Alexander Pruss's Blog

Animalism holds that we are animals. This is a pretty common-sense view. We are clearly mammals, and mammals are animals. However, there is...

Hedonic adaptation is the theory that individual humans have different basic levels of subjective life satisfaction (SLS). When major chang...

Here are two Aristotelian theses: Complete human flourishing requires the exercise of all the human virtues. Courage is a human virtue. ...

Aristotle thinks that the flourishing of a kind of organism is primarily defined by the excellent exercise of the distinctive functions of ...

The Epicurean argument is that death considered as cessation of existence does us no harm, since it doesn’t harm us when we are alive (as we...

As an Aristotelian who believes in individual forms, I’m puzzled about cases of species-level flourishing that don’t seem reducible to indiv...

Most philosophers don’t talk much about games. But games actually highlight one of the really amazing powers of the human being: the power t...

Suppose that, as some theories of motivation hold, that all our actions are done in pursuit of our flourishing. But the Scriptures tell us t...

Plausibly, there is a maximum information density for human brains. This means that if internal mental states supervene on the information c...

Derek Parfit’s Repugnant Conclusion says that, on standard utilitarian assumptions, if n is sufficiently large, then n lives of some minim...

It is common, since Mary Anne Warren's defense of abortion, to define personhood in terms of appropriate developed intellectual capaciti...

It sure seems that: A good human life is an integrated human life. But suppose we have a completely non-religious view. Wouldn't i...

Suppose your cerebrum was removed from your skull and placed in a vat in such a way that its neural functioning continued. So the...

A stranger is drowning. You know nothing about the stranger other than that the stranger is drowning. You can press a button, an...

(Premise) No life centered on love of someone who never exists is a flourishing life. (Premise) Some people lead a flourishing life cen...