British Prime Minister David Cameron has decided to oppose pornography. Among his new anti-porn measures are a default “off” setting whereby internet service providers block access to erotic material barring user override and an outright ban on what Cameron calls “extreme pornography”, erotic material that depicts fictional violent sex. Are these policies (and others like them) good ideas?
Author: Benjamin Studebaker
This is Berk
I have invented a moral conundrum which I believe makes a strong point about moral philosophy. I wish to share it.
Glass-Steagall 2.0
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has a new idea–she wants to bring back repealed portions of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. The bill is, surprisingly, co-sponsored by John McCain (R-AZ). Warren’s student loan scheme was ill-conceived, but is this idea better? Let’s find out.
Mitch Daniels and Howard Zinn
Mitch Daniels, the former governor of Indiana, one-time speculative presidential candidate, and current president of Purdue University has been accused of attempting to use his office to influence the ideological content of Indiana’s classrooms so as to silence dissenting opinions. Specifically, he is accused of attempting to prevent schools from using A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn, a deceased academic. Daniels did indeed attempt to prevent the book from being taught in schools, as he freely admits–was this morally permissible of him?
What is Society?
In political theory, there is some disagreement about what precisely society is. Liberal theorists believe that society is just an amalgamation of individual interests. Libertarians often argue that there is no society at all, that the individual interests are all there are. Both views contrast with the collectivist view, that there are irreducible social goods that cannot be located in individuals at all, because these goods require a society to exist in the first place. Today I’d like to weigh in on the topic by arguing that there are indeed goods that typically require society, but that this nonetheless does not make them irreducible. Society is more than the sum of various individual interests, but it is not separate from its component people either. Let’s dive in.
Benjamin Studebaker 