When confronted with right wing social conservatism, the left usually adopts one of two strategies. On the one hand, it can argue for tolerance of differing viewpoints, but this argument is only persuasive for those who themselves are not so certain of what they believe as to legislate it. In other words, the tolerance argument only works for people who were already susceptible to accept social progressivism. Alternatively, the left sometimes approaches this problem by rejecting the existence of god so as to undermine the foundation of the conservative belief system, but in order for social conservatives to exist in the first place, their level of confidence in their belief in a god must be very high. These arguments, in many cases, are doomed to fail. So what else can the left argue? Well perhaps the left can seek common ground with the right by accepting, for the purposes of argument, the existence of god.
Author: Benjamin Studebaker
Why Money Sucks
One of the basic underpinnings of our society is the notion that people like money and are good with money. They like making money, they like deciding what to do with their money, the whole business of business is an endless fascination for them. On top of that, we’re good at using our money to get what we want. But what if it’s not true? What if, in reality, we hate making financial and business decisions and would rather have it all taken care of by other people? What if we’re actually not very good at spending our money wisely, if, in reality, our tendency is to be irrational and flippant with our funds? There is reason to believe the latter, according to a recent study by Daniel McFadden comparing on an interdisciplinary level what we know about human psychology, neurology, biology, and anthropology with what we think we know about economics (the full study is here, go here for an interview with McFadden).
Using People
One of the frequent criticisms of consequentialist ethics (the notion that whether or not a given course of action is just depends upon the consequences, the results, of said action) is that it has a tendency to treat use people like objects, to treat them as a means rather than as an end. I propose today to challenge this critique.
What is Art?
A few weeks back I was driving around in the states while listening to a discussion on NPR about whether or not food is a form of art. It made me ponder seriously one of the basic questions of aesthetic philosophy, often asked, but rarely answered seriously or comprehensively–what is art? This post details the outcome of a serious think about the topic.
Aaron Swartz and Copyright Law
Recently, Aaron Swartz, a talented programmer involved in the creation RSS feeds and Reddit, committed suicide. Apparently this was in response to his being hounded by a federal prosecutor for the crime of violating copyright protections and sharing a large cache of academic articles access to which was controlled by JSTOR, an online academic library club of sorts. In the aftermath of the Swartz suicide, activists are demanding a significant curtailment of copyright law. Is this a reasonable policy? That’s my question for today.
Benjamin Studebaker 