Tag Archives: Philosophy

from Lars Syll It is a great fault of symbolic pseudo-mathematical methods of formalising a system of economic analysis … that they expressly assume strict independence between the factors involved and lose all their cogency and authority if this hypothesis is disallowed; whereas, in ordinary discourse, where we are not blindly manipulating but know all the time what we are doing and what the words mean, we can keep “at the back of our heads” the necessary reserves and qualifications and...

from Peter Radford  This is something I need to get off my desktop.  It’s just for fun … Asymmetry is the very beginning and end of an economy.  It’s the bumps that matter.  Explain them and you explain the economy.  After all the very notion of exchange presumes differences between those involved, and difference is just another way off saying asymmetry.  Sweep the bumps away with a broad brush of supposedly superb logic and you eliminate the very object of your study.  That is if your...

23 November 2024 This book tells three stories about the impact of machines on the human condition: on the way  we work, on our freedom, and on our physical survival. Each story contains within it a vision of heaven and hell: the promise of relief from work, freedom to think our own thoughts, and almost indefinite improvement of health and extension of life   confronts  their  opposites  in the spectre of human uselessness, of Orwelliam thought control, and of  man made disaster....

July 19, 2024 This essay falls into three parts. First, I  discuss the question of what it is which makes  humans unique — that is, irreplaceable.  Second, I consider whether  machines  on balance  enhance or diminish humanness.   This has become an issue of the moment  with the growth of machine intelligence. Finally, I try to answer two questions: how can we secure our survival as  human beings? Is it worth trying to do so? A quick preview of  my answer to the first question. Some...

from Asad Zaman and WEA Pedagogy Blog Introduction: Beyond the Jungle For centuries, capitalism has told us that land is a commodity to be bought, sold, and exploited for profit. It has also sold us a dangerous myth: that humans are inherently competitive, isolated individuals, destined to fight for survival in a brutal world. According to this worldview, land belongs to those who claim it first and use it for personal gain. But this idea is not only destructive—it’s profoundly false....

by Tom Dinger The Bell A commentary by an acquaintance of mine and from years ago. I believe there is only one person who might recognize the author. He was well liked amongst his fellow writers. Americans Doubting the Big Bang Is a Healthy Thing A new Associated Press-GfK poll asked approximately one thousand U.S. adults to rate their confidence in science and medicine.  The results showed surprising skepticism in various scientific...

It is agreed that freedom of speech does not imply freedom to make whatever performative utterance one chooses. It just isn’t agreed what “performative” means. Some (of whom you are the first I ever heard do so ever in my life) use it in this sense. The usage condemnation is performative when, for example a judge condemns one to death – the sequelae are nonverbal and very direct (much more so before the current practice of 7 years or so if...

Next week, as I’ve mentioned, I’ll take part in a debate/dialogue with Stephen Hicks, a North American philosopher, who has criticised postmodernism from a right/libertarian perspective. He’s on a tour of Australia, and was invited to Brisbane by Murray Hancock who’s setting up The Brisbane Dialogue which has the ambitious objective of promoting civil discussion across political divides. I ended up being dobbed in (is this an Australianism?) to present the other side, and chose the...

A few years ago, I wrote a series of articles in Jacobin showing how Locke’s theory of property, on which most modern propertarianism is based, was entirely consistent with his personal involvement in American slavery and the expropriation of indigenous Americans. Historian Holly Brewer has come to Locke’s defence, pointing to more evidence about Locke’s involvement in American affairs, of which I was previously unaware. I’ve responded[1], arguing that, far from exonerating Locke, the...

Barkley Rosser either makes a bad mistake in starting with Marx's definition of "socialism" as state-ownership of the means of production as exclusive, or he is carrying water for the ownership class that uses this arbitrary definition to demonize the opposition to its rent-seeking and parasitic rent extraction, e.g., by socializing negative externality, the result of which is now climate change. I suspect that he was shooting from the hip and shot himself in the foot instead of hitting his...