“I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think” ― Socrates But sometimes – stuck in a rut, going over the same things in the same environment, again and again – it can be so hard to think. To really, genuinely think, to explore new horizons and find new ideas and wisdoms –… Read More »Think deep thoughts in the snow
New York City contemplates using aerial drones for surveillance purposes, while North Korea buys thousands of cameras to spy on its impoverished population. Britain has so many cameras they cease being newsworthy. The stories multiply – it is trivial to note we are moving towards a surveillance society.
In an earlier post, I suggested surrendering on surveillance might be the least bad option – of all likely civil liberty encroachments, this seemed the less damaging and hardest to resist. But that’s an overly defensive way of phrasing it – if ubiquitous surveillance and lack of privacy are the trends of the future, we shouldn’t just begrudgingly accept them, but demand that society gets the most possible out of them. In this post, I’m not going to suggest how to achieve enlightened surveillance (a 360 degree surveillance would be a small start, for instance), but just outline some of the positive good we could get from it. We all know the negatives; but what good could come from corporations, governments and neighbours being able to peer continually into your bedroom (and efficiently process that data)? In the ideal case, how could we make it work for us?Read More »Enlightened surveillance?
We have a lot of good theories as to why government policies don’t work. Regulatory capture explains why regulating agencies cosy up to the industries they’re suppose to reign in. Politicians’ relentless focus on short term economic growth and desperate chasing of positive headlines causes them to embrace ill-advised short-term measures (and forget about action on things like climate change!). Meanwhile, the civil service’s tenure and lack of accountability allows it to indulge in exuberant nest-feathering wastes of taxpayers’ money. Issues of status and pride saturate the decisions of all ranks of government officials.
These theories are not only intuitive, they are also backed up by research and evidence. And yet…
I started reading a Spanish novel over the Christmas holiday, ‘A Heart so White’ by Javier Marías. One scene described in this book particularly struck me. Juan, the protagonist, reminisces about something he did in the past and now deems as moral wrongdoing. Here is what happened:
I have a relative who faces the following dilemma, though he doesn’t see it as a dilemma. But I do.
My relative is involved in the charitable sector. He has been approached by some representatives of a foreign foundation. He doesn’t know anything about the foundation – those who run the foundation want to keep all substantial details about it secret, for reasons unknown (they may have honourable motives). The foundation has a bank account in the UK, with money transferred into it from abroad: my relative assumes that the money is legally kosher (since the British bank would have had to check for money laundering and so on). Read More »Dirty Money
The American man who held the Guinness World Record for the most permanent transformations to look like an animal was recently found dead in his Nevada home. The man, known by his Native American name Stalking Cat (SC), had since the age of 23, when he had his first tiger stripe tattooed onto his body, undergone a series of body modification procedures aimed at altering his physical appearance to resemble that of a female tiger. In addition to tattooed tiger stripes across his body and numerous piercings, body modification procedures that SC underwent included having his upper lip surgically split, his ears pointed and earlobes elongated, subdermal silicone implants (to change the shape of his face and to facilitate the wearing of whiskers), and flattening of the nose via septum relocation.
A BBC profile on SC from ten years ago states that SC “travels to Phoenix, Arizona to have his surgery carried out by body modification artist Steve Hayward. Cat cannot go under the surgeon’s knife because it is illegal in the United States for a medical professional to alter someone’s appearance beyond what society deems normal.”
What would happen if a person (who, we stipulate, has capacity to make medical treatment decisions under the Mental Capacity Act 2005) wanted to have a similar range of procedures carried out in this jurisdiction?
Read More »Stalking Cat, tiger body modification, and the limits of consent
The Greek statesman and poet Solon, who lived in the sixth century BC, said “count no man happy until he be dead”. His thought seems to have been that a person’s luck can change at any time. Aristotle went further. He believed that things can happen after one’s death to affect whether one is happy.
Initially, that seems an odd idea. Because the modern conception of happiness is that it is purely a subjective state.
But compare two lives, recently in the news. They concern two men – a few years ago both would have been regarded by most people as having lived highly successful, even exemplary lives. Read More »Two Unhappy Lives
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“Treating” homosexuality in minors: Protected free speech or child abuse?
Should mental health providers be allowed to try to “cure” minors of their homosexuality?
Read More »“Treating” homosexuality in minors: Protected free speech or child abuse?
On Wednesday last week, Professor Janet Radcliffe Richards gave the last of her three Uehiro lectures on ‘Sex in a Shifting Landscape’. (Here you can find recordings of all three lectures: 1st audio, 1st video, 2nd audio, 2nd video, 3rd audio, 3rd video.)
She emphasised the goal she pursued with these lectures, namely, to demonstrate methods of philosophical reasoning in practice and to show how they can help in coming to useful conclusions. Recapitulating aspects of her first and second lecture, Radcliffe Richards illustrated the methodological approach John Steward Mill used in the dispute about women’s rights in the 19th century to show the weakness of his opponents’ arguments by proving their incoherence.
Read More »Janet Radcliffe Richards on the past, present and future of sex: Part 3
In the second of her Uehiro lectures on the topic of feminism in the 21st century (which you can listen to here), Professor Janet Radcliffe Richards addresses the question of how the sexes may be said to differ in the light of a shift in our metaphysical understanding of the world. Read More »Janet Radcliffe Richards on the past, present and future of sex: Part 2
