J. S. Russell has argued that it is morally permissible for children to participate in dangerous sports and that much of value can be gained from such participation. He attempts to justify children’s participation in dangerous sport with two arguments, which he calls the common sense view and the uncommon sense view, and I apply the basic reasons given in these general arguments to the specific case of justifying children’s participation in mixed martial arts (MMA). To safeguard against wanton and (...) gratuitous risk of great harm, Russell also includes some basic limitations for children’s participation in dangerous sports, and I use these limitations as a general framework for providing a number of additional constraints to render children’s MMA morally permissible. (shrink)

From his earliest publications until his last, Francis Bacon displayed an intense interest in theo- logical and religious issues, and expressed this interest in both public and private. On the other hand, he has long been recognized for his proposals for a grand reform and reconstruction of natural philosophy, in which experience, observation, experiment, and technological implementation of abstract claims all took center stage. This practical bent has often neatly been encapsu- lated in the slogan derived from Bacon himself, ‘knowledge (...) is power.’ The many and interesting connections between these two sets of interests – the theological and the natural philosophical – have not gone unnoticed by scholars; however, one central component of Bacon’s pragmatic approach to natural philosophy that was deeply influenced by his theological concerns has remained unexplored. The equation between knowledge and power, so well known, in fact developed out of Bacon’s conception of the Christian Trinity, and out of the rela- tionship between the Trinity and humanity’s pursuit of knowledge about nature. It is the task of this essay to trace the development of this connection from the beginnings of Bacon’s literary career until its end. (shrink)

Many video games require complex, rapid sequences of skilled bodily movements in order to complete game-world tasks. It is not unreasonable to think that this might interfere with our ability to aesthetically appreciate such video games. I present two versions of this argument from extreme difficulty: a strong version and a weak version. While extant treatments of the aesthetics of video games can be used to rebut the strong version, the weak version remains recalcitrant. I develop a reply to the (...) weak version, use it to clarify key features of reasons used by video-game critics to argue in favor of their critical judgments, and to illuminate the development of video games over time. (shrink)