What can YOU do? One thing you can do is support the educational institutions listed here.
Tuesday, March 31, 2026
Last Wishes of Jennifer Lee Lawson, MA
Jennifer Lee Lawson, MA. Self Portrait. March 31, 2026.
In the event I die soon, all of my material goods, intellectual and creative property, and assets, including money and digital assets, goes to my daughter Brita Nicole Lawson-Frazier.
It is my wish that anyone who wants to remember me support quality education. The following are institutions I have attended. Please donate, even if I live a long time. Start NOW!
1. The Bonner Chiles Foundation
4. University of North Florida
My obituary may be gleaned from my biography here on this website.
Monday, March 30, 2026
The United States Military vs. Me? Get a Life! UPDATED. UPDATED AGAIN!
My Statement:
Dear All,
Some of you may have heard I was recently attacked, harassed, and threatened by US Military personnel. I'm also battling breast cancer. I can't just at this moment meet the demands of every individual.
Here, however, is an updated post with an embedded video to my speech on YouTube which was apparently so offensive I needed to be attacked. By the military.
My areas in philosophy, which I am highly educated and experienced in, are: Ethics, Political Philosophy, Philosophy of War, Philosophy Language, Philosophy of Math, Philosophy of Logic.
Philosophers like Jason Stanley fled the US for reasons just like this.
Stay safe. Stay well.
Jennie
The Offending Video (See further comments on YouTube):
An unwanted back-and-forth on my YouTube channel about war crimes and when it's legal to disobey orders culminated with me saying this:
UPDATE 4/7/2026: 1000% increase in contentious objectors in the military.
Poem: Mr. Pee Pee Pants Is President
Mr. Pee Pee Pants Is President
Jennifer Lee Lawson
The United States Military is showing strikes on their targets to all of us.
War, in our age, ought to be considered barbaric, it should be rare, and a last resort.
They say the first Caveman hit the other Caveman over a hurt ego.
Yet–Mr.Pee Pee Pants–wants world peace through war.
Kierkegaard argued, in a way, that the ends could justify the means–
The so-called teleological suspension of the ethical.
God didn’t have Abraham kill Isaac.
And Representative Andy Ogles honestly wants to be a Crusader.
What I Did Last Week
1. On Kant: I've been thinking that if one is suicidal--like in "13 Reasons Why"--one could rationally will that at least 13 other people die other than oneself.
2. John Rawls would have you imagine you are an undocumented immigrant. No Kings Day!
Robert Nozick would be even more radical on the issue of immigration. Open borders, possibly, as long as there's no fraud, force, coercion, or harm to another.3. There's nothing new under the Sun from Elon Musk. Rockets are featured in our 'Star Spangled Banner.' Henry Ford invented the automobile. Arabs invented banks.
4. Suggested Bob Dylan invented Rap: Listen to Bob Dylan's Subterreanean Homesick Blues and tell mr he didn't invent rap.
Today in Duck/Rabbit News
"Colorless green ideas sleep furiously." -Noam Chompsky, an example of a meaningless, properly structured sentence.
This sentence makes sense if: Colorless is taken to be a synonymy of bland. Green is the color green. Ideas are ideas. Sleep is sleep. And those green ideas are really into their sleep.
Sunday, March 29, 2026
Saturday, March 28, 2026
Thursday, March 26, 2026
Mission Impossible @--\---- WITH UPDATE
Go to Dr. Leiter's blog post here. We may have no one else to help us, Americans. Even if we do, let's do this!
UPDATE: A kind person on Twitter/X posted these reading recommendations:
Wednesday, March 25, 2026
Tuesday, March 24, 2026
Monday, March 23, 2026
What Descartes Didn't Know
Imagine you have schizophrenia and you are in crisis. There’s a helicopter flying above you, and you believe that, but what you wonder is whether it’s The United States Military coming for you.
You are paranoid.
Paranoia makes you incredibly fearful—for your health, your family, and your life.
You call your best friend with your cell phone, which your counselor said to keep on you as “a lifeline.”
You are panicking.
Your friend tells you he is sure it’s not the military out to get you.
“I can’t believe you, either. I wish there was a God so I could know what’s true!”
What are you looking for here? A firm, solid, indubitable foundation to ground your beliefs. To ground, even, all of reality for you.
That was the project of French philosopher Rene Descartes (1596-1650). His famous Cogito Ergo Sum (I think, therefore I am) in his Meditations on First Philosophy proposed to ground all knowledge on the indubitable belief in, first of all, the inability to doubt that you exist, and then that God exists and God would not allow you to be deceived by an evil demon--or a nefarious philosopher!
Descartes’ rationalism—dividing the foundation for all knowledge into the undeniability that The Self exists--laid the foundation for modern science.
That is important.
These days, we know more about the world than ever before.
But could we know more? And could knowing more be linked with doubting more? Is there any more to doubt after Descartes?
Obviously to many readers, there is more to doubt today. A large percentage—and growing—of people are atheists in the year 2026 on Planet Earth.
That’s one problem for Descartes.
But there’s another problem, too, that most people don’t recognize immediately: One can doubt oneself exists. To see this, let’s go back to you and your schizophrenia.
Imagine you are in crisis again and it’s really bad. You—you?--begin to wonder whether thoughts are being inserted into your mind, whether someone is making you into a Frankenstein-ish Artificial Intelligence with artificial thoughts, and your core self breaks down and shatters.
You are catatonic: you cannot talk, eat, drink, or use the bathroom on your own.
With the help of psychiatrists—Doctors of the Soul—you reintegrate.
Afterwards, you pause and reflect on what happened to you.
God, if that evil dude exists, would allow you to exist unhealthily! You could be deceived by an evil demon!—or a nefarious philosopher!
This is what Rene Descartes didn’t know.
We know some of this, now, because of him, however. Advancements in medicine, owing to scientific research, have enabled us to understand a lot of this.
Many philosophers these days have dived right in to empiricism, jumping right over the skeptical hypothesis altogether, and have hated Descartes and all he stood for.
Let’s not hate Descartes, then, for he laid the foundation—no pun intended—for this very musing. We know more—much more than he did—because of him.
Saturday, March 21, 2026
Friday, March 20, 2026
Thursday, March 19, 2026
Tuesday, March 17, 2026
Saturday, March 14, 2026
My Greatest Influence & Stories About White Women
Buy my collection of short stories, The Hummingbird, as an ebook, here.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, Jennifer Lee Lawson took to writing. This collection of feminist, philosophical short stories were her submission to Creative Writing MFA's. This is Lawson's first collection of short stories made available to the public. In them, she examines the lives of several different women, all located in Florida, Lawson's home. Each story navigates philosophical issues Lawson learned as a philosophy undergraduate and graduate student.
Margaret Lawson, My Mom!
The Big Beautiful Assimilation Bill (In Memory of Dr. Rob Brady & Dr. Jonathan Lear)
1. FREE ESSAY! What to do during cultural breakdown.
2. "Radical Hope" by Jonathan Lear, PhD.
------
SAMPLE INFORMAL LOGIC LESSON FROM INTRODUCTION TO PHILOSOPHY
By Jennifer Lawson
Claims
When you are confronted with an argument, the first thing you want to do is figure out what kind of claims are being made. This way, you will know how to assess the claims.
A claim can be:
Empirical: The truth or falsity can be assessed by looking into the world.
Example: “All crows are black.”
It would be hard to examine every crow in the world, but if you really want to assess this claim to see if it’s true, you’d look into the world.
A Priori: The truth or falsity cannot be assessed by looking into the world. Usually these claims are said to be assessed by mere reason: thinking about it, examining the concepts.
Example: “A bachelor is an unmarried male.”
Normative: Normative claims are prescriptive. They purport to say what ought to be.
Example: “You should never kill another human.”
Here are some further examples:
My arm is bleeding. (Empirical)
A triangle is a three sided figure. (A priori)
Shouldn’t you make better use of your time? (Normative)
There cannot be a square circle. (A priori)
Smoking increases your risk for heart disease. (Empirical)
Thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s wife. (Normative)
Logic
We make a distinction between inductive and deductive arguments.
An inductive argument is one which, if the premises are true, the conclusion is only probable.
Example:
Every time I have gone to my mom’s house and knocked on the door, her dog, Flip, ran to the door and barked. I am about to knock on my mom’s door. Therefore, Flip will bark.
This is only probable because (A) Flip could have died. (B) Flip could be in the back yard. (C) Flip may have been trained to not bark when someone knocks at the door. Or any number of other reasons. Still, it is probable that Flip will bark next time I knock.
A deductive argument is one which, if the premises are true, the conclusion must be true.
Example:
Socrates is a man
All men are mortal
Therefore, Socrates is mortal
If the premises are true, then the conclusion that Socrates is mortal is necessarily true.
Deductive arguments can be called valid and sound.
When an argument is vaild, that means it’s in a good form. Validity describes a good logical form.
When an argument is sound, that means its form is good and it has true premises.
Here are some examples of vaild argument forms:
Modus Ponens
p→q
p
therefore, q Modus Tollens
p→q
not q
therefore, not p Hypothetical Syllogism
p→q
q→r
therefore, p→r Disjunct
p or q
p
therefore, not q
If the statements put inside these variables are true, the conclusion must be true.
For example, let’s look at Modus Ponens:
If one is a dog, one goes to heaven.
Spot is a dog.
Therefore, Spot goes to heaven.
This is an example of Modus Ponens. This argument is valid. And, if the premises were true, it would also be sound.
Friday, March 13, 2026
Thursday, March 12, 2026
Wednesday, March 11, 2026
Tuesday, March 10, 2026
Monday, March 9, 2026
Sunday, March 8, 2026
Wouldn't It Be Nice? Well, This Possible World Could Be Actual For Us.
Check it. Throwback to 2016. Basic Income. And a better socio-economic-political-social system.
Remember! Nothing about us without us!
If Only Someone Could See This Coming....
Please see this blog post of mine at the literary magazine Ghost Parachute (2017).
Today is March 8, 2026.
I cannot believe that I've been saying the same damn thing for over 10 years.
I have responded as best as I could so far given the minority situation I've been in as an "early adopter" of Trump-as-Authoritarian.
For such a young, vibrant 46 years of age, I'm jaded sometimes beyond belief, so much so that I've been known to say "Americans are getting exactly what they deserve" and "Some Americans are such dumbasses it's no wonder America is in the state it's in and that most of the world currently hates America."
Those are my worst moments. We all have them.
I never wanted this particular soapbox. However, the short advice I give in the aforementioned blog post is a good starting point when circumstances make it such that we are lying with dogs and may get fleas, as they say.
Tu Quoque: The First Line of Attack on Indigenous Issues Today
By now, most people have heard the phrase, "No one is illegal on stolen land." But do you know that most of the initial rebuttals to this catchphrase are fallacious? In fact, most often employed today is a fallacy known as tu quoque, meaning, "You too!"
I find this humorous, honestly, because not only does this response refuse to engage in the nitty-gritty of real-life justice issues, as well as serving as a justification to keep being in the wrong. But it can be harmful. For example, singer Billie Eilish received massive backlash after saying that catchphrase at the Grammy's, so I feel the need to call it out. Saying, "You too!" does not negate the initial argument in any way.
You're going to have to do better than that.
Saturday, March 7, 2026
Friday, March 6, 2026
Thursday, March 5, 2026
Announcement to America. March 5, 2026
Figure out what you're going to do...or where you're going to go.
Tuesday, March 3, 2026
Monday, March 2, 2026
Reply to Elon Musk
Elon Musk on X March 2026:
If one is to use the term “First Nations” or “Indigenous Peoples” or “Native Americans” in the Americas and Antipodes, then, in fairness, it should also apply to English, French, Spanish and other such peoples in Europe
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