Apparently I harbour a whole lot of hate I didn’t know about. I’d have thought hatred is a sufficiently powerful emotion that I’d feel it. But the fact that I don’t feel it doesn’t mean it’s not there. For example,… Read More ›
Social and Political Philosophy
ATLANTIS
In the year 731 BCE, a flotilla of eight fishing boats, each with about 6 people, men and women, on board, set sail from a village near present-day Cadiz in southern Spain, and, by a freak anomaly of wind and… Read More ›
UNWOKE U
Jonathan Haidt has argued that a university can seek truth, or it can pursue justice, but not both. He’s right about the dichotomy, but I’m not sure he’s best identified the two choices. Getting the truth is far above anyone’s… Read More ›
FANTASIES
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 ›
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
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 could be lying. In fact maybe I have lied, on this very matter. In the event… 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 ›
Paulosophical Vimplications 