Two diametrically opposed factions in the Republican Id: Sleepy McSleepums (a.k.a. Ben Carson), who is like a shot of morphine straight into the cerebellum. And Donald Trump, who needs no alias because he is the most stimulating form of political snuff available without a prescription.
The Incoherence of Michael Sandel’s Critique of Liberalism
Michael Sandel is one of America’s best-known political philosophers, and helped establish his reputation with a widely respected and widely taught book, “Liberalism and the Limits of Justice.” That’s surprising, given that its central argument is based on some very obvious errors in reasoning.
Listen or Watch: Episode 116 Aftershow on Freud and Dreams
Listen to the Aftershow for Episode 116 on Freud and dreams, with Danny Lobell and Wes Alwan.
The ‘Deus’ in ‘Ex Machina’
What does the film Ex Machina have to do the deus ex machina as plot device?
The Eternal Relativism of the Freshman Mind
Is K-12 public schooling that leads to the moral relativism of college students?
How Not to Be a Public Intellectual: Amartya Sen’s Terrible Piece in the New Republic
A piece by the Nobel Prize-winning economist (and aspiring philosopher) is a strangely awful attempt by an intellectual to communicate with the general public.
Please Stop Contributing to the Publish-or-Perish Landfill
<br /> Bernard Williams was the rare academic who was also a great writer. In his review of Williams’ Essays and Reviews: 1959-2002, Paul Sagar lets academia have it: We can now see that Williams was not lazy: he spent an immense amount of time reading and thinking, and knew much beyond his own academic arguments. What he chose to Continue Reading …
Why Identity Politics is Illiberal (Belly Dancing, Ctd)
In my post on the identity politics of belly dancing, in which I argued that Randa Jarrar’s recent tirade against white belly dancers must imply the moral inferiority of white women, I bypassed – because I thought it particularly weak – the notion that white belly dancing unwittingly perpetuates racist stereotypes about Arabs, even if there is nothing inherently mocking Continue Reading …
On the Identity Politics of Belly Dancing
Novelist Randa Jarrar has been mocked – and accused of racism – for telling the world that she “can’t stand” white belly dancers. As Eugene Volokh notes, if we were to universalize Jarrar’s objections to “cultural appropriation,” then we might object to East Asian cellists or Japanese productions of Shakespeare, rather than treating the arts as they ought to be Continue Reading …
On Woody Allen and the Presumption of Innocence
Dear Reader: You do not know whether Woody Allen molested Dylan Farrow. You do not know this, because the only evidence you have are her accusations, his denials, and heaps of evidence that call Dylan Farrow’s account into question. Further, you are aware of or ought to be made aware of the many cases of false accusations of molestation elicited Continue Reading …
The Priority of Justice-as-Fairness
We need rules for living together, we cantankerous human beings: this is one premise governing John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice, and one that governs social contract theory in general. As chaos is the point of departure for creation myths, so conflict has been for political theory. We need rules to establish peace and order and stability. Just as “the Continue Reading …
In Which Ta-Nehisi Coates Deploys a New Epithet
In his latest response to my criticisms, Ta-Nehisi Coates oddly compares Alec Baldwin to Strom Thurmond in a way that inadvertently makes my case for me. Thurmond adamantly and openly opposed desegregation and civil rights, even as the political winds were shifting the other way, while Baldwin adamantly and openly supported gay rights, long before this was the majority opinion Continue Reading …
What the Word “Bigot” Actually Means (and Why it is Important)
Update: Coates responds. I rebut. Ta-Nehisi Coates and Andrew Sullivan have both responded to my criticisms of their claim that Alec Baldwin is a “bigot” for, among other offenses, calling a photographer a “cocksucking fag.” In doing so, they resort to two tried-and-true tactics available to someone on the losing side of an argument: the first is to quietly abandon various Continue Reading …
No, Alec Baldwin is Not a Bigot
Update: Coates responds here, and Sullivan here. My follow-up here. Alec Baldwin is a talented actor who also happens to be extremely intelligent, verbally dexterous, and politically active on the left. And he has a history of getting in trouble for very public (or publicized) displays of anger, once leaving a rant on his 11-year-old daughter’s voicemail in which he called Continue Reading …
Why Non-Euclidean Geometry Does Not Invalidate Kant’s Conception of Spatial Intuition
Everyone once in a while I run across the opinion that non-Euclidean presents a serious problem for Kantian epistemology. While I’ve rebutted this notion before, it’s common enough that I thought I’d have another go at explaining why it’s a misconception. For Kant we can’t know the universe to be spatial “in itself” (as in “things-in-themselves”), Euclidean or Non-Euclidean or otherwise. Continue Reading …
Back to the Father: The Incest-Driven Plot of “Back to the Future”
Let’s pause for a moment to do proper homage to the remarkable fact that during the 1980s, there was a blockbuster family film in which large parts of the plot revolved around the subject of incest. That film was Back to the Future, which I recently discussed with Dan Calvisi and William Robert Rich on their screenwriting podcast (PEL listeners Continue Reading …
The Moral Uselessness of Moral Outrage
Andrew Sullivan has accused Glenn Greenwald of “justifying” terrorism for a post that is largely about the inconsistent use of the word “terrorism.” Greenwald’s response is a thorough and decisive debunking of Sullivan’s accusations, but I wanted add something as a follow-up to my discussion of Sullivan’s incoherence on these issues. In this latest piece, he doubles down on the Continue Reading …
Andrew Sullivan’s Incoherence on Radical Islam
Since it became known that the Boston Marathon bombing suspects are Muslims, there has been a predictable celebration by a chorus of right-wing commentators for whom the evil of Islam and the collective guilt of Muslims in such cases are tenets of faith. More subtle but equally pernicious are the reactions of blogger Andrew Sullivan and political entertainer Bill Maher. Continue Reading …
Four Highly Effective Responses to Terrorism
1. Choose liberty over security. 2. See events like the Boston Marathon bombing — by virtue of their rarity — as evidence of our relative security, not as one more reason to feel afraid. 3. Understand that our relative security is guaranteed on the whole not by guards and guns, but by basic human psychology, which involves the remarkable nonviolence Continue Reading …
Evolution is Rigged! A Review of Thomas Nagel’s “Mind and Cosmos”
Thomas Nagel, a famous philosopher if there is such a thing in America, has written a book a bold title: Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False. The main title invites you to settle into your armchair for an evening of speculative meditation; the subtitle orders you to the barricades, in preparation for Continue Reading …
- « Previous Page
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- …
- 8
- Next Page »