Constructing Camelot: John F. Kennedy and the 1946 Massachusetts special congressional election

This is a study targeting the political debut of a great American figurehead. Before he was President, John F. Kennedy was a soft-spoken and shy congressional candidate with little perceived political promise. The 1946 John F. Kennedy congressional campaign was successful because of the unique organization, image, and opportune timing of the congressional race. By obtaining a better understanding of the people, the stories, and the nuances of the Eleventh Congressional District, Kennedy was able to alter his campaign approach and win the election. The Kennedy campaign promoted a candidate who resonated with a large percentage of the electorate and campaign workers mapped out the greatest path to victory within the constraints the district presented. Through hard work, grit, and unwavering dedication, the Kennedy campaign team helped shape a legendary statesman; a leader who defied legend and lived on in American culture years after his assassination

The Immorality of Eating Meat

Unlike other ethical arguments for veganism, the argument advanced is not predicated on the wrongness of speciesism, nor does it depend on your believing that all animals are equal or that all animals have a right to life, nor is it predicated on some highly contentious metaethical theory which you reject. Rather, it is predicated on your beliefs. Simply put, the argument shows that even those of you who are steadfastly committed to valuing humans over nonhumans are nevertheless committed to the immorality of eating meat and other animal products, given your other beliefs

Epistemic Luck

Epistemic luck is a generic notion used to describe any of a number of ways in which it can be accidental, coincidental, or fortuitous that a person has a true belief. For example, one can form a true belief as a result of a lucky guess, as when one believes through guesswork that “C” is the right answer to a multiple-choice question and one’s belief just happens to be correct. One can form a true belief via wishful thinking; for example, an optimist’s belief that it will not rain may luckily turn out to be correct, despite forecasts for heavy rain all day. One can reason from false premises to a belief that coincidentally happens to be true. One can accidentally arrive at a true belief through invalid or fallacious reasoning. And one can fortuitously arrive at a true belief from testimony that was intended to mislead but unwittingly reported the truth. In all of these cases, it is just a matter of luck that the person has a true belief. Until the twenty-first century, there was nearly universal agreement among epistemologists that epistemic luck is incompatible with knowledge. Call this view “the incompatibility thesis.” In light of the incompatibility thesis, epistemic luck presents epistemologists with three distinct but related challenges. The first is that of providing an accurate analysis of knowledge (in terms of individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for “S knows that p,” where ‘S’ represents the knower and ‘p’ represents the proposition known). An adequate analysis of knowledge must succeed in specifying conditions that rule out all instances of knowledge-destroying epistemic luck. The second challenge is to resolve the skeptical paradox that the ubiquity of epistemic luck generates: As will become clear in section 2c, epistemic luck is an all-pervasive phenomenon. Coupling this fact with the incompatibility thesis entails that we have no propositional knowledge. The non-skeptical epistemologist must somehow reconcile the strong intuition that epistemic luck is not compatible with knowledge with the equally evident observation that it must be. The third challenge concerns the special skeptical threat that epistemic luck seems to pose for more reflective forms of knowledge, such as knowing that one knows. Each of these challenges will be explored in the present article

Taking Hunger Seriously

An argument is advanced to show that affluent and moderately affluent people, like you and me, are morally obligated: To provide modest financial support for famine relief organizations and/or other humanitanan organizations working to reduce the amount of unnecessary suffering and death in the world, and To refrain from squandering food that could be fed to humans in situations of food scarcity. Unlike other ethical arguments for the obligation to assist the world’s absolutely poor, my argument is not predicated on any highly contentious ethical theory that you likely reject. Rather, it is predicated on your beliefs. The argument shows that the things you currently believe already commit you to the obligatoriness of helping to reduce malnutrition and famine-related diseases by sending a nominal percentage of your income to famine relief organizations and by not squandering food that could be fed to them. Consistency with your own beliefs implies that to do any less is to be profoundly immoral