Skip to content

Is it the thought that counts?

Is it the thought that counts?

There was a jolly fire in the fireplace. The snow was falling outside the windows, to the delight of children and despair of transport planners. Aristotle sipped on the mulled wine, watching while Kant meticulously wrapped another jar of homemade mustard.

“Dear Immanuel, are you going to give all your friends mustard?”

“Everybody except Georg. He likes to mix it with ketchup; he says it makes a great synthesis. I don’t care much for that idea and I would hate to see it spread. He will get a writing style guide instead.”

“I guess for you it is the thought that counts, when it comes to Christmas presents.”

Read More »Is it the thought that counts?

Wikileaks Rights and Wrongs

Would it be a good thing if, far from crushing Wikileaks, governments were required to post their entire correspondence on Wikileaks? In principle, this would appear to be highly desirable. A legitimate ruler over us it might justifiably keep secrets from us—but there is no such thing, neither leviathan nor the general will nor the people. Government is merely a mechanism we employ to protect our rights and resolve certain coordination problems. The government is therefore our agent and agents have no ground for withholding information from principals. The enormous power accumulated by the state should not be wielded in secrecy. Furthermore, when we give up democratic and political romanticism the attractions of openness only increase: we realise that anyone putting themselves forward to have power over us (always for our own good, of course) thereby raises a doubt over whether they should have it, and that politicians are not and never will be especially wise or good and will do what they think is required to hang onto power.

(update: see also my discussion of Wikileaks on Guardian Comment is Free)

Read More »Wikileaks Rights and Wrongs

Political epistemology and recent Australian experience

One of the growth areas in recent analytic philosophy is social epistemology. Epistemology is concerned with the nature of knowledge, but social epistemology often has a more applied focus. It asks about the conditions under which groups produce knowledge, and one of its central claims is that groups are often better at discovering truths than are individuals.

This comforting claim seems, at first sight, to be challenged by contemporary political events. The recent electoral success of Tea Party candidates in the United States, following on the heels of strong showings for hard right parties in the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe, as well as an increase in xenophobic rhetoric from centre right leaders like Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel, seem to cast serious doubt on the ability of the electorate to rationally assess policies. The problem is sharpest in the US case, since the Tea Party seems to have mobilized the white working class to vote against their own economic interests. In these circumstances, it is tempting for the social democrat or even the moderate conservative to say, with Brecht, that the government should dissolve the people and elect another one.

Read More »Political epistemology and recent Australian experience

Education is child abuse

By Charles Foster

I took my son to school this morning. And I’m wondering if that was evil.

Proponents of human cognitive enhancement are fond of saying that there is nothing very novel about their suggestions. There is no difference in principle, they say, between improving someone’s neural processing power by (for example) manipulation of the genome, and improving that power by education. It is a potent argument. Brains are very plastic things. Education increases the number of neuronal connections. You can see the effect of education with an electron microscope. Education produces change every bit as physical as the bruises produced by a violently abusive parent.

Read More »Education is child abuse

Sex and Chess

For chess geeks (like me), it’s an exciting week.   Tomorrow will see the start of the London Chess Classic.   It will feature the first, second and forth ranked players in the world.   Apart from their prowess over the 64 squares, all the competitors share another characteristic: they’re all male.

Read More »Sex and Chess

People will behave badly if it’s not too much work…and if no one is watching

by Alexandre Erler

An interesting article recently published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science concludes that people are more likely to transgress moral norms if doing so does not require an explicit action on their part. The researchers, from the University of Toronto, conducted two studies: in one of these, they asked participants whether they would volunteer to help a student with a learning disability complete a problem-solving task. One group of participants had only the option of checking a 'yes' or 'no' box that popped up on the computer. The second group of people could follow a link at the bottom of the page to volunteer their help or simply press 'continue' to move on to the next page of their questionnaire. Participants were five times more likely to volunteer when they had to expressly pick either 'yes' or 'no.'

 

Read More »People will behave badly if it’s not too much work…and if no one is watching

Is mathematics the Christmas present of the year?

by Anders Sandberg

Is mathematics the Christmas present of the year? TheoryMine is a company that uses automatic theorem discovery and proof to generate new theorems via computer, which customers can then buy the naming rights for (for a paper describing the method, see The Theory behind TheoryMine). Is this a scam? Or does it devalue pure mathematics? Or is this a great new way of acknowledging its beauty?

Read More »Is mathematics the Christmas present of the year?

Is Discounted Therapy Fair?

by David Shipley

A friend of mine is a therapist. She faced the following dilemma.

My friend specialises in enhancing fertility and was approached by a prospective patient who wished to become pregnant but could not afford to pay the standard fee of £45 per treatment as she was on benefits. The woman was aged 40 and had no children. What should my friend the therapist have done?

Read More »Is Discounted Therapy Fair?