Cure-alls and Remedies
One of the most common philosophical conversations on the internet is the argument between atheists and agnostics as to which is the more reasonable position. This comes up so often that I thought I’d record some of my reflections on it. In particular, I am mindful that my position is somewhat at odds with my…
NPR has a story about group intelligence : Anita Woolley, an assistant professor of organizational behavior and theory, has been studying what it means to say a group is “intelligent.” So she created teams of two to five people, drawn from 700 volunteers, and asked the teams to solve various kinds of problems. “We had…
If you’ve ever been to my home city, Washington, DC, you’ve probably noticed that the license plates say “Taxation without Representation.” That’s because DC residents (like Puerto Ricans and inhabitants of the US territories and “overseas possessions”) are not represented in Congress by voting members. Instead, we have a non-voting delegate , much like the…
Following up on my claim in the last post that “honor produces error,” in my view, the problem is epistemic privilege, i.e. deference. By deference, I mean the epistemic privileges that some people receive or earn through demonstrating their erudition or looking like they know what they’re talking about. When you think of deference, you…
Dr. J responds to my criticism of her position on plagiarism detection. I am, she accuses, guilty of Cold War paranoia and preemptive warfare with my students: That is to say, the classroom is a millieu in which everyone is suspicious and noone can be trusted, so every preemptive security mechanism one can employ should be employed. This is,…
Dr. J protests that her school has purchased access to the service Turnitin.com : If I participate in Turnitin, I am negating their Honor Code promise and, effectively, treating my students as if they never signed it. Quite simply, I do not know how I can reasonably expect students to take the Honor Code seriously…
Dr. Trott has a nice post over at Mahogany Feed on Terry Jones’ threat to burn Korans over the weekend to commemorate the attacks of September 11th and to remind Muslims “not to push their agenda on us .” Dr. Trott suggests that this threat to burn the holy book of a cultural group, with…
In a previous post , I argued deception robbed sexual and marriage partners of their capacity to grant informed consent: attempts to reduce consent to the simple act of saying “yes” actually ignore the ways in which fraudulently representing oneself may be coercive. We can hate the bigotry and prejudice that make the lies seem…
Moral Camouflage or Moral Monkeys? An individual psychology primarily disposed to consider the interests of all equally, without fear or favor, even in the teeth of social ostracism, might be morally admirable, but simply wouldn’t cut it as a vehicle for reliable replication. Such pure altruism would not be favored in natural selection over an impure altruism…
If you lie about your ethnicity in order to procure consent for sex, is that rape? Sabbar Kashur, 30, was sentenced to 18 months in prison on Monday after the court ruled that he was guilty of rape by deception. According to the complaint filed by the woman with the Jerusalem district court, the two…