Landon D. C. Elkind

Landon D. C. Elkind

Philosopher, Logician, Logical Atomist

Blog

2023

Against philosophical canons: How I became a canon-shredder

5 minute read

Published:

Recently I published a piece in Sandra Lapointe and Erich Reck’s wonderful anthology with Routledge, Historiography and the Formation of Philosophical Canons. There I offer a conceptual analysis of philosophical canons according to which they are dogmatic practices. Then I argue that philosophical canons, so understood, undermine the ultimate practical point for which we have them, which point is to faciliate better philosophy. Even taking a very broad range of views of what counts as “better philosophy” the argument shows that philosophical canons are self-undermining because, no matter what authors, texts, and traditions they contain, they undermine the practical point for which they exist.

2021

Against Huemer’s ‘Against History’

6 minute read

Published:

In a recent post at Fake Noûs, Michael Huemer asks why we have history of philosophy as a specific field of academic research. In Section 1, Huemer agrees that reading the works of dead philosophers is important and worthwhile. It is agreed that dead philosophers’ works are usually mined for the sake of creating a formulation of a problem. When this is done by a philosopher of sufficient disciplinary influence, and their work gets enough uptake among other philosophers, this formulation can become canonical and set the agenda for a subset of living philosophers.

2019

Literature on the Empty Domain

5 minute read

Published:

The state of play in the empty domain, pun-intended, seems to be this: nobody has really gotten a generally satisfactory proof theory and semantics for (non-free) inclusive logic—logic inclusive of the empty domain. I think that getting a satisfactory semantics for it stands to benefit discussions of metaphysical nihilism—the view that, possibly, there are no concrete entities—a priori justification for contingent claims, and of proof-theoretic and model-theoretic semantics for logic.

2018

Why should we care about believing what is true? Using Trivialism to Answer

2 minute read

Published:

I was recently asked how I motivate caring about what we believe (to students, but this applies to plenty of non-students). Likely most philosophers are already sold on believing what is true and holding consistent beliefs. And if someone already cares about being right, about being consistent, and about believing truly, your work is done as soon as you explain it what the issue is. But not everyone cares about believing truly and holding consistent beliefs. How do we sell them on it?

2017

Digging in a Library Basement (Pt. 1)

4 minute read

Published:

In summer 2017, I was awarded a T. Anne Cleary International Dissertation Research Fellowship to travel to the Bertrand Russell Archives at McMaster University. My dissertation focuses on Russell’s philosophy of logical atomism. So visiting the Archive was a real treat, and truly helpful in getting a more complete picture of Russell’s logical atomism. I am grateful to the University of Iowa Graduate College for their generous support of my first archival adventure! In this series of three posts, I will give an overview of my trip, talk about what it was like to work in the Russell Archives, and then discuss the historical data I found that aided my research.

2014

Blog Post number 3

less than 1 minute read

Published:

This is a sample blog post. Lorem ipsum I can’t remember the rest of lorem ipsum and don’t have an internet connection right now. Testing testing testing this blog post. Blog posts are cool.