If you think about it – my advice is don’t – the lion’s share of our lives are lived not in the world but in our heads. By this I don’t mean the now banal observation that our experiences of… Read More ›
Social and Political Philosophy
WHAT IS MORALITY?
1.Ethics and Meta-Ethics: Ethics is about how we should behave. Meta-ethics is about what we’re doing when we’re doing ethics. That is, meta-ethics asks why we should behave as we should. Note that it won’t do to say because we… Read More ›
HACKLES
Jonathan Haidt has argued that a university can seek the truth, or it can pursue social justice, but it can’t do both. This is not because the two are never one. As often as not they are. But that means… Read More ›
THE HURT ARGUMENT
When you don’t want people to hear what they’d like to hear, you tell yourself not that they’d be hurt by hearing it – after all, that would be for them to decide! – but rather that there are people… Read More ›
WHAT TERRY O’RILEY TAUGHT ME
There used to be a programme on the CBC, hosted by Terry O’Riley, called “The Age of Persuasion” and then later resurrected as “Under the Influence”. It was about advertising, and it was excellent. But remembering it now puts me… Read More ›
HOW TO RESOLVE THE TRANS ISSUE
I claim to self-identify as a woman. I self-identify as a woman. I am a woman. How do we get from (1) to (2)? And then from (2) to (3)? With a whole lot of as-yet-suppressed premises. After all, I… Read More ›
THE DEAL
It’s really just a Prisoners’ Dilemma. Your first choice is you get to listen to whomever you want to listen to and I don’t get to listen to whomever I want to listen to. Your second choice, and it’s my second… Read More ›
SIX TAKEAWAYS FROM THE WIDDOWSON AFFAIR
If you’ve read my penultimate entry, you’ll know that last week I invited Frances Widdowson to Lethbridge, as the first post-Covid “Guest of Dishonour” at our Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner series on Saturday, then to give two guest lectures,… Read More ›
THE WIDDOWSON AFFAIR
As many Canadians will know – but I’m not sure the story has hit the international wires – I invited a certain Dr. Frances Widdowson to give a talk at the University of Lethbridge on February 1st, on a topic… Read More ›
THE EVOLUTION OF THE UNIVERSITY
For most of human history – and in most parts of the world to this day – there were institutions that work like this: We tell people – priests or commissars – what to tell others, who are then sent… Read More ›
