What’s doing the work in justifying some political arrangement we’ve made is not whatever the official justification might be – as, for example, in the preamble to the Second Amendment to the American Constitution – but rather that in virtue… Read More ›
Social and Political Philosophy
OH BUT THAT’S DIFFERENT
As a philosopher of mind Kant was beyond brilliant. As an ethicist he was an idiot. Kant asks us to consider two scenarios: I steal your wallet, you steal mine. If I think the one is okay, I have to… Read More ›
UNSOLICITED WORDS OF ADVICE INSTALLMENT #18
Those who claim that the end is nigh – today it’s anthropogenic global warming that’s most widely thought is going to do us in – are aware, are they not, that the world is going to come to an end… Read More ›
WHY BLACK LIVES MIGHT MATTER AFTER ALL
You and I allow each other to freely be in each other’s presence on condition that we won’t misbehave. Were this not so we’d all still be cowering in our caves, “and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish,… Read More ›
NECESSITATED HYPOCRISY
There are a few things that I get that other people don’t. If this weren’t so I wouldn’t be of much use to them, now would I? So no, since it’s not hubris, no apology warranted, so none forthcoming. And… Read More ›
IN DEFENCE … NO, MAKE THAT IN PRAISE, OF OMAR KHADR
Here’s a newsflash for all those American servicemen serving in Afghanistan and Iraq. And for their wives. When you enlist in a nation’s armed forces, there’s an understanding that at some point you may be asked to go off somewhere… Read More ›
WHAT’S WRONG WITH THOSE TRUTHERS?
The nineteen martyrs of 9/11 were never charged let alone convicted of a crime. This is because – so as not to squander precious prosecutorial resources – we tend not to indict dead people. But now let’s suppose the Truthers… Read More ›
SOME CONFIDENTIALITY DILEMMAS
Most people have their smart phone in their pocket at all times. Most smart phones are also recording devises. If there’s any chance it’ll be a “he said, she said”, stick your hand in your pocket and press the record… Read More ›
CHALLENGE versus RIDICULE
Much as I’d sometimes like to be, I’m not a knee-jerk civil libertarian. I understand that the maintenance – and before that the promotion – of a civil society sometimes requires limits to freedom of movement, of association, of expression,… Read More ›
TWO LECTURES YOU WON’T GET AT LAW SCHOOL
LESSON 1: NATURAL LAW AND POSITIVE LAW There are, among the Great Unwashed – that’s everybody except me, by the way – some pretty serious misconceptions about law. Some people, including some philosophers, think there’s something called natural law, by… Read More ›
