Satirical Criticism on Philosophie-Delor

As Free as a Turnspit

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This is the second part of a two-part critique of Kant. The first part — “The Two Dogmas of Königsberg-7” — deals with the categorical imperative and universal human dignity.

As Free as a Turnspit

The civilisation of Königsberg-7, whose demolition was documented in Part 1, has since gone extinct. Galactic archaeology has never conclusively established whether the extinction bore any relation to the Königsbergers’ philosophy. The Königsbergers themselves would have emphatically denied any connection. After all, their philosophy was not empirical, and the extinction was.

The Two Dogmas of Königsberg-7

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This is the first part of a two-part critique of Kant. The second part — As Free as a Turnspit — covers Kant’s synthetic a priori judgments, his acausal free will, and the question of why the supposed champion of Enlightenment had to suspend knowledge in order to make room for faith.

On the third planet of the binary star system Königsberg-7, there lived a civilisation that had solved a remarkable problem: it had developed an ethics that could under no circumstances fail the test of reality. Not because it was particularly good, but because it was constructed so that reality was fundamentally not competent to judge moral questions. Morality came from pure reason. Reality was empirical. And between the two ran a border that was considered logically impossible to cross.

Expressivism

Sun, 08 Mar 2026 21:07:06 +0100

The Ostrich Strategy of Ethics

Why Expressivism Fails – A Critique from the Perspective of Critical Rationalism

In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams describes the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal – a creature of such staggering stupidity that it believes if you can’t see it, it can’t see you. The recommended defence strategy is therefore to wrap a towel around your head. The Bugblatter Beast sees that you cannot see it, concludes that it cannot see you either, and consequently does not eat you.

Parfit and the Normative Parallel World

Sat, 07 Mar 2026 19:53:48 +0100

Derek Parfit and the Normative Parallel World

Or: How to Build an Entire Floor and Claim It Isn’t a Storey

1. The Invisible Elevator

Imagine a building. A perfectly normal building. Ground floor, first floor, second floor. Everything comprehensible, everything accessible, everything connected by doors and stairs. One day, the architect announces there is yet another floor. It lies somewhere between the first and second floors. You cannot enter it, see it, or measure it. It has no windows, no walls, no physical extension. But it is definitely there. It is objectively there. It is even there in a robust sense.

Thick Rules

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 23:41:40 +0100

Thick Rules and Fat Concepts: A User’s Guide to Philosophical Fog

Or: How to turn “it’s complicated” into an academic paper and get cited for it

There is a venerable tradition in philosophy of not solving problems but reformulating them until they dissolve in a cloud of terminology like a sugar cube in a particularly pretentious cup of tea. The theory of thick rules and thick concepts is among the most elegant specimens of this genus. It sounds approximately the way it feels when someone in a meeting says “Well, it’s not quite that simple” — except that this time it takes three hundred pages and results in a publishing contract with Oxford University Press.

The Gospel of Searl

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 22:23:46 +0100

The Gospel According to Speech Act Theory — Or: How Searle Tries to Pull Himself Out of the Ontological Swamp by His Own Speech Acts (and Fails)

A Critical Rationalist Intervention Against John Searle’s Speech Act Theory

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” — Gospel of John, 1:1. Or, in Searle’s version: “In the beginning was the Speech Act, and the Speech Act was with the Institution, and the Speech Act was the Institution.” Note the subtle but decisive difference: at least John invokes a God. Searle doesn’t need one. He has language.