedagogical purpose. “Two drugs diverged in a wood,” etc. Continue reading →

Roderick Long recently posted a short essay on Facebook called “Abortion and Rape,” by a pseudonymous author named “Catiline.”  Rumor has it that Roderick is Catiline and vice versa, but we don’t traffic in rumors at PoT, so “Catiline” it is.*

The essay is structured as a response to this anti-abortion argument (hereafter, “the Argument”):

1. Abortion involves killing an innocent person.

2. It’s always wrong to kill an innocent person.

3. Therefore abortion is wrong.

According to Catiline, the Argument is valid but unsound: both premises are false. “Abortion and Rape” proceeds by making a case against each premise, followed in the discussion of premise (2) by answers to objections. If the Argument is the most plausible or typical sort of anti-abortion argument out there, and it fails, we can infer that the pro-choice position has in some way been vindicated by its failure. At a bare minimum, it’s won round 1 in a long battle. QED. Continue reading →