The Japanese are leading the way. Fascinating implications for the deep human need for companionship — interaction, visibility, and personal connection, even if simulated. Also: My related article on the ethics of sex with robots.
Want a Hologram Girlfriend and Assistant? Read More »
[Re-pinning for this season’s festivities.] We all know the tale of Ebenezer Scrooge. Or do we? Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol has generated an astonishing variety of interpretations, and as with most rich tales the interpretations often tell us as much about the interpreter as the original story. The legend of Robin Hood is a
Ebenezer Scrooge as Aristotelian Hero Read More »
I’m reading Radical by Nature: The Green Assault on Liberty, Property, and Prosperity by Thomas J. McCaffrey. His target is radical environmentalism. Environmentalism as a big-tent label like feminism, liberalism, and conservatism, each having many competing strands within. McCaffrey focuses on the most philosophically fundamental versions of envrionmentalism — and with good reason, as that
McCaffrey’s *Radical by Nature* Read More »
My anti-Trump street cred is here. But acting like an immature asshole (to use technical philosophical terminology) is no way to fight back against the man or his policies. Minimal civility is essential for a politics to function peacefully. Some disturbing anecdotes: * Senator Joseph McCarthy was demonized for going after artists and others who
Civility down the toilet: intolerance, anti-Trump style Read More »
The Tale of the Slave By Robert Nozick Robert Nozick was Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University. Consider the following sequence of cases, which we shall call the Tale of the Slave, and imagine it is about you. 1. There is a slave completely at the mercy of his brutal master’s whims. He often is
Nozick’s Tale of the Slave [excerpt] Read More »
1. I’d kill for a Nobel Peace Prize. 2. I went to a restaurant that serves “Breakfast at any time.” So I ordered French Toast during the Renaissance. 3. Half the people you know are below average. 4. What’s another word for thesaurus? 5. Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time. 6. 99%
Fifty Quotations from Steven Wright Read More »
At the non-partisan PRRI site, results released today about the frequency with which people unfriend over politics. (Scroll down past the surveys about Christmas language.) Striking contrasts by gender and party affiliation: Question: Do the results show a general tendency, or is this December 2016 result narrowly reflective of the previous month’s election in which
Unfriending over politics — survey results Read More »
In 1689 John Locke noted, wryly: the Church … is for the most part more apt to be influenced by the Court than the Court by the Church. How the Church was under the vicissitude of orthodox and Arian emperors is very well known. Or if those things be too remote, our modern English history
When Christians change their ethics to suit the political winds Read More »
[Every few years I post an updated version of student bloopers from exams and essays.] A Brief History of Philosophy Humor alert: Being a compilation of student research collected over the years, gently edited by Stephen Hicks, Rockford University (updated: December 2016). Is philosophy a waist of time? Ethical debates have been around for a
An Alternate History of Philosophy — Student edition (2016) Read More »
[From lecture notes for Immanuel Kant’s 1775-1780 courses as published in Lectures on Ethics [1775-1780], translated by Louis Infield, New York: Harper and Row, 1963, pp. 162-168. The text is below and here as PDF.] Duties towards the Body in Respect of Sexual Impulse Amongst our inclinations there is one which is directed towards other
Kant on sex, marriage, concubines, prostitutes, and incest [text] Read More »