Skip to content

Epistemic duty and conspiracies against the laity 2

Epistemic duty and conspiracies against the laity 2

Conspiracies against the laity frequently operate with an inverted morality. For example, honour among thieves includes the obligation not to snitch, that is to say, not to tell the truth about the wrongdoing of each other. By contrast, the professions have an epistemic duty to speak the truth about the success and failure of the deployment of their particular profession’s expertise, and about the success and failure of the professional activities in which they are engaged and for which they are responsible.

Margaret Haywood, a nurse, had sought to fulfil this duty, but the Nursing and Midwifery Council has treated her as a snitch.

Read More »Epistemic duty and conspiracies against the laity 2

Intuitive pirates: why do we accept file sharing so much?

Piracy is in the headlines, whether in Somalian waters or Swedish cyberspace. A Stockholm court this friday found four men guilty of promoting copyright infringement by running the popular file-sharing site The Pirate Bay and sentenced them to one year in prison as well as a 30 million kronor fine (about $3.5 million). The case will no doubt go to a higher court and the circus (as well as the piracy) will continue. Legally, at least in the sense of the spirit of the laws banning copyright infringement, the case is pretty clear. But morally, what is wrong with file sharing? And why don't people care?

Read More »Intuitive pirates: why do we accept file sharing so much?

An earthquake in the theodicy doctrine

On April 6, a strong earthquake struck several Italian cities, causing hundreds of deaths and destroying thousands of homes.
Such violent and destructive  phenomena always arouse dismay and amazement. Many date the birth of modern atheism to the Lisbon earthquake of 1755. On that occasion Voltaire  wrote his  “Poem on the Lisbon disaster “ in which he  discussed the Leibniz theodicy, that is the problem of justifying the existence of evil and suffering in the world whilst believing at the same time in the  existence of  a good and omnipotent god.

Read More »An earthquake in the theodicy doctrine

Tortured logic

A leaked report by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has concluded that medical personnel were involved in interrogation and torture performed overseas by the CIA according to reports in the New York Times. The practices reported by the ICRC have been known about for some time. The way that this has been reported in the media seems to imply that there is something especially bad about the involvement of medics in torture, that this makes it even worse. But why should this be?

Read More »Tortured logic

Be mindful of results, not the method

David King warns that we should modify society, not childrens' brains. This is a response to a recent Radio 4 documentary on "the criminal mind", which discussed recent evidence for biological underpinnings of some forms of antisocial behaviour and the possibility of reducing it using vitamins, drugs or early interventions. Dr King quite rightly points out that the image given by the program tends to oversimplify things and promote a reductionistic view of the causes of crime. But he also appears to contend that complex social problems cannot be solved through biological interventions. In this he is likely wrong.

Read More »Be mindful of results, not the method

Ecclesiastical gaydar: should churches be allowed to discriminate priests?

Melbourne's Catholic Churches have decided to test potential priests for sexual orientation, banning those that appear to be gay. This is in accordance with the Vatican recommendation that even celibate gays should not be allowed in the priesthood. Needless to say, both people within and outside the church have reacted negatively to it. But to what extent can a church declare who is fit to hold positions in it? And would the testing be fair?

Read More »Ecclesiastical gaydar: should churches be allowed to discriminate priests?

Contradicting Nature

Rubén Noé Coronado Jiménez is 25 and pregnant with twins. He is unusual in that he is a transsexual man, in the middle of hormone treatments and about to undergo a full operation to change his sex: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/30/transexual-man-pregnant-twins . The operation has, of course, been postponed while he and his female partner await the birth… Read More »Contradicting Nature

Conspiracies against the laity and wishful thinking

Most duties are concerned with or grounded in the significance of actions. By contrast, an epistemic duty is a duty whose grounding object is belief or knowledge rather than action. My concern here is with a certain epistemic duty had by professionals and their professional organizations. Professionals present themselves in public as being in possession of special expertise and as taking on correlate special responsibilities. They require us to grant them special discretion on the promise of holding each other accountable through professional organizations, which organizations in turn present themselves in public as speaking for their profession.
    The epistemic duty that concerns me here is the duty to speak the truth about the success and failure of the deployment of their particular profession’s expertise, and about the success and failure of the professional activities in which they are engaged and for which they are responsible. This a duty which professional organizations are reluctant to fulfil. Bluntly, their message to us is often “ we know a lot so shut up, do what we tell you, trust anybody we approve of  and don’t hassle us about them: we’ll let you know if there’s a problem”. Too cynical for you?

Read More »Conspiracies against the laity and wishful thinking

Is Reality Just a State of Mind?

In a recent article in the Guardian entitled ‘Quantum Weirdness: What we call ‘reality’ is just a state of mind’, quantum physicist and winner of the 2009 Templeton prize Bernard d’Espagnat argues against the commonsense view, championed by realist philosophers, that reality is objective and importantly independent of our thinking about it. ( See: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2009/mar/17/templeton-quantum-entanglement). Like many before him d’Espagnat appeals to some of the findings of quantum mechanics, which appear to defy commonsense, to support his case. In particular, he appeals to the phenomenon of quantum entanglement, under which particles that have interacted with one another remain importantly connected to one another even when far apart. D’Espagnat points out that this phenomenon has important consequences for our conception of space and time. Somehow he seems to think that it is also important for debates about realism in general and not just to debates about the nature of space and time, although he does not explain why this is the case. According to him:

 

This reality is something that, while not a purely mind-made construct as radical idealism would have it, can be but the picture our mind forces us to form of … Of what ? The only answer I am able to provide is that underlying this empirical reality is a mysterious, non-conceptualisable "ultimate reality", not embedded in space and (presumably) not in time either.

 


Read More »Is Reality Just a State of Mind?